Guide to grow your salad own

Growing your own salad greens will put a world of fresh ingredients at your fingertips. Whether you are a gourmet salad lover who likes to experiment with interesting greens or someone who just wants to have your own homegrown lettuce, your choices are only limited by the seeds you can find and the space you have.

Types of Salad Greens

We always think of spinach and lettuce as the main spring greens, but there are many more to choose from. Look to the east—Asian greens such as napa cabbage, tatsoi, pac choi (or “bok choy”), mibuna, santoh, and hon tsai tai are especially suited to growing in cool spring weather. If you have never tasted any of these greens, then you are in for a treat. Some are hot and spicy, while others are quite mild. They can be eaten raw or cooked and will add flavor to any salad or stir-fry.
Depending on your taste buds, you can grow mild, tender greens like claytonia, chard, and mache, or bitter greens like endive, escarole, and radicchio. If you want to add a peppery tang to your salads, try mustard, mizuna, broadleaf cress, or arugula.

Lettuce is the obvious choice for a salad garden and there are many spring lettuces to choose from. Try a delicate butterhead, tasty heirloom crisphead, or colorful leaf lettuce. Plant them as soon as the ground can be worked. Lettuce seeds will germinate in soil as cold as 40°F (5°C).

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“Cut-and-Come-Again” Greens

There are ready-made salad mixes that offer a wide variety of textures, colors, and flavors. Look for mesclun or misticanza mixes, or make up your own custom blend using seeds for your family’s favorite greens. Lettuces and greens that will continue to grow after being given a haircut are called “cut-and-come-again” in many catalogs.

Growing and Harvesting Salad Greens

The key to having perfect greens is to grow them under row covers, which help to keep them relatively clean and bug-free.

Many row covers are made from spun-bonded polypropylene, a material that is light-, water-, and air-permeable, and very lightweight. Most allow 70%-90% light transmission. Covers help to moderate temperature and give a few degrees of frost protection, too. They can be supported by wire hoops or just laid over the plants and held in place with rocks and soil. Unlike plastic, this breathable material won’t cook your plants on a hot sunny day.

One simple way to grow your cut-and-come-again greens is to rake the prepared seedbed smooth and broadcast the seed evenly or sow it in wide bands to make harvesting easier.

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To keep a continuous supply of greens, plant a small section of the bed every two weeks. Cover the seeds lightly with soil and tamp down. Keeping the seedbed moist while the seeds are germinating is important and the row covers will help to keep moisture in. Greens are mostly water and will suffer a setback if allowed to wilt. When the plants emerge, keep the row covers in place and well-anchored on all sides. Only remove them when harvesting. This is a very effective way to foil flea beetles, the bane of the early spring garden. Tiny, black hopping specks no more than 2mm long, they will leave your lettuce riddled with small holes.

To pick your greens, carefully shear the young plants with scissors, leaving the growing center of the plant intact. Water and lightly fertilize the plants, cover them up with the row cover, and in no time at all, they will regrow and be ready for another harvest.

Growing a garden can be a most rewarding pastime. Whether you are a homeowner, a tenant or a lover of beautifying public spaces, watching green things bloom never gets old.

It is one mystery most of us are happy to observe our whole lives through.

Plants can be very sensitive, and much like people, require different environments and situations to survive and thrive.
Gardening is also one of the most therapeutic activities ever. In fact, the psychological benefits of horticulture include a sense of connection, self-esteem, less anxiety, and a healthy emotional release.

If you’ve never gardened before, there is no time like the present. There are a few basic gardening tips and tricks that can help you become a better grower.

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1. From Black Thumbs to Green Ones

Do you love the idea of being able to take care of your own garden, but it seems every time you start one everything dies?
The curse of the dreaded black thumb is all part of the process. Nobody starts off as an expert gardener.

It takes practice, patience and experimentation to learn about your own personal ecosystem. Put those gardening gloves on and get planting, but take note of all the lessons along the way.
On this interesting journey, you will learn about your garden, the plants, the seasons, the soil, the insects, the water systems, and the light-dark relationship to growth.

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 2. Location, Location, Location

Like starting your own business, creating a thriving garden has much to do with where you put it. Look for somewhere that regularly will meet your gaze when you move in and around your house.

A good garden needs plenty of attention, so if it is out of sight, it may be easily forgotten.

Be sure to find a location that gets a good balance of sunlight and shade, too.

You will learn as you go along that some plants need more than others, but a little of both is usually healthier.


3. Good Soil, Better Soil

A garden is highly dependent on the nutrients the plants can access from the ground. If you do not have good soil where you live, it is a good idea to invest in some by buying (or composting) decent topsoil and making use of nitrogen-rich compost to layer the garden beds.
Healthy soil is full of good nutrients like nitrogen, potassium, sulfur, magnesium, and calcium, to name a few.

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If you do not have the chemistry skills, the gardening section at your local store or the experts at your local nursery will be happy to advise you on the right choice.

Note that not every garden has the same elements and you should take note of which plants grow well in your type of soil (some types are sand, clay or silt, for example).

 If you don’t have a lot of room, try growing salad greens in a pallet garden (pictured above). Wrap landscape fabric around the back and sides of a wooden pallet, then fill the openings with soil and plant your seeds or starter plants. When the plants have taken root and begun to grow, simply stand the pallet upright in a sunny location.

Turn just a small part of your backyard into a salad-lover’s dream garden and soon you’ll be harvesting a bounty of flavorful greens.