Laugh at high produce prices in the store and get the greens you really want when you design and plant your own salad garden. Expand your gardening horizons with mesclun, chards and more lettuces than any grocer offers.
Instructions
1. Remember the greatest salad you ever ate and list the ingredients. Start with green leaf lettuce and add fancy spring greens, edible flowers, crisp radishes and cherry tomatoes - you name it.
2. Find a sunny spot for a garden bed or a collection of containers. Make sure you'll tend and use the garden - put it where you pass by every day, or just outside the kitchen.
3. Locate your salad garden near a water source. Try to meet all of these ideal conditions and give the garden an eastern exposure as well.
4. Draw the garden space on graph paper and begin sketching in plants. Plan for an obelisk or tepee trellis at the center - something with height to anchor the bed.
5. Put the tallest plants on the east side so they don't cast a shadow all day long on the plants below. But use that shadow to keep greens sweet at midsummer.
6. Edge with edible flowers like nasturtium and dianthus for a friendly look. Or surround your salad garden with a decorative edging and let trailing herbs spill out.
7. Plan for a tight planting and a quick-succession harvest. Start with four leaf lettuce plants in 1 square foot, or four spinach, two chard or a dozen green onion sets. Harvest the first leaves of each and later the whole plant.
8. Design your garden so it suits you all season. Plan for early Bibb lettuce to give way to bush cucumbers, and replace tomatoes with fall collards and garlic at season's end.
Tags: your salad garden, your salad, edible flowers, leaf lettuce, salad garden, Start with