Prepare to Eat the Most Delicious Leaves You've Ever Tasted

Each packet of spring mix contains a variety of leaves selected to blend into the absolute most perfect salad.

I'm not talking about one of those plastic bags from the grocery store, by the way.

I'm talking about a little $5 envelope of spring mix seeds.

These seeds are the key to unlock the best salad you've ever tasted.

Scatter them over some soil, give them water, and in just 30 says, you'll have tender baby lettuce, spinach, endive, arugula, and radicchio leaves ready for harvest.

3 Reasons to Grow Your Own Spring Mix:

• All of the plants you might find included in a spring mix grow super easily from seed and don't require a lot of space or tending. They're perfect for growing in containers, tubs, or short raised beds.
• You'll get to enjoy new flavors and heirloom varieties you've perhaps never tried before because the grocery store only sells leaves that ship and save well. Lettuce leaves are at their best—the most delicious and crisp—right after harvest. That's also when they're at the peak of their nutrition. Warning: It might be hard to go back to store-bought leaves at the end of the growing season.
• For the cost of one plastic box of spring mix from the grocery store, you can grow a variety of lettuce plants that keep producing again and again after you've harvested their leaves.

These plants prefer cooler weather, so growing your own spring mix is a great spring and fall project for most of you. Even with just a small space, you can produce enough leaves for your own gourmet salad.

Let's look at what you'll need.

This post contains Amazon affiliate links, which means I earn a small profit if you purchase my recommendations.

Here's What You'll Need to Grow Your Own Spring Mix Salad

-Spring Mix Salad Seeds

There are all kinds of mixes out there. My all-time favorite is the Rocky Top Mix Salad Blend from Baker Creek. Another great option is the Allstar Gourmet Lettuce Mix from Johnny's Selected Seeds. (This is not a sponsored post; these links aren't even affiliate links. I just really love these blends.)

If you're shopping on your own, look for heirloom, organic, and non-GMO, since the quality of these tiny seeds can make all the difference.

-Water Source

Lettuce plants and other leafy greens need consistent watering to grow and produce the tastiest leaves. Make sure you're prepared to water by hand regularly or set up a drip irrigation system on a timer. The smaller the container you're growing in, the more frequently you'll need to water since it'll dry out faster.

-Garden Mesh, Landscape Pins, and Hoops

If you're worried about pests wanting a piece of your salad garden, your best defense is to cover your space from the moment you sow your first seeds. I'll talk more about how to use a cover as a chemical-free form of pest control in a bit. For now, grab some garden mesh or even just some inexpensive tulle from the fabric store. You'll also need some garden hoops and landscaping pins.

-4+ Hours of Sunlight

Lettuce plants only need about 4 hours of sun per day to produce leaves for you. In my Chicago kitchen garden, my back two beds were always the slowest to grow flowering and fruiting plants because they got the most shade. I came to think of them as my slacker beds. They were like the stereotype of the students who sit in the back of the classroom while all the overachievers sit up front, closest to the teacher. The one thing that always thrived in my back beds were leafy greens.

Tossing some spring mix seeds in an unproductive area of your garden is a great way to make the best use of that space.

-Container or Raised Bed

Because lettuce plants have such shallow root systems, you have so many options for where you can grow them. Your container only needs to be at least 6 inches deep and 12 inches wide so you can fit several plants.

A small steel tub like this one from Behrens works great for balconies and patios. (Read more about how to set a container up to be a salad garden.) If you want a larger container that's still moveable, check out this post on creating your own raised bed on wheels. I keep my rollable planter on my wooden deck.

You can also, of course, grow spring mix in a raised bed. Here are some raised bed options on Amazon that are perfect for growing leafy greens. You can also build your own 4'x4' wood raised bed for about $100. I grow tons of lettuce in my little raised bed below, which I call my Super Simple Salad Box. Here are the steps to create your own. (This box is growing my fav Rocky Top mix in the picture.)

Planting your spring mix involves little more than tossing the seeds, raking them in, and then stepping back to watch them grow. Just follow these simple steps.

Step 1: Prepare the Soil

Use your hands or a little hand rake to loosen up the top couple inches of soil in the planting area. Remove any large pieces of debris and break up clumps of dirt.

Add some organic compost (I love mushroom compost) or earthworm castings to the soil surface. This will give your plants enough organic matter to power their growth. You won't need to apply additional fertilizer or anything.

Level the surface with your hands or something flat like a ruler to get rid of any dips or mounds before planting.

Step 2: Sprinkle Seeds

You can use a little planting ruler or tape measurer to space out your seeds every inch or so apart if you want. Honestly, the fastest way to plant these seeds is to just put some in the palm of your hand and sprinkle them over the soil.

These plants don't need a ton of space to themselves to produce leaves as long as you'll be harvesting from them regularly. They might never grow to be really huge, but they will continue to grow without too much trouble. By planting them densely, you're also ensuring their leaves will cover the soil and help to retain moisture. (Exposed soil allows water to evaporate too quickly.)

Once you've sprinkled all your seeds, use your hand to pat down the seeds to make sure they have good soil contact. You don't need to cover them with more soil.

Step 3: Water

Give your seeds a nice watering in to tell them to wake up and grow. With lettuce seeds, it's super important to keep the soil moist while you're waiting on the seeds to sprout. If they dry out, they just won't grow.

Your plants will require very little maintenance once they start growing other than regular watering. Honestly, I'm semi-negligent toward my Super Simple Salad Box, and it still produces a ton of leaves for me.

Step 4: Cover the Garden

Birds are likely to eat all those little lettuce seeds you scattered if you don't cover your garden from day one. Covering is also best so that other pests never have access to those sweet, sweet leaves.

The idea is to use something with really small holes that allow air, sunlight, and water through but keep out pests, including dogs, squirrels, and birds. Place the garden hoops every couple of feet in your garden. Most hoops are flexible so that they can span the entire bed. Stretch your mesh or netting over these hoops, and then secure the edges in place with landscaping pins.

You'll only remove this cloth to harvest your leaves. Then you'll put it right back. It makes harvesting extra exciting because it's like pulling back the curtain!

How to Harvest Spring Mix

This is the fun part. You can begin harvesting leaves as soon as they're a couple inches long. These plants are cut-and-come-again, which means you can harvest from them, leave them alone to regrow from their center, and then come back to take more leaves.

Take a strainer and a pair of scissors into the garden with you for each harvest. When plants are younger, the best way to harvest from them is to only take a couple of leaves at a time. Focus on the older leaves—these will be the larger, outermost leaves. Plants regrow from the center, so you want to leave those baby leaves in the middle alone.

Once plants are more mature, you can harvest using what I call the ponytail chop. Grab some leaves like you're gathering hair for a ponytail, and cut straight across so that you get the top half of the leaves. You'll want to leave the bottom of the plant to regrow.

To encourage continued growth, vary which plants you harvest from throughout the week. Harvest regularly to make sure tightly-packed plants still have access to sunlight, water, and air flow. If you've chosen not to cover them, harvesting is a good way to ease any pest pressure on the plants.

Once you’ve harvested your salad greens, you could try making my favorite dressing, a delicious blend of equal parts EVOO, apple cider vinegar, and honey, plus a pinch of salt. You'll find these leaves are so good you don't need much dressing.

As long as the weather stays nice and cool, you should be able to continue harvesting from these same plants for another 50 to 60 days before it's time to cut the plants at their base, remove them, and start all over.

Time to Grow Your Own Spring Mix!

It was cutting from my own salad garden for weeks on end that really got me into wanting to teach others about gardening in the first place, especially when I realized all my friends were still buying store-bought lettuce even during prime salad-growing season.

You'll have gourmet leaves for months from just one to two packets of seeds that cost a couple bucks each—way more than you can get from a plastic container of spring mix that costs twice as much at the grocery store. 

I challenge you to try growing your own lettuce greens. It’s one of the easiest ways to get started gardening.

Join me, my friends, on my mission to instate a salad garden revival. We’ve got so many resources here at Gardenary to get you started and to make organic salad gardening super simple.

I wish you many bountiful spring mix harvests and delicious organic salads in your future!