How To Grow A Complete Salad Garden
It’s the most wonderful time of the year – gardening season. (Photo Courtesy of Getty Images)
There’s a popular way of gardening with kids called a pizza garden. It’s basically a circular garden with different pizza ingredients grown in each “slice.” The grown up version is the salad garden — your own living salad bar, all summer long. Lay it out how you will — circle, rows, squares — with all of your favorite salad mixings. Salads are by their nature varied mixes so the list of what could be grown for your salad could fill a book, but here are a few suggestions to fill your bowl.
Related: How to Build a Sustainable Garden
Tomatoes
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Tomatoes are one of those vegetables where a garden will beat a grocery store any day. Fresh tomatoes are flavorful and nutrient-dense, and once you escape the need to ship them cross country as the commercial growers do there are hundreds of varieties to choose from. There are three basic categories of tomatoes — cherry, sauce, and slicers. Though any of these could find their way into a salad, the small round cherry tomatoes are the best place to start since they’re easier to grow than slicers and are often less susceptible to disease. Once the plant starts to fruit you will be able to harvest fresh tomatoes throughout the season.
Related: 35 Ways to Eat a Tomato
Tomatoes need to be planted from starts, the small plants you see at racks in garden stores. You can buy seed and start your own or just buy the starts from a garden center or farmers market.
Growing Salad Greens
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There’s a problem with salad greens. Get the big tub of spring mix off the grocery store shelf and it will be filled with slimy greens before you reach the end. Get the small tub and you wont have enough greens to last the week. The only solution is to grow your own salad through the spring, harvesting fresh greens that will always be on hand and hit your plate before going bad.
How much do you need?
Start by figuring out exactly how much salad mix you will need. Most small tubs of salad mix sold in grocery stores are 5 ounces. Though yields are difficult to predict you should be able to grow around a pound of spring mix from six square feet of soil. The amount of lettuce seed you need would be around a 1/16 of an ounce to yield 1 pound of lettuce.
In order to have a continuous harvest of salad you should divide your salad plot into smaller subsections. Harvest can begin in as little as three weeks so you could divide your plot into quarters or four rows, and plant a quarter a week. With this strategy you should have a good amount of salad greens each week. You could mix it up with brassica greens like baby bok choi and kale, but be aware that they mature more quickly than lettuce so they should probably be planted in beds or rows of their own.
Planting
Prepare your garden bed with compost and manure. You don’t need particularly deep soil, but make sure that you have good drainage. Salad greens don’t need as much direct sunlight as many vegetables, so they can be a good way to make use of a shaded spot in your garden. Around 4 hours of direct sunlight should suffice. You can also plant salad greens in trays or pots. A pot 18 inches across and at least 6 inches deep should work.
There are a variety of seed mixes for lettuce available in most garden stores. Johnny’s Selected Seeds offers a popular and easy to grow “All Star Gourmet Lettuce Mix" and High Mowing Seeds offers a great Mesclun Mix that provides a reliable yield and flavorful salad.
Related: How to Choose the Right Seeds For Your Garden
Most gardeners plant salad greens in rows or broadcast them in beds, covering the seeds with 1/8 to ¼ inch of soil. The broadcast method has the advantage of ease. Simply rake or till loose a patch in your garden and evenly toss seeds across the soil. Then cover the seeds with soil. Once the seeds start to sprout you will need to thin them to around 2-3 inches apart. The small greens you pull out while thinning are great additions to salads and packed with nutrients.
Water with a light mister in the morning and evening, but avoid watering in the hottest part of the day. You can continue to fertilizer the mix with fish emulsion, particularly following harvest.
The Harvest
Once the lettuce greens have reached 4-6 inches they are ready to harvest. Cut them ¼ of an inch above the soil line. Most plants will regrow their leaves in another few weeks so you’ll be able to harvest them again throughout the season. Lettuces are cool season crops, which means they don’t like the heat. Eventually they will become bitter in the hotter parts of the country. You can extend the season by using a special shade cloth, but many gardeners call it quits on lettuce by the end of June.
For those accustomed to prewashed greens, it is also good to remember that you’ll need to wash your lettuce unless you like your salads full of grit. Simply rinse the lettuce under cold water and spin in a salad spinner until it’s dry. Then enjoy the harvest—you’ll never have a better salad than the one you grow yourself.
Peppers
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Like tomatoes, peppers are a great way to add color, variety, and flavor to a salad. Peppers like hot weather so they should be planted when the ground is consistently warm. There are a wide variety of pepper cultivars, but bell peppers are the best for salads and among the easiest to grow.
Bell peppers should be planted as starts in good soil and full sun.
Related: The 6 Vegetables That Will Save Your Life
Cucumbers
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Cucumbers mixed with vinegar, pepper and a little honey can make for a great salad all by themselves. Any cucumber will make for a great salad, but not all cucumbers are good for pickling, so if you plant only one variety you might want to try a pickling variety to provide you with more options. Cucumbers are generally planted directly from seed in warm soil (though they may be cool, they don’t like the cold). Once the vines begin emerging from the soil the plant will go looking for something to climb so have a trellis nearby.
Related: The 10 Healthiest Fruits and Vegetables
Sugar Snap Peas
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One great salad ingredient that can be started early in the season are sugar snap peas. These vining peas need a trellis, but grow easily and actually help replenish nitrogen to the soil. The peas are great to eat whole as a snack or can be a good addition to stir-fries as well as salads.
Radishes
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Radishes are quick thrills in the gardening world. They grow fast (in as little as three weeks for some varieties) and though they can’t be harvested continuously like the other plants on this list, they can be replanted throughout the season depending on the variety. There are many kinds of radishes from short and stubby to long and carrot-like. Try out a few packs of seeds over the season and find your favorite.
By Ragan Sutterfield
