It is no secret that many love a fresh salad. In light of recent store shortages, I’ve rebooted my indoor cut and come again salad greens growing setup. Many people even in cold regions can grow salad greens indoors easily.
Salad greens often do well outdoors as well when growing conditions are kept within parameters. By utilizing leafy greens a gardener can get several leaf harvests and keep a perpetual indoor garden going.
How To Grow Cut And Come Again Salads
Cut and come again lettuce and greens are one of the easiest things to maintain in an indoor grow setup. The leaf lettuces are very forgiving for a variety of grow light conditions and aren’t too picky with growing methods.
Some people pop their growing lettuce into a window and some people like to use those hydroponic or Aerogarden devices. My leaf lettuce grows happily under some indoor grow lights.
The gist of the idea with farming leaf lettuces is you snip off the young leaves and new leaves will grow allowing for more harvests. As long as the plant base isn’t compromised then more young leaves will keep shooting up for the life of the leaf lettuce.
The other nice part about leaf lettuces is they don’t require a lot of space and you can usually tuck away a grow space even in a small living space.
Getting Started
Soil For Growing
- Containers: I use my own organic potting mix made. If you buy another potting mix then check the label to be sure it is good for food crop growing. Some potting soils are meant for indoor plants in general and not suitable for food grade production.
- In ground: If planting outside I use prepared garden beds. My beds are filled hugelkultur style and the top inches are heavy with finished compost. The soil is nutrient rich and keeps moisture at optimum levels.
Recommended Seeds
When buying seeds you can often find packets that are a “leaf lettuce mix”. Some people buy a leaf lettuce or mesclun mix and some like to buy specific seeds to get all of their desired greens.
Popular Seeds to Grow
- Arugula
- Loose leaf lettuces
- Mibuna
- Mizuna
- Kale
- Spinach
- Tatsoi
- Tender pea shoots
Sow Seeds
Your packets will all have their care instructions on the back of their seed packets.
- I do my seeds by making my potting mix moist and make sure excess moisture can drain away.
- I sprinkle my seeds on top of the soil and don’t worry about spacing too much as worst case scenario I can thin them out or harvest them before too long.
- Sprinkle a cover layer of soil that is very thin. Then check that everything is moist though not flooded.
- Leave the seeds alone so they can germinate
- Start harvest generally around 4 weeks later once I get a good smattering of tender leaves.
I don’t generally use high power lights for lettuce growing, here’s one of my inexpensive grow light setup recommendations and for more advanced seedlings with higher light requirements I prefer these more serious lights.
What I’m currently using for my own setup are these lights. I gave away my other lights. Just check how long the light strips are and make sure they suit your growing space. I use small metal stacking cubes for a lot of my indoor gardening because it makes it easy to change things around so I use shorter lights.
Get the lights that suit your growing space in terms of their length.
Care For The Seedlings
You want to do a spot check for your lettuce daily. Plants are pretty good at letting you know if they are doing well or poorly by how healthy the leaves look.
I usually add a small bit of water to the bottom drainage tray just to keep the soil adequate moist and ignore the lettuce greens otherwise. An advantage of bottom watering is I don’t risk disturbing the delicate seeds or seedlings. Once established I may top or bottom water. After a bit of experience you get a good sense for when to do these things.
Harvesting
Once your salad greens get to a harvest size you want to cut them right before you intend to eat them for freshest taste. You should only harvest what you need for a salad and leave the rest to keep growing or to grow back.
To harvest leaves you want to wait until they are a few inches tall and cut your lettuce leaving 1″ of growth on the bottom of the leaf that connects to the central core. You essentially prune off the tops so the roots and lower part of the lettuce keep enough energy to keep shooting off new growth.
Salad greens can be harvested up until the lettuce hits a bolting stage or if the lettuce loses vigor.
Up until that time you can expect additional harvests for the life of the plant.
Sow More Seeds
Something that helps when you notice your lettuce bolting or losing vigor with shooting off new leaves is to reset some planting flats. I might add a new seeded flat once a month if I’m trying to do a perpetual lettuce supply. I get fresh compost and potting mix and add new seeds.
Compost matters
Normal garden routine for most crops is when the plants get old or tough or are no longer of edible quality you can remove them and either toss them out or return them to compost if you have no worries of pest introduction. When planted out in a bed I like to reset the beds by removing old plant material and adding fresh compost with a fresh top mulch.
Keeping healthy soil leads to healthy plants. If I’m using containers to grow the lettuce then I might toss the old mix in favor of fresh potting medium.
