Grow Your Own Greens

We all know we need to eat more greens, but between the cardboard taste of store-bought bags and the price of buying organic, going green can be less than tasty.

Growing your own salad garden solves this problem. Freshly cut garden greens taste so much better than store-bought. And, after the initial investment of garden setup, you can harvest loads of greens for the price you'd pay for one small bag at the store (half of which you'd likely trash)!

My Favorite Garden Salad Mix

Over the years, my clients and I have decided that our favorite garden salads are a mix of sweet, colorful, peppery, soft, and crunchy.

With that in mind, I'm happy to share my favorite seeds and seed mixes with you. These will make your garden beautiful, your bowl full, and your smile huge. Going green has never been so fun, and I guarantee that you'll never feel the same about eating your greens again.

Salad Garden Shopping List

Here are my five go-to salad greens you can plant now to fill your salad bowls for months to come. 

• Toscano Kale
• Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach
• Rocky Top Lettuce Mix
• Astro Arugula/Rocket
• Five Color Silverbeet Swiss Chard

Keep scrolling to read more on these leafy greens.

How to Grow These Greens at Home

Most of these greens thrive in the cool season (when the temps are 35 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit), though several can hang on in frost and others in heat.

The varieties I picked do well in containers if you don't have a raised bed set up. I recommend growing these greens in a steel planter or simple wood box.

For a good overview of salad gardening, watch (or re-watch) my Salad Gardening Workshop for the 4 steps to grow your own salad greens.

And then, if you'd love the step by step help to grow your own organic salad greens from garden design to specific plans for each week, you can get access to our great salad gardening courses inside of Gardenary 365 for less than the price of a few salads.

All right, let's look at some of my favorite greens that are guaranteed to give you success in the garden!

The Best Kale Seeds: Toscano Kale

If you don't already have kale in your garden, you've got to give growing it a try. Thanks to its tendency to spread out higher on the stalk, you'll be able to plant other leafy greens around its base to maximize your salad garden space and production.

Toscano kale, also called dinosaur kale and lacinato kale, grows long, dark bluish-green leaves. What I love about these plants is how they're resistant to frost thanks to their crinkled leaves and how they can grow into mini-trees if you let them. My favorite use for these leaves, besides to toss into smoothies, is to sauté them.

Find toscano kale seeds at Botanical Interests.

How to Grow Kale from a Seed

You can either start your kale seeds indoors under grow lights or sow them directly in the garden (about ¼ to ½ inch deep). Though kale seeds are small, the plant itself is large, so give each seed or seedling (if transplanting) at least half a square foot of room.

Keep your seeds well-watered after sowing. The soil needs to stay moist to ensure germination.

You can harvest the tender young leaves of the heirloom toscano kale I recommended in just 21 days (when they're about 2 to 4 inches tall).

Find more tips for planting and growing kale in our ultimate kale growing guide.

The Best Spinach Seeds: Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach

I never really cared for spinach until I started growing this variety. Not only is it easy to grow, but I love tossing garden-fresh spinach leaves into my salads and green smoothies for a flavor and nutrition boost. Bloomsdale features glossy, deep green leaves that are slightly curled; you can typically only find smooth spinach leaves at the store, so growing your own spinach means you get to experience new tastes and textures!

Bloomsdale holds up in warmer weather better than many other greens, and mine even survive snow and ice. You can harvest your first baby spinach leaves in just 28 days.

If you're tired of tossing stinky bagged spinach leaves in the trash, Bloomsdale will be your new best friend.

Find Bloomsdale Seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds or Botanical Interests.

How to Plant Spinach Seeds

Spinach loves cool weather. Its ideal temperatures range between 45 and 75 degrees, but spinach thrives when daytime temps climb no higher than the 60s.

You can begin sowing your spinach seeds directly in the soil outside starting about six weeks before your last expected frost date.

Spinach seeds are tiny, but it's worth it to take the time to spread them out a bit as you're sowing the seeds to prevent having to thin them later once too many seeds come up close together. I like using a seed spacing ruler like this one to help me out. (Watch me plant spinach seeds in this short video.)

Find more tips to grow your own spinach in our growing guide.

My Favorite Lettuce Seeds: the Rocky Top Lettuce Mix

This is the very first lettuce packet I planted with my family. It's the perfect mix of reds and greens, crunchy and sweet. If you typically go for the spring salad mix at the store, then you'll love this salad blend—but it will be much more flavorful than the leaves from the bag. Highly recommended!

Find this lettuce seeds mix at Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

Tips to Grow These Lettuce Seeds

To sow lettuce seeds in your garden, you can literally just scatter your seeds around the bed. Rake them into the soil to ensure each seed has good contact. If you prefer things a little more orderly, I recommend using a seed planter tool (something like this one) since lettuce seeds are so tiny.

Give the seeds a good watering in. Within just 72 hours of planting my lettuce seeds blend, I typically see little sprouts popping up.

You'll be harvesting your first leaves very soon! Here's how to harvest lettuce to encourage the plant to keep producing leaves.

Check out this post on what to do when your lettuce goes to seed and how to harvest and save lettuce seeds from your garden. I love to pick my favorite plants from this salad blend and save lettuce seeds for next season from them.

My Favorite Arugula Seeds: Astro Arugula/Rocket

If you're nervous about success in the kitchen garden, start with arugula. The plants grow so quickly and are generally not touched by pests. After living and growing in many different climates, I can attest that arugula is one of those super greens that just keeps producing until the ground is frozen. Plus, you can harvest a ton from every little plant.

Harvest the leaves when they're small and haven't yet developed the full peppery bite. Arugula is seriously productive and will make you feel like a salad garden pro.

Astro arugula has nice, wide leaves and a milder flavor that's perfect as a baby green ready in just one month.

Find Astro arugula seeds at Botanical Interests or another good arugula/roquette option at Southern Exposure.

Tips to Plant Arugula Seeds

Arugula should be planted directly by seed into the garden or container where it will grow. You can basically plant arugula a couple weeks before your final frost date under cover and continue planting all the way until a month or so before your first frost.

Arugula seeds, like the other seeds here, are tiny. The simplest way to sow these seeds is to take a bunch between your fingers and rub your hands together to scatter the seeds over your raised bed or container, right on top of the soil. Use your hand to rough up the soil a bit after. You don’t want to bury arugula seed too deep—it really just needs to make soil contact. 

Water your seeds in well, and you’ll start to see seedlings emerge in six to ten days.

Find more tips to grow and harvest your own arugula in our growing guide.

The Best Swiss Chard Seeds: Five Color Silverbeet Swiss Chard

Not only are the leaves of Swiss chard delicious and packed with nutrients, you can also eat the stems (they’re a bit like celery).

This rainbow chard produces stems in jewel-toned shades of pink, yellow, orange, red, and white. These leaves, with their deep red veins, could hold their own when compared to any flower, if you ask me.

Enjoy tender, baby Swiss chard leaves in as few as 20 days.

Shop Five Color Silverbeet Swiss Chard at Botanical Interests.

How to Plant Swiss Chard Seeds

To grow Swiss chard from seed, sow seeds in the spring as soon as your soil is workable, even before the threat of frost has passed. Your plants will thrive once the temperatures stay between 50 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit. You can keep sowing Swiss chard seeds until temperatures rise above 85 or so.

Only bury your Swiss chard seeds at a depth of 1/2" (which is not very deep). Keep your seeds well watered while you're waiting on them to germinate.

Find more growing info in our guide to Swiss chard.

One Last Tip to Grow These Leafy Greens at Home

These recommendations are so delicious that everything will want a bite—and I mean everything! The best way to protect your salad garden is to cover it with garden mesh from the moment you plant your seeds.

Learn more about garden covers and find links to some of my favorite products here.

Time to Order Your Salad Seeds

So, don't just sit there... go order your seeds! Just one packet can fill out an entire 4'x4' garden. Lettuce seeds go a long way and will give you many leafy harvests. But why stop at just one? Try as many different varieties as pique your interest. Seed packets are kinda like potato chips to me—I can't have just one.

If you still need a little help getting your salad garden set up, check out Gardenary 365 to find online gardening courses you can watch in under 10 minutes a day.

Let's grow something beautiful together!

Some of the links in this article are Amazon affiliate links, which means I receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you click on the link and purchase the item. The links to stores outside of Amazon are not affiliated—they're just products I really like. All opinions remain my own.