Of all the edibles I grow from seed in the vegetable garden, I find salad greens to be the easiest and most rewarding. Sprinkle seeds on top of good soil then water. There's no need to cover the seeds with dirt. They'll sprout in around 3 days and can be harvested in about 3 weeks.
If you've never grown lettuce before, I would recommend buying any pack of mesclun salad mix that looks interesting and give it a try. Don't worry about sowing the seeds too thick. Once the leaves are large enough to harvest, cut them at the base of the plant, and within a few days you'll notice the open spaces filled with new leaves. Salad greens can be grown in pots, raised beds or directly in the ground and by growing them from seed yourself, you will have access to wonderful varieties you would never find at the grocery store. One of my favorites is Romaine Freckles from Botanical Interests.
I harvested the first salad greens for dinner tonight. This is Tango from Johnny's that overwintered (shocking!) and a few leaves of Sea of Red from Renee's. It's hard to articulate the excitement of the first dinner salad of the season eaten 30 minutes after harvest. Bliss!
I agree! Lettuce is the best from ones own garden. The first year I grew it I made the mistake of sowing 100 heads(5 different kinds)all at the same time.
ReplyDeleteI was trading it, giving it away and eating it! lol
I have a post about trading it for aged horse manure! The horse seemed to love organic produce and his uummm..manure was great in the garden!
I've planted spinach (almost a month ago) and am barely seeing sprouts. I think I planted too deeply but I'm not giving up on greens.
ReplyDeleteThat looks yummy. We love fresh lettuce from the garden too. We tried the mesclun mix a couple of years but there was always something in there we didn't like.
ReplyDeleteYour salad greens look great and you are so right that lettuce is easy and rewarding to grow. We just harvested a bunch of lettuces this weekend too.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite part about growing leaf lettuces is that you can use space in the garden more than once with multiple lettuce sowing or by growing lettuce in the spring in the same spot that you put heat loving veggies like peppers or squash in early summer.
Also, do you plant greens again in the Fall? That's great as well.
BTW, I haven't been here in a while and I love the new look of your blog. You are doing great with your garden and with this site. I will be back regularly!
I too grow all of my salad greens from seed, including spinach, radishes and green onions. I have so much right now, I need to start giving it away!
ReplyDeleteEileen
Last night, I harvested my first batch of lettuce - I planted 2 kinds for a community garden volunteer project and kept a couple of seedlings for myself.
ReplyDeleteI love lettice but wanted to share with my mother, so she was the lucky recipient.