The Start of an Indoor Salad Garden

Jennifer and I are getting really excited for the upcoming growing season, but it's far too cold at the moment to grow anything outdoors. However, I was reading this week about people being able to grow indoor salad gardens. I remember seeing something like this last spring and summer at the garden centers. There were shallow bowls overflowing with green and red lettuces. I just had to give this a try myself, and Jennifer was on board with the idea.

As you know, we bought some arugula seeds this year. I also collected a lot of lettuce seeds from our plants at the end of the summer, which included all of our heirloom lettuces and our mom's green and red romaine lettuces. Jennifer and I planted arugula seeds in one pot, and lettuce seeds in another. We decided to put them in my room, where there's one of the only south-facing windows in the house besides the bathroom window.

The arugula is doing amazingly well. We planted the seeds on Thursday and today they look like this. I was shocked at how quickly they germinated, especially because my room gets a bit cold in the winter. I guess it helps that the arugula likes cooler temperatures.

I'd say the lettuce is doing equally well. Many of the plants still have the seed heads on them, but they have started to drop them. Jennifer and I are hopeful that we'll have a good variety of lettuce, so we planted lots of seeds to ensure there's lots of variety for our indoor lettuce garden.

I think once the plants start producing their true leaves, we'll re-pot however many will fit into a larger pot. We found a nice one at the store that's blue and round. It's really pretty and I think the lettuce and arugula would look really nice overflowing in the pot (at least I really hope we'll achieve this image that I have in my mind).

If you're interested in knowing more about growing indoor salad gardens and whether we succeed, stay tuned for more posts within the next couple of weeks.

Megan