Grow Your Own Organic Salad at Home

That's right, no more of that stinky stuff in the plastic package that gets shoved to the back of your fridge and then tossed two weeks later. No, no, we're not doing that anymore. Because I'm sharing Chapter 3 of my book Leaves, Roots, and Fruit with you.

Leaves, Roots, and Fruit is a step-by-step gardening system. I start with leaves, which are easy to grow, and graduate you up to fruit, which is way more demanding. Chapter 3 is Step 3 of my system, following Step 1, microgreens and sprouts, and then Step 2, herbs. Chapter 3 is, of course, all about growing organic salad greens.

So settle in, grab something delicious to drink, and learn everything you need to know about growing your own salad.

Excerpt from Chapter 3 of Leaves, Roots & Fruit

When I first started Gardenary, I was far from being a "gardening pro." I didn't have a degree in horticulture. I hadn't even won Yard of the Month in my neighborhood. I declared myself a "garden consultant" even when I was a long way from knowing how to grow everything in the garden. (Just between us, I still don't know everything!)

But before you call the garden police on me, let me explain. When I met with my first clients, I never ever promised that I could teach them everything about gardening.

I didn't have to. I filled our hour together by talking about the thing I did know how to do, my favorite aspect of gardening—setting up an organic salad garden.

As a self-taught gardener, I knew that learning everything at once wasn't possible or even enjoyable. Instead, the key to continuing to pick up the trowel season after season is gradually mastering one plant type at a time and incorporating it into your everyday routine.

I knew that if I could help someone quickly grow and harvest delicious salads every week for dinner for half of the year, they'd be on their way to becoming garden pros themselves. Spoiler alert: my plan worked!

6 Months of Salad Greens

This promise of six months of salad greens is no small thing. Picture that plastic box of spring mix that you pay $6 for after it's been shipped across the country. Now compare that to a garden bed of sweet, crunchy, and fresh lettuce greens you can harvest right outside your back door.

When you weigh the cost of store-bought greens (like fuel usage, single-use plastics, waste, and the history of widespread E coli and salmonella outbreaks) against the benefits of homegrown (vibrant flavor, nutritional content, and access to tasty varieties not commercially available), the garden beats the grocery store in every way (though the grocery variety does have more frequent flyer miles).

"You've spoiled me," my client Reed said. "I can't buy lettuce from the store anymore. It's either from my garden, or I can't bring myself to eat it."

I had to confess: "That's exactly what I was hoping would happen." Getting hooked on something so good for you, so good for the planet, and so easy to grow is the best insurance that you'll never stop growing.

If you're still not sure this gardening thing is for you, let me introduce you to salad gardening. Let's pretend it's you and me during one of my first garden consults; I'll tell you how excited I am about my own lettuce garden and see if I can't convince you to start growing your own greens too.

Just don't be mad if you can't bring yourself to buy lettuce from the store anymore either.

Salad Garden Plant Families

Pop quiz time! You've got 10 seconds to name as many salad plants as you can.

Iceberg, one. Romaine, two. Spinach, three. Cabbage, four. Have you thought of any others?

If variety is the spice of life, it's clear why some people are not that excited about salads. The truth is there are dozens, if not hundreds, of different plants that produce leaves perfect for tossing into bowls of fresh greens. It's not the plants' fault that our salad needs so much dressing to add a little bit of flavor; it's our food system.

There are so many more greens worth eating than are stocked at the grocery store. You rarely see these other cultivars on the shelves because they don't ship well or hold up in storage.

So before you dig in and grow your own salad greens, let's meet up with the varieties possible. Three key salad green plant families are the most important to understand.

The Asteraceae Family

First up is the aster family that you met in Steps 1 and 2 , which includes sunflowers, zinnias, marigolds, and of course, asters. But the asters we welcome now are the ones that become delicious salad greens: romaine, iceberg spring mix, radicchio, butterhead, and buttercrunch.

These greens generally prefer the cool season, when temps range from just above freezing to 65 or 75°F.

The Brassicaceae Family

The next plant family is the "dark greens" or mustard family. These salad greens are darker in color than the asters, and they vary in size from small arugula leaves to kale that can grow more than 5 feet in height.

The key brassicas in the salad garden include arugula, radishes (grown for their greens), kale, collards, mustards, and cabbage.

These greens prefer the cool season. Brassica plants are frost tolerant if not frost resistant, meaning they can be planted as soon as the soil can be worked in spring and will even grow under frost cloth or a cold frame deep into winter.

Some brassicas (namely arugula and kale) can continue growing in warmer weather that exceeds 75°F. Kale and collards are biennial plants, so they actually make it through two years in the garden if conditions are optimal.

The Amaranthaceae Family

You met the amaranth family in Step 1 (microgreens and sprouts), but now we grow these family members to their full size.

Amaranth favorites for the salad bowl include spinach, Swiss chard, and beets (grown for the leaves).

These greens are packed with antioxidants and vitamins, and they also love the cool season. Swiss Chard is also a biennial and can last for years in the kitchen garden.

Other Salad Garden Plant Families

If you were to grow only these three plant families in your salad garden, you'd still have way more variety in your salad bowl than you thought possible. Asters, brassicas, and amaranths together produce the majority of the green leaves you can harvest for just-picked salads from the garden for much of the year, if not year round, since each family includes plants that can withstand frost and some that can survive summer's hottest temperatures.

After you master the plants in these plant families, you can expand to less-well-known plant families, especially when you're ready to grow into the heat of the summer.

For Warmer Times of the Year

You can try nasturtiums (the Tropaeolaceae family), a peppery green that produces beautiful edible flowers and flourishes in the warm season. New Zealand spinach (the Aizoaceae family) is a heat-loving salad green that's actually not spinach at all but still packs the same nutrients. Another "spinach" called Malabar spinach (the Basellaceae family) is a climbing plant, and Malabar spinach (pictured below) is a nutrient-dense green that thrives in the summer heat.

For Cooler Times of the Year

Another cool-season plant family called Polygonaceae includes sorrel, with its tangy, citrusy leaves.

How Much Space to Give Salad Greens in the Garden

When it comes to spacing plants, salad greens might be the most forgiving of all in the garden. If you give them a foot, they'll grow to be a huge lettuce plant. If you give them an inch, they'll grow as much as they're able within that little piece of earth.

In a sense, lettuce leaves it up to you. (Get it?)

The space you should allot to salad greens really depends on (a) the output you're hoping to achieve and (b) whether you'd like to cut a couple of leaves from each plant at a time or harvest an entire head of greens at once.

Small Leaf Harvests

If you're aiming for small leaf harvests, plant the seeds closer together, with as many as 9 to 12 seeds per square foot for smaller greens or at least 1 to 4 seeds per square foot for larger ones. Leafy greens that produce lots of small, harvestable leaves even when given minimal space include spring mixes, buttercrunch, and endive in the aster family; arugula and radish greens in the brassica family; and spinach and beet greens in the amaranth family. Each of these can thrive with only a few square inches in which to grow, and many of them taste best when harvested at 3 to 4 inches in length. Be aware that tight spacing assumes you'll be harvesting often.

Large Leaf Harvests

If you'd prefer to harvest larger leaves or an entire head of cabbage or romaine at a time, give plants more space to reach maturity. Larger plants include romaine, iceberg lettuces, and radicchio in the aster family; kale, mustards, and cabbages in the brassica family; and Swiss chard in the amaranth family.

Though all can actually be grown for baby greens, if left in the garden for longer than 45 to 60 days, these plants will grow leaves that are at least 10 to 12 inches long, with the plants themselves extending as wide as 1 square foot each. So plant these larger plants as many as four per square feet or as little as one per square foot.

How to Plant Salad Greens

Some greens are best planted by seed right into the garden soil. This is true for all those tiny leafy greens. Their root systems are shallow, which makes it challenging to transplant them without shocking the plant and hindering the growth.

Most leafy green seeds, from spinach to spring mix to arugula, don't need to be planted deeply. They're very small, and they enjoy a bit of sunlight as they germinate. All you need to do is measure out the seed-planting distance, place the seeds on the surface of the soil, and then barely cover the seeds with a little bit of compost.

Larger plants, especially those that will grow for months, are ideally started in advance indoors or purchased as transplants. This includes cabbage, mustard, and kale in the brassica family; Swiss chard in the amaranth family; and iceberg and romaine in the aster family.

Start these in a mix of coco coir and compost or organic seed starting mix indoors under grow lights, and then transplant them to the garden at 1 to 4 plants per square feet.

How Much Sunlight Salad Greens Need

Unless you're growing in an empty lot or on a treeless prairie, chances are you're fighting for sunlight in your garden space. The good news is you don't have to struggle nearly as much when you're growing on Step 3. In fact, it's because of our own frustrations with too much shade that I learned the resilience of salad greens.

When the gardening books say, "Find a spot that receives 8 hours of sunlight," they're speaking in ideals and also assuming that you're going to be growing all sorts of vegetables in that space, including fruiting plants like tomatoes and cucumbers. Too many would-be gardeners call it quits when they hear this instruction and assume their yard doesn't have enough light for any kind of productive gardening.

They're not entirely wrong. Sunlight is the central ingredient for a successful garden. But just because your yard isn't basking in 8 or more hours of direct sun doesn't mean you have to close the book on your garden journey. A kitchen garden can still work for you, thanks to leafy greens.

With just 4 hours of sunlight a day, leafy greens produce roots and their first set of leaves, and most lettuce plants will grow to their full potential while receiving less than 5 or 6 hours of sun a day.

It may be true that more hours of sunlight at the right time of year with the right temperatures will give you more leaves, bigger plants, and more production. But you'll find that if you plant enough, you can gather plenty of salad greens from a bed that receives just a few hours of light daily.

So find a spot that receives at least 4 hours of sunlight a day, plant your greens there, and fill one harvest basket after another with delicious salad greens, even if you're standing in the shade with your scissors.

Salad Garden Season

For the most part, salad plants thrive in the cooler temps of the year. In fact, ideal growing temperatures for the three key plant families range from 45 to 75°F, meaning salad greens grow best in spring and fall or even in winter for some gardeners.

That's not to say that these greens grow only in the cool season. With a little help from you, they can continue through cold and heat.

In cold weather, greens grown under the cover of frost cloth for protection from light frost will hold up until temperatures dip below 25°F. If you really want your greens to push through winter, you can grow them under glass, under a small cloche, in a cold frame, or inside a greenhouse, where most greens stay alive and are harvestable even when outside temps sink as low as the teens.

In hot weather, you can extend the life of your cool-weather-loving salad plants by keeping their roots well watered each day and by covering the plants with shade cloth or a wicker cloche. Providing shade can delay bolting (going to flower and seed) by at least a few weeks and possibly the whole season.

More Ways to Extend Your Salad Garden Season

Of course, the best way to push into either the coldest or the hottest parts of the year with salad greens is to grow the varieties that are more tolerant or resistant to the temperature swings. For extreme cold, grow greens with a savoy, or bumpy, texture. Brassicas like kale and especially cabbage have savoy varieties.

To push into the hotter months, grow greens that love the heat, such as Malabar spinach, New Zealand spinach, nasturtiums, and mustards.

One final way to extend your salad garden season is by focusing on biennial plants like kale and collards from the brassica family and Swiss chard from the amaranth family. These plants don't produce seed until their second full growing year. Biennial plants need to survive as long as possible so they make it to their seed-producing year, which means they'll work hard to keep growing through the hottest days. Planting biennials means more greens for you, possibly year round.

How to Water Your Salad Garden

One of my favorite concepts in the garden is to think about nature. Anytime I feel confused, frustrated, or downright overwhelmed in the garden, I just come back to this question: How does this grow in nature? The answer is almost always the solution I'm looking for and the logic I need to keep me growing.

Consider the life cycle of a buttercrunch plant. After growing lots of leaves, it finally produces a bolted stalk with flowers that bloom. Those flowers dry, each one containing hundreds of tiny seeds. And with the first big rainstorm of autumn, all those seeds drop to the ground. The plant's withered leaves and stalk crumble under the weight of the first snow and freeze in place over the dark months of winter. As the days lengthen in early spring, sunlight hits the soil once more, and the snow begins to melt. Each day, another layer of snow turns to water until all we see is dark, wet earth.

What we can't see are the lettuce seeds, the ones that fell onto the soil, where they continue their long winter nap. Day after day, the seeds absorb the sun's warmth, the light overhead, and the rain and snowmelt. Finally, full to the brim of cool water in warm soil, the tiny seeds burst right open. 

It's easy to assume the first green sprout came up because of the sunshine. Yes, light was definitely part of the equation. However, the thing that was most consistent for those seeds was water. That slow snowmelt provided consistent moisture for the seeds until they simply had to burst open and sprout.

And that's the picture to keep in mind when you're watering your lettuce greens.

Most lettuce plants are 90 to 95% water, so to successfully grow greens, watering must be your major focus. More important than the amount of water is the frequency of watering. So there's one word to remember when it comes to your salad greens watering plan: consistency.

If you're growing lettuce greens, you've now got a new habit to add to your gardening routine, and that's checking the moisture level of your salad plants. 

The most crucial time for consistent watering is before the seeds germinate. Think about nature here, and do your best imitation of melting snow. Don't let the soil dry out one bit before the seeds show their first signs of green.

Once the seeds are established, continue to keep the plants well watered. Lettuce plants have shallow roots that grow right under the soil surface, putting them at risk of drying out sooner than the more deeply planted seeds. So water lettuce seedlings consistently, maintaining a moist soil environment and being certain that the water hits the roots of the plants, not the leaves.

As lettuce plants grow, their leaves will tell you when to water and when to pause. If leaves begin to wilt, that's a sign you should have watered about 2 days ago. You'll have to baby the greens back to life over the next few days. If leaves turn yellow, you watered too much. And if leaves show signs of mold or mildew or the stem starts to rot, you're watering way too much.

Let nature be your guide when it comes to watering your salad plants. Remember the slow snowmelt; give them a little water, not too much, and keep it consistent. Follow these rules, and you're 98% of the way there.

Salad Garden Nutrients

The good news about growing salad greens is that they only reach the third stage of their maturity before we harvest and enjoy them. That's because leaves are the only thing that we want from these plants. This means less work for you and faster harvests.

If you set up your leafy green plants to grow in rich compost-amended soil, they're not going to require additional fertilizing. Compost-rich soil provides the key nutrients—namely nitrogen and magnesium—salad greens need to thrive.

That said, if you want to boost leafy green production, encouraging the plants to grow bigger and maybe faster, or if the leaves lose their bright green hue, you can fertilize every 2 to 4 weeks to add a bit of nitrogen to the plant's system. But be careful. Think about nature and use only organic ingredients like cottonseed meal, earthworm castings, or extra compost. If you use a synthetically derived fertilizer, you risk burning the leaves.

Listen to your plants. They'll tell you when they need a little something extra.

How to Tend Your Salad Garden

"Ugh! The caterpillars!"

It was my third year growing salad greens (so I obviously knew everything on the subject), and I had just conceived a plan to sell homegrown salad greens to my neighbors.

I told a few local businesses and neighbors I'd be delivering just-harvested lettuce greens from my garden every day for lunch. I covered all 6 of my raised garden beds with lettuce seeds.

As expected, within about 30 days, I started to harvest the first leafy greens from my boxes, and I did a test run of washing, sorting, and packaging the greens before I was ready to sell.

But what I found in the kitchen sink was something no one would buy: a bunch of wriggly caterpillars. These were cabbage loopers, little green critters that munch on leaves at will in their early caterpillar stages, form chrysalises, and then emerge as white moths, each female capable of laying hundreds of new caterpillar eggs in a matter of days.

The fact that I was discovering caterpillars at this stage could only mean that there were likely hundreds more in my future product. Ugh was the best thing I could think to say. I knew I could treat the caterpillars organically, but I immediately regretted not protecting my salad plants in the first place.

How to Prevent Pests in the Salad Garden

They say "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," but you'll actually need a few yards for pest protection in the salad garden. Yards of tulle or garden mesh, that is.

Take it from me and my caterpillar-infested garden: Put most of your tending efforts into protecting your greens from pests and disease rather than treating the problems once they arise. 

The best way to do this in the salad garden is with covers. Tulle or mesh fabric offers the perfect protection for salad greens. The tiny holes in the fabric are big enough to allow sunlight, water, and air to reach the plants, yet small enough to keep out moths, slugs, beetles, leaf hoppers, and caterpillars. Simply covering greens with hoops and a piece of agricultural mesh fabric or tulle can prevent all kinds of critters from entering your bed, saving all the beautiful greens for you to enjoy, not the pests.

Protecting your leafy greens will spare you a lot of grief, but you've got to time it right. As soon as you plant the seeds or starter plants outside, cover them. Waiting a few days or weeks, especially after the first leaves appear, can mean you'll end up trapping the pests inside the garden, instead of keeping them out.

Once your greens are protected with a cover, you simply lift the mesh when you need to tend or harvest the plants, and then reapply and secure the cover again till next time.

How to Treat Salad Garden Pests Organically

If (I mean when) pests do arrive on salad garden plants, there are ways you can treat them organically. The first measure is to remove all the damaged leaves—be ruthless!—and clean the soil around the plant. Over the next 2 weeks, continue plucking off damaged leaves and picking up dead plant material and weeds from the soil.

If severe cutting and cleaning don't rid the plants of the pest, you can apply a spray or granular treatment. My favorites for the salad garden are garlic barrier (an extract of garlic mixed with water and sprayed on plants) or diluted Castile soap. In extreme pest infestations, you could use Monterey B.t., but if the pest issue is that severe, I typically just remove the affected plants, clean the area, and start again.

How to Harvest & Prune Leafy Greens

Beyond protecting the garden, your most important tending task is harvesting. By harvesting lettuce greens, you're actually tending them. When you remove the oldest and lowest leaves from each plant, you make sure the soil is clear of leaf debris and encourage new growth from the center of each plant. Just as in Step 2, tending and harvesting are pretty much the same thing. If that's not a gardener's win, I don't know what is.

Beyond harvesting to eat, regularly cut the older and outer leaves from the plants, even if they don't look fit for consumption because of holes, spots, or other damage. Generally I toss these leaves into the compost pile, but if there are signs of disease, I'll put them in a separate space for green waste.

Those caterpillars might have gnawed their way through my first business idea, but they ultimately taught me important lessons in tending my salad garden. A little mesh and regular harvesting go a very long way.

The Best Companion Plants for Salad Greens

Salad greens play well with other plants in the garden, and plants will stay healthier when you work with nature.

Plant chives, green onions, garlic, and onions around your greens as a natural pest deterrent. Pests smell the onions but not the leafy greens.

Grow edible flowers like calendula and nasturtiums as trap crops, plants that attract pests to their flowers and scent, enticing the pests away from the salad greens.

Grow herbs in the Apiaceae family near salad greens to welcome beneficial insects like ladybugs to the salad garden. These insects prey on lettuce's predators like aphids and will work alongside you to keep your lettuce for you, not the bugs.

Finally, plant greens alongside nitrogen-fixing fruit plants like peas and beans that absorb nitrogen from soil bacteria and can share that growth-spurring nitrogen with salad greens so they grow strong.

You can also plant salad greens in the shade of taller fruiting plants like tomatoes or cucumbers to keep the greens cool when the temperatures warm up.

The Time to Harvest for Your Leafy Greens

Though the wait to harvest salad leaves is longer than that for sprouts and microgreens, I'd still classify lettuces as garden "fast food." Baby greens like radish leaves and arugula are ready to harvest in less than 30 days, and most other salad greens will be ready to cut after 45 days. That's under 6 weekends between your planting day and your first harvest day.

Once you hold a lettuce, kale, or arugula seed in your hand, you won't be able to look at a head of lettuce or plastic tub of arugula the same way again.

"All this can come from just that in such a short time?"

It is an everyday miracle that most of us take for granted when browsing the grocery store refrigerated section. But not you. Not after you complete your first few weeks of salad gardening. From now on, romaine is remarkable, kale is unbelievable, and yes, even spinach is a wonder.

As soon as you plant your lettuce seeds, mark your calendar 45 days forward with a star that reads, "First harvest of the best salad I've ever tasted in my entire life."

Leafy Greens Production

As soon as our first salad garden started growing, my family couldn't shove the greens in our mouths fast enough, so I did what any smart mother who desperately needs help from friends and neighbors would do. I shared the bounty.

Actually it was these garden barters that first got me thinking about starting a garden business. (This was before I spotted the caterpillars...)

You'll see exactly what I mean in terms of full harvest baskets once your lettuce plants begin showing leaves. Follow these steps and you just might find yourself equipped with new bribing power for puppy walking or kid watching too.

One of the reasons leaves are so much fun to grow is because they grow so much. You can get pounds of lettuce from just one plant in a very short period of time. In fact, I expect to get at least one salad bowl full per month from each plant. So if I've planted nine salad plants in a square foot, I'm going to get nine small bowls of lettuce within a 45- to 75-day period from just that one spot.

If I'm growing bigger leaves from head lettuces like cabbage and iceberg, I'm going to get one huge harvest that could feed all of us from one square foot after 60 days. And if it's a large cut-and-come-again plant like kale, I'm going to harvest weekly from that one square foot of space for at least three to six months, if not longer.

How Many Salad Plants to Grow Per Person in Your Household

It's good to think forward to harvest time when planning and planting your salad greens. Before sowing any seeds, estimate the number of green servings you'd love to have for your household per month. Remember, this isn't just for raw salad. I use greens in morning smoothies and dips and side dishes and stir fries and sautéed meals too.

I usually estimate a little under two servings a day for myself and my husband and one serving every day for my kids (one can hope!). This adds up to about 150 green servings per month for our household. When I divide those servings by 4 or 5 plants per square foot, I know I need about 30 square feet of gardening space to grow enough salad for my family every single month.

Once your plants get started, it can be hard to keep up with everything that's coming out of the garden. Harvest one leaf, and another one's already growing to replace it. The majority of plants from the aster and some from the brassica and amaranth family will produce new and delicious leaves for 60 to 90 days if the temps stay below 80°F. When temps get higher, it'll be time to either let these plants bolt and produce seed, or just remove them from the garden altogether.

Biennial plants like Swiss chard and kale provide new leaves and servings for months to come. As soon as you pull the cool-season greens, you can plant some warm-season greens to give you harvests instead. They'll provide another 45 to 75 days of harvests before it's time to return to cool-season greens once more.

If you have a hot season in your climate, fill it with hot-tolerant greens like Malabar spinach, sorrel, and longevity spinach too.

Taking This Step

Once you take this step, you'll soon enjoy the most delicious salad greens you've ever tasted. They don't just taste good; they are so good for you. These freshly harvested leaves contain more nutrition than any salad green you can purchase.

And they're not just good for you; they're good for the planet too. With every bite of homegrown salad, you're cutting down on food miles and single-use plastics—and let's not forget the food waste you're avoiding. In between salads and green smoothies, your greens aren't turning slimy in the fridge. They're still growing in your garden—staying healthy and fresh until you're ready to consume another harvest. Instead of facing spoiled plastic boxes of lettuce, you're spoiling yourself with salad you actually like to eat.

Consider yourself warned: once you've tasted homegrown greens, it will be hard to go back to the grocery variety. Don't be mad at me if it's garden greens for you or none at all after you take this step.

That, My Friend, Is How to Grow Your Own Salad Garden

This excerpt from my book, Leaves, Roots, and Fruit is just one step in an eight-step system that teaches you how to go from black thumb to green thumb. But listen, if you just do Step 3, oh my goodness, can you imagine how different your diet would be? How different your health would be? How different your grocery bill would be?

When I first started growing my own greens in Houston, I'm not exaggerating to say I harvested a salad a day and did not have to buy greens from the store from October until April of the following spring. The salad garden is that abundant and prolific. And I was just growing in a couple of raised beds right next to my driveway. If I could do it, you can do it too.

Salad gardening is a huge passion of mine, and it's something that I truly believe every single person can do. Even if you're in an apartment or high-rise, you can grow enough greens to produce salad for at least 6 months months out of the year.

Will you commit to growing 6 months of salad alongside me this year?

Love from my salad garden to yours!