We celebrate greens of all ethnicities the whole week at Plant Exchange Blog! One way we celebrate is watching seeds turn to salad greens when it’s too cold to grow them outdoors in spring or fall.
Though a south-facing windowsill will do, we use the same fluorescent bulb lights that will help starter plants grow soon. The lights are about a foot above the moist potting soil when seeds are lightly pressed into the soil. With water to keep the soil moist, the plants look like this after a month. Leaves are about the size found in “spring mix” packages.
A salad greens mixture fits my interest to harvest the seeds and let them regrow several times. I harvest with a pair of clean scissors, leaving about two inches of the plant to grow again. Several harvests are possible. Various seeds grow at different rates, so that helps ensure that another harvest will be ready in three weeks. A mixture often will have enough seeds that grow better at the time of the season you are planting. Later one can specialize in seeds.
In the beginning the mixture is chosen according to one’s taste and appearance. These have mild, balanced flavor and multiple red and green leaf shapes. The mixture includes red mustard, green mustard, Chinese cabbage, Pac Choi, and tatsoi.
A half packet of these seeds will fill a tray about three feet long. Choose a container the size needed for meals. This can be done with small containers planted about two weeks apart. Another way is to harvest a section at a time so that cut greens are fresh at the time of eating. Cutting only the section needed allows one to rotate the cuttings as leaves re-grow.
This Premium Greens Mixture seeds for salads are found at Johnny’s Selected Seeds. They include videos and articles for growing the mixture as micro-greens, harvested at a two-leaf stage or as young shoots that are shown in the photo.
Do share salad green comments with us!
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These greens are unfortunately now something I will devote garden space to this spring. I have not grown any in a long time. So many greens are naturalized just a short distance away, and have overtaken part of an abandoned baseball field. It would be nice to grow them in the garden for later, when the wild greens run out, and to be more selective with varieties.