Grow Your Own Salad Greens This Spring

Apr 07, 2011

by Margaret Inwood, County Master Gardener

It is very easy and convenient to grow several salad greens in a small amount of garden space. You can pick them fresh and enjoy their colourful, delicate flavours such as peppery, tangy, or a taste of mustard or anise. Several lettuces can be cut and they will grow back again. These looseleaf types come in shades of green and red. One just carefully harvests from around the outside of the plant, leaving the ‘heart’ free to keep growing. Then there are head lettuce and romaine types. One can also buy a package of mesculin mix to include varieties of lettuce, endive, chicory, oriental greens, kale and mustards.

Also nice in a salad is fresh radish, green onions and sugar snap peas. Basil, borage, chervil and chives can also add flavours to a salad.

One can grow two salad crops in a year, one planted in May and the other one in late August or early September. The growing medium should be rich, loose light soil. Water it daily in hot weather and fertilize weekly. To control insects around your salad greens, plant a border of marigolds and calendula.