Fresh Salads Are A-Growing!

I few weeks ago, I read a quite interesting blog.  The writer was talking about the fear of not knowing how safe the fresh greens she was buying at the grocery store were.  So her answer was to grow her own.  Once she started growing her own salad, she realized how easy it was!  And she realized that she could grow her salad year round.

So this got me thinking...we love a fresh salad, but everytime I purchase a bag at the store, it goes bad before we finish it.  Why don't I take this blog writers cue and grow my own too!  I had grown fresh salad a few years ago and we loved it!  We just went outside and picked just what we needed for that meal.  What we picked, would grow back in a few weeks.  But I had direct seeded those greens in my garden.  This time I wanted to do something different; something that I could bring indoor when the weather got bad this fall.

After buying a bag of good potting soil, mixed green seed, spinach seed, and liquid fertilizer, I decided to plant my salad in a container that I had on my back patio.  I chose this container because in the area I live in, mixed greens do great in the spring, but struggle in the hot, humid summer.  In this container, I can find a good shady, cool spot that would be a better environment for my greens to make it this summer.  Then, when the weather gets too cool, I can move my container to a more protected area. So let me share with you the steps I took to get my salad garden started growing.

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   I placed a old bag of sand in the bottom of my container.

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  I then placed my potting soil in the container.

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  Then my trusty helper, Knox, came along and spread the mixed greens in 2/3 of the container.

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  Knox then covered up our seeds.  He then planted the spinach in the last 1/3 of the container.

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  We finished up by watering in our seed with a good liquid fertilizer.

Our salad should be shooting up from the soil in about seven days.  We will just have to keep the chickens out of the container!

If you have any questions or comments on our fresh container salad garden, just leave me a post!

Let me know if you have done some creative gardening of your own!