Stu’s Backyard Salad Bar is Open!

Whenever I want a tasty, healthy salad, all I have to do is head for my backyard salad bar. My wife and I planted several different types of lettuce and spinach in containers this year. This makes it a little easier to manage and keep track of what is growing.

Another benefit of using containers to grow leafy greens is that they are too tall for the rabbits to get at them. This frees up more garden space for other crops and makes it really easy to walk out back and pick some veggies for a nice salad.

We have spinach, spicy mix lettuce, a couple of heirloom lettuces, radishes and collard greens growing in containers. These all grow from seed to your salad bowl in about three to four weeks. Once they mature, they grow quite quickly, so you need to pick them regularly. Keep them picked, and they keep growing back!

Once they go to seed, you can pull them up and start a new crop. You can plant/re-plant greens two or three times in a growing season. Maybe four or more if you have plenty of containers and can rotate them.

Our snow peas are also starting to come in. They will produce delicious pods for snacking or salads for two or three weeks before they are done. Peas can be planted again for another crop in the late summer/fall.

If you don't have a lot of room, but want to enjoy fresh greens through the summer, get some containers and potting soil and some packs of seeds. You won't have to wait a long time to enjoy the fruits, I mean vegetables of your labor!

You'll be eating healthy and won't spend a lot of money to get fresh, tasty vegetables.