Winter Garden Salad

If it is a bit early to begin growing seeds indoors for transplants for the spring garden where you are, you don’t have to wait! Even if you don’t have a greenhouse, you make a windowsill winter garden salad. You can eat it within weeks!

Grow your own Micro-Greens!

Use a window box liner with drainage holes as your container. You will also need a tray to set under it so you won’t have a mess.

1. Fill the box with soilless seeding mixture, lightly moistened. Don’t fill too full or you will not be able to water without a mess
2. Plant lettuce seeds. Be sure to use the leaf lettuce variety, not the heading types. You can even mix in other greens like kale, arugula, mizuna, mache or corn salad if you like them. Sprinkle over the soil so that the seeds are not too close together (half and inch or so)
3. If your box is deep enough, throw in a few carrot or radish seeds!
4. Cover your seeds with a thin layer of moistened seed mix, then cover the container with plastic wrap. This will help create a tiny greenhouse environment and keep the moisture in. Don’t put it in too much direct light.
5. Check your seedlings daily. If too much moisture has clung to the plastic, tap it gently back into the soil. If the top of the soil is dry, water using a spray bottle or mister.
6. Once you start seeing green, do the dance, no just kidding! It is exciting seeing plants grow though, I always do the dance, even if it is only inside my heart, LOL You may need to thin the seedlings out a bit to keep them from overcrowding your little kitchen garden. Cut them off at the root and you can add them to today’s salad. You may have to do this more than once.
7. Once the leaves are 2 -3 inches high you can begin harvesting. Take one or two leaves from every plant -or as many as you need- for salad. As you continually remove leaves from the outside the plant continues to create new leaves from the inside, pushing out… pretty cool plan, huh?

More on How to grow lettuce

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