How to grow your own salad greens at home

If you want to grow food and you are not sure where to begin, start with greens. Not because they are glamorous, but because they are fast, they forgive nearly everything a beginner does wrong, and you get to eat the result within weeks rather than waiting a whole season to find out whether it worked.

They also do not need a backyard. A pot on a sunny step will do it.

Why greens are the easy start

Lettuce, spinach, rocket, kale and most soft herbs grow fast, which matters more than it sounds. A tomato takes months to tell you whether you got it right. Lettuce tells you in a fortnight, and if you got it wrong you have lost a fortnight and a few seeds rather than a summer.

They are also shallow rooted, so a reasonably deep pot is plenty, and they will put up with you forgetting them for a day or two. They will sulk in the heat and bolt to seed, which is the main way they fail, and even then you have learned something for the next sowing.

What you actually need

• Seed. One packet goes a very long way. The D.T. Brown lettuce packets run from 750 to 1250 seeds, which at a dozen plants a sowing is years of salad out of one packet.
• Something to grow in. A pot at least 20cm deep, a polystyrene box with holes punched in the bottom, or a bed. Drainage is the only non negotiable bit.
• Decent mix. Seed raising mix to germinate in, potting mix to grow on in. This is the one place not to economise, because cheap mix goes water repellent and then nothing you do fixes it.
• Somewhere with morning sun. Greens want good light and they do not want a full day of afternoon summer sun here, which will cook them.

Sow a little, often

The mistake nearly everybody makes is sowing the whole packet at once, which gives you 40 lettuces ready in the same week and then nothing for two months.

Sow a short row or a few cells every couple of weeks instead. You end up with a continuous supply rather than a glut, and it costs you nothing extra because you had the seed anyway.

Cut and come again

Do not pull the whole plant. Take the outer leaves and leave the growing point in the middle, and the same plant keeps producing for weeks. That is where the real value is: a plant that gives you a handful at a time over a month beats one that gives you a whole head once.

Pick in the morning if you can. Leaves picked in the afternoon heat are limp before they get to the kitchen.

When it goes wrong

• Bolted to seed. Heat, or the plant got too dry. Nothing to be done once it has happened, and the leaves go bitter. Sow again when it cools.
• Leggy and pale. Not enough light. Move it.
• Eaten overnight. Snails. Go out after dark with a torch, which works better than anything you can buy.
• Never came up. Sown too deep, or the surface dried out. Greens want to be barely covered and kept damp until they germinate.

Shop related products

• D.T. Brown Lettuce, Green Mignonette, 1000 seeds. A soft loose leaf, and a good cut and come again variety.
• D.T. Brown Red and Green Salad Lettuce, 1250 seeds. A mix, so one sowing gives you variety in the bowl.
• D.T. Brown Lettuce All Year, 750 seeds. For stretching the sowing window at both ends.
• Brunnings Seed Raising Mix 5L. Finer than potting mix, which is what small seed needs to push through.
• Brunnings Premium Potting Mix 36L. For potting on once they are up.

The garden centre carries the D.T. Brown seed range, mixes, pots and tools, and the seedling benches change every couple of weeks, so ring us on (08) 8536 4333 if you would rather start from seedlings than seed. Online there is D.T. Brown seeds and garden products.

More on growing food

• 7 habits that make a vegetable garden work
• Avoid these 7 mistakes in your vegetable garden
• The tools a new gardener actually needs

I sowed a whole packet of rocket in one go once and then ate rocket with everything for three weeks, including things that did not want rocket.

Cheers,
Candeece