Grow the Best Leaves You've Ever Tasted Right at Home

I spent most of my life not knowing that lettuce could actually be delicious. I forced myself to eat spinach, scraped arugula off my sandwiches, and as for mizuna—well, I'd never even heard of it. That all changed once I started my own salad garden.

Now I look forward to having a salad for lunch. And you will too. When you grow your own greens, you get to have the most delicious leaves you've ever tasted. You simply step out to your garden, harvest the leaves you need, and bring them inside to enjoy them at their best moment—when they’re full of water, flavor, and nutrition.

But be warned: It’s hard to go back to the store-bought stuff once you’ve tasted homegrown greens. 

Here are our favorite salad greens to grow at home to get you started off in your own salad garden.

Our Top 10 Salad Plant Varieties for Your Salad Garden

• Dinosaur Kale
• Arugula
• Spring Mix
• Swiss Chard
• Napa Cabbage
• Mizuna
• Purple Mustard
• Spinach
• Romaine
• Blue Curled Scotch Kale

Dinosaur Kale

You probably already know that kale is super healthy for you, but did you know that kale has over 900% of your daily needs for vitamin K and over 600% of your needs for vitamin A. There's more vitamin C in a single serving of kale than in an orange.

Dinosaur kale, also called Toscano kale or Lacinato kale, is one of my favorite varieties to grow. It's an heirloom variety that produces huge blue-green kale leaves that are savoyed, or wrinkled.

Here are three reasons to grow dinosaur kale:

• This type of kale is super robust and resistant to frost and cold.
• It will also continue to thrive in your garden in the warmer parts of the year. That means you can come and harvest these delicious leaves for months and months to come. Some of you might even be able to keep these plants around for a full two years.
• Dinosaur kale can be used in more than just salads. I like coming out to the garden each morning to harvest some leaves for my morning smoothie—I find that these kale leaves are more tender and richer in flavor than other kale varieties. I also bake dinosaur kale to make kale chips or toss in sautéed dishes.

Explore our dinosaur kale growing tips.

Arugula

This is one of the first plants I had success with in the garden. It's the quintessential cut-and-come-again plant, meaning you can keep on harvesting (and enjoying) its peppery-flavored leaves over and over again.

If you think you don't like arugula, try growing your own—I promise it's so much better than the stuff you buy at the store.

Here are three reasons to grow arugula:

• Arugula is chock-full of nutrients, and like other Brassicas, it's a cancer-fighting food. It contains iron and magnesium, boosts our immune systems, and helps balance our pH levels.
• Arugula is one of the easiest vegetables to grow ever. It's fast (you'll get a full-size plant in about six weeks) and stays fresh longer than most greens. It can handle freezing temps and hot summers, which is definitely not true for other salad greens. If those reasons weren't enough to grow arugula, its unique smell and oils also make it unappetizing to garden pests that typically go for your salad greens.
• Arugula adds a nice nutty flavor to dishes. Throw arugula in a pasta or soup, braise it, eat it fresh, or make pesto.

Learn more about the benefits of arugula and how it became the omnipresent green for restaurants to toss on dishes. Then plant some arugula seeds in your garden for harvests just around the corner.

Spring Mix

Spring mix is really an assortment of salad plants with leaves that—when harvested while they're young and tender—blend together into one perfect salad bowl. I'm not exaggerating when I say that homegrown spring mix is 10x more flavorful than the stuff in the plastic box at the store.

My favorite spring mix is Baker Creek's Rocky Top Lettuce Mix Salad Blend. No matter where you buy your seeds, you can typically expect a mix to include tender lettuce, spinach, arugula, endive, and radicchio.

Here are three reasons to grow spring mix:

• Spring mix salad greens are easy to start from seed. I toss my salad seeds on the soil, rake them in, and step back to watch them grow. They require very little maintenance, just consistent watering.
• Your first leaves will be ready in just 30 days, and you can harvest at least two to three times more from the same plants. For the cost of one spring mix box at the grocery store, you can grow a variety of lettuce plants that keep producing again and again.
• Spring mix is rich in nutrients. Even though lettuce is over 80% water, you'll still get vitamin A, folic acid, vitamin K, and the B vitamins, plus immune and liver support.

The lettuce varieties in spring mixes don't need a lot of space above or below ground, which makes them great for containers, tubs, or short raised beds. Learn more about growing your own spring mix.

Swiss Chard

Swiss chard is a must-grow in your garden. I put it near the front of all my clients’ gardens to add beauty and color. I give it pride of place in my container gardens on my front porch. It's also really delicious and not always available at the grocery store.

Here are three reasons to grow Swiss chard:

• We can actually enjoy the stems and the delicious leaves. The stems are crunchy and make a wonderful substitute for celery. That means bigger bang for your plant-growing buck, if you ask me. I like to chop up the stems and toss them into my salad bowl, along with the smaller chard leaves. The big leaves I save for stir fries and sautés. Even my kids love eating Swiss chard in this Swiss chard lasagna recipe.
• Swiss chard is a super food. Those rainbow stems that draw so much attention in your garden are packed with antioxidants, and the leaves are excellent sources of vitamins K, A, and C, plus magnesium, potassium, iron, and dietary fiber.
• Swiss chard is a biennial, and biennials tend to be hardy little plants. Weather permitting, you'll be able to keep your Swiss chard in your garden for two full years.

Swiss chard is super easy to grow from seed, or you can buy a little plant from the nursery. It'll be worth it after just one leaf harvest. Learn more about growing your own Swiss chard.

Napa Cabbage

Also known as Asian or Chinese cabbage, this plant's sweet and crunchy leaves are highly coveted in East-Asian cuisine. I became hooked on Napa cabbage leaves in stir fries when I lived in China for two years out of college.

Napa cabbage is a cool season plant that produces heads of tightly grouped light-green leaves. It needs about 60 days of cool temps to grow in the garden.

Here are three reasons to grow cabbage:

• Napa cabbage is resistant to cold weather. I've heard of people growing this vegetable in the far northern regions of the globe... like really far north. It's also just easy to grow as long as the weather doesn't warm up too much. That means you can really extend your growing time in the spring and fall.
• Napa cabbage has many uses. This a good salad green choice for large crowds—one head goes a long way, and it's filling. In China, Napa cabbage is used in stir fries, noodle dishes, dumplings, rolls, and salads. It's also generally the main ingredient in kimchi. Cabbage is easy to prepare and has a mild, celery-like flavor that gets sweeter with cooking and that picks up flavors from the food it's cooked alongside.
• Rich in vitamin C, calcium, and essential vitamins like riboflavin, thiamin, and more, Napa cabbage is also a good source of dietary fiber. Like celery, Napa cabbage is in the net-zero calorie group of vegetables praised by dietitians.

Learn how to grow Napa cabbage plants.

Mizuna

Mizuna leaves grow on long stems and have glossy dark green leaves with feathery edges. Mature leaves have a fresh, peppery flavor that's a little less spicy than arugula. Mizuna, also known as Japanese mustard greens, belongs to the Brassica family alongside so many of our other favorite salad greens.

Here are three reasons to grow mizuna:

• This cool season plant is vigorous, cold-resistant, and easy to grow in most soils. Just like Swiss chard, it can add lots of beauty to your raised beds. I like to grow mizuna near the edges of my beds to fully appreciate them.
• Mizuna has many uses. The Japanese like to pickle the leaves or use them in hot pots, stir fries, and soups. The leaves can be steamed, sautéd, boiled, or stir-fried, though they shrink quickly like spinach leaves, so it's best to add them near the end of your cooking. In salads, mizuna mixes really well with mustard greens, mesclun mixes, or spring mixes. You could also add mizuna to pasta dishes, pizza, or risotto for a nice crunch.
• Mizuna is super nutritious. The leaves are high in vitamins A, C, and K, plus folate and iron. They contain essential minerals such as calcium, magnesium, manganese, potassium, zinc, and selenium.

Mizuna is another great cut-and-and-come again salad green. Learn how to plant, tend, and harvest mizuna.

Purple Mustard

This lesser-known member of the Brassica family packs a spicy mustard flavor. It also adds bright pops of color to your garden and meals. With tender leaves and crunchy stems, you'll end up finding so many uses for this plant, including adding flavor and color nuance to microgreen seed mixes.

Here are three reasons to grow purple mustard:

• The leaves begin a beautiful green and then turn more intensely purple as they mature. I don't know about you, but I can never have enough color in my kitchen garden (or in my salads). I love to toss the leaves into salad mixes and stir fries, and have found that this leaf pairs well with just about anything.
• You might be getting sick of me saying all of these leafy greens are easy to grow, but there's a reason I recommend starting with herbs and salad plants before moving on to more complex fruits and vegetables in the garden. Though it's a cool season plant, purple mustard is cold-tolerant, super productive, and slow to bolt in warmer weather. The seeds have a high germination rate, so you can simply scatter them over your bed and pat them in with your hand or a small rake. You can eat the sweeter baby leaves about 20 days after planting or wait 40 days for the bolder mature leaves.
• Mustard greens are one of the most nutritious foods you can eat. These leaves are rich in fiber and micronutrients. Just one cup of chopped raw greens provides 44% of your daily vitamin C and 120% of your vitamin K, and guess what. Cooked mustard greens contain even more nutrients, including 96% of your daily vitamin A and 690% of your vitamin K.

Read up on how to grow your own organic mustard greens.

Spinach

Spinach has become increasingly popular in the 21st century, but you may be concerned to learn it ranks on the Dirty Dozen, a list of the top 12 vegetables and fruits that should be bought organic to avoid high rates of pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic materials used in the farming. The best way to ensure you're not ingesting stuff you don't want in your body is to grow your own spinach. Fortunately, that's really easy to do!

Here are three reasons to grow spinach:

• There are actually three different types of spinach. Smooth spinach is the most popular variety at grocery stores, but if you grow your own spinach, you can broaden your spinach horizons to savoy spinach, which is bumpy, and semi savoy spinach.
• Spinach can help you sleep better. In addition to all kinds of nutrients, spinach has magnesium, which relaxes our nerves and muscles and can prevent leg cramps while sleeping. Spinach is a good source of calcium and supposedly helps your brain manufacture melatonin, so you can make yourself a little spinach smoothie at dinner and see if you just might sleep better.
• Spinach is an incredibly fast grower. Mass producers of spinach harvest just 25 days after planting! In your garden, you can successive plant spinach for a continuous supply of fresh greens throughout your entire cool seasons.

Explore our guide to growing your own organic spinach.

Romaine Lettuce

Romaine is one of the four most popular types of lettuce (along with crisp head, butter head, and loose leaf) and has long been the star of Caesar salads. I'm sure you've eaten your fair share of romaine—and probably stopped buying it every time there's an E. coli recall—but you haven't really tasted romaine until you've had it fresh from the garden, not trucked in from California or Arizona.

Lettuces like romaine are one of the best plants to start off with in the kitchen garden. They grow quickly, don't take up a lot of space, and provide harvests again and again.

Here are three reasons to grow romaine:

• Romaine can stand the heat. Unlike most lettuces, this plant is tolerant of hot weather. That's great news if you love cold, crisp lettuce leaves on summer days.
• Romaine goes down a little easier than other greens. The oxalate found in kale and spinach can make things difficult for those with compromised gut health if they eat too much. Romaine contains a much smaller amount of oxalate, and because it's less fibrous and higher in water, it's just overall easier on your digestion. Plus, there's more than 100% of your daily vitamin K needs in a single serving of romaine, not to mention tons of folic acid, vitamin C, and minerals.
• Romaine is good for more than Caesar salads. Toss romaine in sandwiches to add a crunch, or keep the ribs attached and add the leaves to stews. You can even add romaine to green smoothies.

Here's how to grow romaine.

Blue Curled Scotch Kale

Like dinosaur kale, blue curled scotch kale is a superfood, and these blue-green leaves have a sweet and nutty flavor. You probably know by now what I'm going to say, but these plants are also easy to grow, they keep producing leaves for you, and they're easy to harvest. They even last longer in the fridge than most leafy greens.

Here are three reasons to grow blue curled scotch kale:

• Not only are these plants resistant to cold, the leaves get that much sweeter after a bit of frost. You can keep your kale plants in your garden for up to two years in mild climates.
• Studies have shown that out of all of the kale varieties, curled kales contain the highest concentration of glucosinolates, which are believed to have anti-cancer properties. Kale also has a ton of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties, in addition to more beta-carotene than any other green vegetable.
• Curled kale adds the perfect texture to salads. I love cutting these leaves into strips and tossing them in my salads for a little extra crunch. They also do well in juices and smoothies.

Explore our kale growing tips.

Enjoy the Tastiest Homegrown Salad Greens

If you plant just a couple of these top 10 picks, you're going to have the best salad bowl ever. There will be more flavor, texture, and color than you thought possible. You'll also enjoy way more nutrition than you get from store-bought leaves that were harvested weeks ago.

Like I said, it'll be hard to go back to the tasteless leaves from the store. But the good news is, you'll be able to grow your own fresh salads for at least 6 months out of the year. That is no small matter! If you're anything like me, it might just be life-changing!