Growing delicious veggies with your spare times
Have you found yourself arriving at your local market just as you watch the last bag of salad mix or baby spinach you had your eyes on the fly off the shelf?
Luckily, there’s no need to rely on anyone but yourself when it comes to providing your kitchen with a year-round, healthy supply of fresh, crisp salad leaves!
Salad greens are rewarding and easy to grow. The tiny seeds can be sown directly into pots on balconies, or directly into the soil of outdoor garden beds. After the seedling stage, they grow quickly and leaves can be harvested often, giving you multiple fresh salads per week and plenty left over for your wraps and sandwiches.
As well as the different lettuce varieties we’re used to, try adding some variety to your garden by planting some other edibles which bees will love like Borage and Nusturtium. If you enjoy a bit of heat on your pallet, plant some cress, or radish. If you have a real eye for plants than you might like to learn how to identify some weeds like chickweed, dandelion and purslane which are easily found and contribute even more flavour and health benefits to your plate.
5 tips for delicious salad all year round:
1. Plant as many different varieties as you can with your available space to add some diversity to your salad mix. Eat the rainbow!
2. Pick regularly to enjoy the leaves when they are freshest, and to make sure nothing else eats them first!
3. Salad leaves have shallow roots so it’s important to keep your topsoil moist and apply a mulch layer to retain moisture. Water often.
4. Check which plants will suit your climate before buying seeds. Our friends at Easy Come Easy Grow have a monthly seed posting service to take the headache out of knowing what to plant and when.
5. Learn how to forage for extra goodies to put in your salad.
Remember salad mix can last up to 2 weeks in your Beeswax Wrap when folded into a bag and placed on the bottom shelf of the fridge!
Good luck and happy gardening!
Rob Holley
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