Another tiny harvest

 The other night I had another little harvest from my little garden I have going on here.  This little 4 foot long bed was originally a small perennial garden.  I was given a few perennial flowers from my grandmother and I planted them here in front of the house.  They were nice, but I decided if I'm going to be growing something I should be growing something I can eat!  So, out came the shovel and out went the flowers and the rocks I had surrounding it.  I cleaned up the area a bit and then tossed in a whole bunch of different lettuce seeds.  I had a container that had random lettuce seeds in them that I had intended for this very use.  There's some regular lettuce mixes, swiss chard, some spinach, and who knows what else.  I just know I love salad and I love having different greens.  Greens only take a few weeks to come up to a point where you can cut them and many will continuously grow until it gets too hot.  Greens don't like hot weather.  I should have planted these quite a bit earlier, but I still got some nice baby greens out of it to add to our salads.  I kept the tall grass around the little lettuce patch to give them a little bit of shade because our little house faces south here and it can get quite hot, especially right now! 

From this harvest I got about a good handful of greens, which I should be able to get another couple of handfuls before the summer is over.  This is the only thing I have growing directly in the ground right now and I love it!  I can't wait to have many more gardens like this when we move into our own house.  Greens can easily be grown in containers too and are very happy in long window boxes.  You could probably keep them going through the winter if you have a grow light to aid in the little bit of sunlight we get in the winter, depending on where you are.  I also had some cuttings from carrots that I had thinned out as well, which I will share later. 


This just goes to show, that it DOES NOT matter how big or small your garden may be or where or what it is in.  It's not necessary to dig into the ground in order to grow your own food and take a step towards being more self-sufficient.  Like I said before, many plants are happy to grow in containers or in small spaces, or wherever you see that you have some room.  The amount of greens that I picked from my little garden, would probably cost about $2 for the same amount of baby, organic greens at the grocery store.  Let alone, the gas driving to get to the store and the gas it took for the greens to be delivered to the store.  My greens were probably eaten within 30 minutes of picking them and I walked about 10 feet from my front door to get them. 

Lettuce greens are one of the EASIEST things to grow and they grow fast.  You have a lot of options when you grow salad greens.  You could grow lettuces that form heads and keep them in the ground longer until they have grown to a fair size or you could cut them when they are only a few inches from the ground and have baby greens.  Many greens will continue to grow back after cutting them like this, sometimes they're called "cut and come again" greens, which is exactly what they will do.  They could be grown outside in your garden or you could have pots or window boxes with all different types of greens.  Another option with greens is to grow micro greens, which are huge in the culinary world.  Buying micro greens can be quite expensive, but growing them yourself is a cinch.  Almost anything can be used as a container, as long as it is at least 2-3" deep.  Those plastic containers that greens come in at the grocery store are perfect  and you can use the cover as a drip tray.  If you are using something like this, just poke holes in the bottom of whatever you plan to use and make sure you have something underneath it to catch the water.  Place soil in the container and throw in your seeds.  If you want micro or even baby greens, sow them very thick.  You don't have to evenly space them or anything just sprinkle them on top of the soil.  Throw a little more soil on top and water it.  The seeds will germinate within a few days and when they have a couple little leaves you can chop 'em off!  Micro greens pack a TON of flavor because all their flavor is in that tiny little leaf.  Micro greens also don't need to have sun to grow because seeds don't need the light to germinate, they just need the sun to continue to grow so you can keep them anywhere at first.

So, if you don't know where to start with your vegetables, start with lettuce.  It's easy and you'll have results within a few weeks.