Now’s the Time to Plant a Salad Garden for Lush, Leafy Greens on Demand

One of the easiest ways to get started is with cut-and-come-again leaf lettuces. Tomas Bazant/Shutterstock

Eat your greens! Our mothers were right. Lettuce, spinach, arugula, Swiss chard, kale, and other leafy delights are an important part of a healthy diet. Sadly, they are a nutritional component that is often found lacking.

Grabbing a bag of mixed salad or head of lettuce at the grocery store is easy, but forget it in the crisper, and it’s soon a suspicious, mushy mess that looks more like a kid’s science experiment than anything that was once edible. The solution is to grow your own.

Sounds over-the-top? Growing greens at home actually takes much less time, effort, and space than one might expect—often significantly less. On the upside, having greens-on-demand saves trips to the store; they stay fresher, thereby more nutritious; they last longer as the leaves are still on the mother plant; and from the first forkful, it’s apparent that there’s no substitute for just-picked flavor.

It’s Salad Season

The most popular salad greens are cool-season crops. The warmest parts of the country (Zones 9–11) consider fall and even winter to be some of their prime growing seasons for two main reasons: First, the plants are no longer being battered by summer’s high heat, intense pest pressure, mildew, and diseases. Second, the lower temperatures allow cool-weather crops to grow. One example is lettuce, which prefers temperatures in the 55-to-70-degree range and can handle some dips below once the plants are established.

Temperate Zones 7–8 can grow a salad garden outdoors well into the fall. Other gardeners might want to consider planting containers that can be moved inside when the temperatures drop. A basic leaf lettuce salad garden can be planted in a container of just about any shape or size—such as a repurposed tin summer drink container (with holes drilled for drainage) or a wood garden box built to fit a specific space inside the home—as long as it is at least six inches deep for sufficient root growth.

A south-, east-, or west-facing window that gets a minimum of five hours is best. In fact, because salad greens can easily be grown in several small planters if needed (rather than one large one), they can be distributed throughout a home or apartment to make the most efficient use of window sills with natural light. Bonus: They’ll cheer up the room(s) on dreary days. No good location? Consider some basic grow lights.

Gotta Love Lettuce

One of the easiest ways to get started is with cut-and-come-again leaf lettuces. There are several renowned for their easy-to-grow nature and ability to provide baby lettuce in as little as 35 days and more mature leaves for several weeks thereafter. These include the green favorites Salad Bowl, Matchless (aka, Green Deer Tongue), and Black Seeded Simpson. Or add a dash of color to the garden and the plate with red leaf lettuces such as Antares, Bronze Arrowhead, Merlot, and Red Sails (which needs 49 days).

Other popular selections that will be ready to pick in 40 to 45 days for baby lettuce, or 55 to 65 days for mature leaves, include buttercrunch, bibb, Boston, and romaine (the crunchy basis of a Caesar salad).

Head lettuce, on the other hand, is harvested once, typically 55 to 85 days after sprouting. This includes crisphead-style lettuces, such as the ever-popular iceberg that is sold in supermarkets, and Batavia, a French cultivar. Also, buttercrunch, bibb, and Boston, which are technically considered loose-head lettuces that can be left to grow full size, can be harvested all at once, if preferred. Romaine can be treated similarly and left until it forms a tall head with big ribs. Though honestly, who can be that patient when there are delicious baby greens to be had?

Popeye’s Faves

Baby spinach leaves can be harvested in as little as 20 to 30 days. The soft, tender leaves add a bit of pop to a salad and also make an excellent base for a smooth and creamy spinach dip. If one wants full-size curly leaf, smooth-leaf, arrowhead, or savory (crinkly leaf) varieties, it doesn’t take much longer—just a mere 38 to 50 days total.

Plus, there’s some extremely robust cool-weather spinach for northern gardeners, with varieties such as Bloomsdale and Tyee able to survive heavy freeze temperatures below 20 degrees with no or minimal protection.

Rainbow Swiss chard offers a mild spinach-like flavor. It is highly favored because of the unique burst of iridescent colors it brings to the salad bowl, and is ready in 40 days.

Emphasis on Flavor

Arugula (aka rocket or roquette) is a palate-pleaser that adds a pop of peppery flavor as well as a bit of visual interest with its interesting leaf shapes. A member of the mustard family, its leaves are best when picked young, starting in 30 to 40 days.

Chinese mustard, pac choi, red and green leaf mustard, and tatsoi are additional favorites, which—good news here!—can be purchased as a handy Mesclun mix (the name is derived from Mesclar for “mixture”). The blend is famous for its combined mild, nutty, and earthy flavor profile, and is ready for harvest in 45 days.

Get out the salad dressing. Salad bowl gardens are a natural for succession planting or, in more limited space, trying new crops every few months.

Tempt the Taste Buds

Go beyond lettuce to add interesting flavors and textures to the salad bowl with these tasty accents. They work equally well to garnish a sandwich.

Home-growing greens means that you'll always have a fresh supply at hand. Smit/Shutterstock

Consider Cress

Upland, broadleaf, garden, and curly cress are easier to grow for the newbie gardener than their famous cousin watercress, which requires consistent, very moist soil. All are highly nutritious and ready for harvest as early as 15 to 20 days.

Choose Chicory

Chicory with deeply cut, curled leaves is referred to as endive, while those with waxy, broad, crumbled leaves are escarole. One particular cultivar, Ruffec (endive), is particularly well-suited for cold and wet conditions. All take 60 days to harvest.

Marvelous Mâche

Often called “corn salad” or “lamb’s lettuce,” these slightly nutty-tasting Mache rosettes have been known to withstand temperatures as low as negative-20 degrees (though a cold frame should be seriously considered at this point). It takes from 40 days to, in harsher conditions, up to 70 days to mature.