Gardening Floyd: Growing Winter Salad Update

On December 1st I posted about how we set up our seed starting shelf to grow tender greens for winter salads.  Twenty-eight days later I harvested our first batch of salad greens.  The little plants are still very baby-like and I had to gently pinch off the larger outer leaves but with each harvest they'll grow sturdier and by the third or fourth harvest I'll be cutting the whole plant off about 2" above the base.

The spinach prior to pinching back...

...and the first spinach harvest.

Mixed lettuces...

...and the first lettuce harvest.

All together I got about 4 cups of tender baby greens out of the first harvest, enough for the two of us to enjoy for our evening salad!

Gardening Floyd: Growing Winter Salads Indoors

Out in the garden Swiss chard, cilantro, dill, and our perennial herbs are still thriving despite several really hard frosts and many lighter ones.  I'm sure that could end any day now but that doesn't mean it's the end of fresh greens.  Last February I showed you our seed-starting shelf and how we built it.  I talked about how we use it to grow greens in winter and today I want to show you how we set it up for that.