Edible Yards

This week in our garden …

… we eat salad! Since it is difficult to grow lettuce and other salad greens in our Texas summers, growing lettuce in containers is a great way to beat the heat and produce perfect salad. If you seed lettuce every few weeks or so, you can have a continual harvest throughout the summer. Lettuce needs cooler temperatures and light to germinate so broadcast your seeds on top of some good, organic potting soil in the containers, cover with plastic to keep them moist and move them into an air conditioned space to germinate. Immediately after the seeds sprout, move the containers outside but make sure they are not in direct sunlight all day – morning sun is best. Keep them watered and let them have some shade in the afternoon. The lettuce will be ready to harvest in a few weeks and you should be able to get at least 2 or 3 cuttings from each planting.

These cedar boxes or flats are space efficient and ideal for growing salad greens, sprouts and microgreens. You can build the boxes out of any untreated wood – both cedar and pine are good choices since they are also rot-resistant and will last many years.