Indoor Salad Greens Experiment

Because There's Something About Fresh Salad...

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Our growing season here in North Idaho is a bit of a roller coaster ride, colored with a patina of temperature extremes. One day we will be buried under a fluffy blanket of snow and within a week's time it might be eighty degrees and muddy. We tend to get season slapped, hard. No gentle transitions from one season to another, rather, one day it might be a pleasant seventy-three degree spring day, the green grass beckons and you think that you have at least a week or two to finally get your garden planted. Yah right, the next day could be 32 or 102F and your entire gardening scheme has to evolve more than an antibiotic resistant bacteria in a meat processing plant.

All that introductory marshmallow fluff aside, our growing season is short, and I am constantly looking for new methods of greens production to utilize during the cold and dark months of winter. Over the years I have tried multiple experiments in the sprout production department, but what I am really looking for is a method for producing salad greens without utilizing a ton of space or grow lights. The salad green growing technique also needs to be streamlined and frugal in nature, because as anyone who does anything knows, it kind of defeats the self-sufficiency purpose if you have to go buy a ton of stuff just to do something supposedly money-saving.

A few years ago we grew a plethora of sunflower seeds. A sunflower cornucopia it was! I have multiple paper lunch bags full of sunflower seeds in the shell. I also have more than fair amount of lettuce mix and snow pea seeds thanks to a sale on bulk sized bags at Mountain Valley Seeds, which is now known as True Leaf Market. Hooray for re-branding! Over the next ten days I am going to be conducting a salad greens experiment using only items I have on hand. As much as I love sprouts, this endeavor will not be about them. Nay, I say! Instead I am going to use bread pans, compost, Neptune's Harvest fertilizer, the seeds I have on hand, and a whole bunch of finesse. Hmm, on second thought, strike the finesse, I have a feeling this series of blog posts will be more entertaining as I relate my salad greens lumbering without any trademark GK elaboration.

Here are the seeds that I am going to start with:

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Sunflower

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Lettuce Mix

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And

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Snow Peas

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I also did a little bit of research, and here are some other good seeds to utilize for growing little salad greens:

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Buckwheat, broccoli, beets, amaranth, kale, cabbage, arugula, cilantro, kohlrabi, and spinach

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I have lots of available window sills and shelf space, so instead of a fancy, space taking grow light system, I'm going with what I have in stock!

So, now that I have laid out my plan with about as much clarity as a murky subdivision mud puddle, I am going to present you all with my house produced salad greens goals:

1. To produce at least 12-16 ounces of edible salad greens every day of the week, with the first harvest starting seven to ten days from tomorrow.

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1. To develop a streamlined technique for producing salad greens that utilizes no fancy equipment, doesn't take up too much space or time, and can be done without grow lights.

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Ooh. I think I have aimed high enough with just the two goals. That potential salad green gloriousness pedestal will either be sublime to stand upon or a short drop into failure oblivion. Either my family will be eating tasting salad-like greenery or my compost pile will have some interesting new editions, for some reason I am cool with either outcome. Time will tell.

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Next post foreshadowing: Prepare the greens lair! Or, for the less dramatically inclined: Soil and planter preparation.

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And as always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's perpetually deprived of chlorophyll iPhone.

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