36: How to Grow a Mini Salad Garden in a Small Space with Kathi Rodgers
In this episode, gardening expert, Kathi Rodgers, shares her knowledge on how to create a mini salad garden that is both space-efficient and pesticide-free. With increasing concerns around food safety, more people are looking to grow their own produce, and Kathi offers tips and advice for beginners looking to start their own salad garden. From choosing the right plants to identifying a suitable growing space, she covers all the basics, making it an essential listen for anyone looking to grow their own fresh and healthy produce.
Summary
With the increasing concern surrounding food safety, more and more people are turning to home gardening as a way to avoid consuming potentially harmful chemicals. In a recent episode of HobbyScool, gardening expert Kathi Rodgers shared her knowledge on how to create a mini salad garden that is both space-efficient and pesticide-free.
One of the main benefits of growing your own salad garden is the ability to avoid the potent pesticides commonly used on store-bought lettuce. "Lettuce, believe it or not, is usually contaminated with some of the most potent pesticides that are used on food," said hobbyist gardener Destini Copp. "It's also treated with preservatives so that it will last longer on your store shelves. How best to get rid of that? Grow it yourself."
Fortunately, starting a mini salad garden is not a difficult task, even for those with limited space. According to Kathi, a variety of plants can be grown, including leaf lettuce, spinach, micro tomato plants, beets, peas, radishes, chives, basil, sprouts, microgreens, and even strawberries. Leaf lettuce is a particularly good option as it can be harvested using the "cut and come again" method, where only the outer leaves are removed and the plant continues to grow.
While salad gardens can be grown year-round, the plants thrive in cool weather conditions, making spring and fall ideal growing periods. Cool weather plants like lettuce, spinach, beets, and radishes prefer to grow in the spring and fall, while heat-resistant lettuce varieties can be grown in the summer. Salad plants that are easy to grow include sprouts and microgreens, while carrots and cabbage can be more difficult due to germination and pest issues.
To start a mini salad garden, beginners should identify a sunny space and choose between using transplants or seeds. Good soil and proper drainage are important considerations. The plants can be grown in a variety of spaces, including flower beds, planter boxes, and containers on patios or kitchen counters.
For those interested in starting their own mini salad garden, Kathi offers a free gift of a several-page list of plants that are perfect for mini salad gardens, which can be downloaded from her website. Whether you have a large backyard or a tiny apartment balcony, growing your own pesticide-free salad garden is a satisfying and healthy hobby. As Kathi says, "home is where your garden is."
Mentioned In This Episode
Where you can find Kathi: Website
Kathi's Free Gift: FREE Guide to Choosing Plants for a Mini Salad Garden
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Transcript:
[0:00:02] Destini Copp: And today my special guest is Kathi Rodgers. Kathi believes that home is where your garden is, and after decades of gardening in many locations and regions, this gave her the experience with differing growing conditions and how to make do. And she's passionate about helping others grow their dreams and their garden no matter where they live. And today we're going to be talking about how to grow a mini salad garden in a small space. And Kathi, thank you so much for joining me. I am so excited to jump into this topic with you. I love salads. I eat them every single day, and I would love to know how to grow them, but I don't have a ton of space in my yard to do that. So very excited to jump into this with you. But before we begin with all the questions I have for you, can you tell the good audience a little bit more about you, how you help people and how you got started?
[0:01:06] Destini Copp: I'm so happy to be here today. Destini, thank you so much for having me. I married a career military man many years ago, and we followed him around the country, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and overseas and back and overseas and back. I stopped counting when we moved 30 times. So I love gardening. It was a passion for me. It kind of made me feel like this is that I live here, it's not temporary, that it was more of a home. And sometimes the timing wasn't right. When we moved somewhere, it was the middle of summer and I couldn't plant or it was the depth of winter. We didn't always have a lot of space. Some of those homes were apartments and some were rented houses and so on. But overall, through all those years, I learned how to make the most efficient use of what space we did have. Whether it was containers or maybe a flower bed out front or just herbs in the herbs in my kitchen window sill. I tried to always grow something, even if it was a tomato plant, because tomatoes are my favorite. So I'm passionate about this because I know not everybody has property.
[0:02:16] Destini Copp: They don't have a lot of land, they don't have space for a garden, like you said. So I'm trying to help them get started so that they can at least grow something, make it feel like home, give them a sense of permanence.
[0:02:32] Destini Copp: So today we're going to be talking about mini salad garden. So tell us a little bit about how or why did you think of growing mini salad garden? Why were you like, this is something that I wanted to focus on.
[0:02:48] Destini Copp: Well, many years ago, as I said, I came across a photograph in a magazine that showed a bowl of lettuce growing in somebody's kitchen. And I thought, wow, what a great way for me to do this as we move around, I could grow something. So that idea developed. From there. I figured out how to put what space we had into good use, like I said. And my husband loves salads more than I do, but I've always enjoyed making them for him. That something that looks appealing every day, that it's not the same, that it's pretty as well as tasty. And that's how I developed this idea.
[0:03:30] Destini Copp: So you saw this picture. Was it a bowl? And it just had a head of lettuce in it?
[0:03:36] Destini Copp: It was a large mixing bowl, and it wasn't head lettuce. Now, that is a secret. We'll talk about that in a second. Leaf lettuce grows much better for this sort of purpose. Ahead of lettuce, you only get one head out of that entire plant, and it doesn't go quite as far, and it takes up a lot more space. So that's the other trick, growing the right plants.
[0:04:01] Destini Copp: Well, let's talk about that. So what plants can you grow in a mini salad garden?
[0:04:06] Destini Copp: Okay, as I said, leaf lettuce, we'll start with that. Actually, one of the my main reason for gardening is to avoid toxic chemicals. And lettuce, believe it or not, is usually contaminated with some of the most potent pesticides that are used on food. It's also treated with preservatives so that it will last longer on your store shelves. How best to get rid of that? Grow it yourself. So leaf lettuce, as I said, is smaller than a head lettuce. There are so many different varieties. Imagine a salad that's made of both red and green lettuce leaves in different shapes and different textures. Some spinach or some beet leaves in the bowl as well. Maybe some herbs, a sliced red tomato, a yellow pepper, maybe topped with some colorful flower petals and some alfalfa sprouts. You'd pay a premium price for that at a fancy restaurant front. But you grew it yourself. And you don't have far to go to care for these plants either. They're right there on your balcony, your patio, your front flower bed, maybe even inside.
[0:05:14] Destini Copp: Okay, as for what to grow, leaf lettuce has small plants, and it's called cut and come Again, which means you don't have to harvest the whole plant at one time like you would with a head of lettuce. You just remove the outer leaves as you need them and put them in your salad. Wash them, of course, let them dry rolled up in a towel so that they stay crisp. Then put them in your salad bowl. There are so many different colors that you could plant let's. Say you have room for four lettuce plants. You could plant four different kinds, different colors, different shapes, different tastes and textures. And that would give you some variety, some other things that you can grow. Spinach. It takes spinach longer to come to maturity, but baby spinach is just spinach leaves that are harvested early, just like that leaf lettuce. There are even some micro tomato plants. This is kind of a new thing on the market. I want to grow some of these this year, although my daughter does. She says they're less than a foot tall, the plant, and it's covered with little tomatoes that are cherry or maybe grape size. They are small, but she said hers were just covered with fruits.
[0:06:23] Destini Copp: And I think that sounds so fun and so cute. You can plant beets, which are a dual purpose crop. You can eat the beet root. You can also eat the leaves just like they're a spinach. Put them in your salad. Peas are easy to grow, and you can eat both the pods or the peas inside. And it doesn't take up a lot of space. It kind of trails over your planter, or maybe it'll grow up your balcony railing. Radishes grow very quickly. You can eat the radish leaves as well, but they kind of have a fuzzy texture if you eat them raw. So most people cook them like turnip greens. Grow a pot of chives on a sunny window sill. They taste like onions or they taste like garlic. Whichever variety you grow, just snip off a couple of leaves, cut them up in your salad, and you have onion flavor. You can even eat the flowers.
[0:07:19] Destini Copp: Basil is another herb that you can grow for your salad. Those plants get pretty big, but let's face it, you're going to keep it small because you're going to be trimming leaves off of it all the time. Make some pesto with the rest. And you can also sprout seeds in your kitchen, add them to your salads. Broccoli seeds, chia, clover, radish seeds are just a couple. Or you can grow microgreens, which grow in a tray on your kitchen counter. Doesn't take up a whole lot of space. It just takes a little longer than sprouts. It's the same thing as growing sprouts. But you let them grow until they have four leaves, and then you can snip them off with scissors. And you can use that as the base of your salad instead of lettuce. If you don't have lettuce that day, you can even grow strawberries in a hanging planter. Slice up a couple of those into your salad as they're like. So as you can see, there's plenty of things that you can grow in a salad.
[0:08:15] Destini Copp: You gave us so much to talk about there, and I want to go back to a comment that you made earlier, which is, I didn't realize that you could actually do this. So this is new to me. You mentioned something about with some of the lettuce, you can do cut and come again?
[0:08:33] Destini Copp: Yes.
[0:08:34] Destini Copp: So that means that you can just in the way you described it, I think you can just cut some of it off and go wash it and use it and leave the rest there so it stays fresh. Is that how it works.
[0:08:46] Destini Copp: That's right. And the plant continues to grow, so it's continually getting bigger. But you're harvesting leaves so that it lasts a lot longer than that one head lettuce plant, you say.
[0:08:56] Destini Copp: I had no idea you could do that.
[0:08:58] Destini Copp: Yes, it depends on the kind. You just get leaf lettuce instead of a head lettuce, and you cut the outside leaves and wash them and put them in your salad.
[0:09:09] Destini Copp: And then you talked about also those micro tomato plants. So you said it was new on the market. Where would we find something like that? Because that sounds amazing that it's less than a foot tall.
[0:09:21] Destini Copp: It does, doesn't it? My regular tomato plants are like six and 7ft tall. My daughter found hers at one of the home improvement stores in her town. They did have the actual little plant starts that she could grow, she could buy and grow at home. I've seen seeds for them this year. I hadn't seen them before, but several of the online seed seed companies have them. And you just look for mini tomatoes or micro tomatoes. And there are a couple of different varieties now as well, different colors.
[0:09:54] Destini Copp: So are you only growing all of this in summer, or are you doing it all year round? Or how does that work exactly?
[0:10:04] Destini Copp: If you're in a place that has mild winters, you could grow several of these plants, perhaps all year round outside. And you can grow that big bowl of salad lettuce on your kitchen counter too, if you wanted to. Maybe with a grow light. Your herbs can grow on a sunny window sale in pots, no matter what time of year it is. Most of these salad vegetables, salad plants are cool weather plants. They like to grow in the spring and the fall, maybe not so much in the hot summertime, depending on where you live. Oklahoma is way too hot for that. So your lettuce, your spinach, your beets radishes, those are all cool season plants that prefer to grow when it's not super, super hot. But the tomatoes like the heat. There are heat resistant varieties of lettuce that you can purchase the seeds for, and those will grow all summer long. They produced beautifully here last year, even though it was 104 degrees every day, they grew very, very well. So when the weather warms up, you just change your variety of what you're growing. And here's another trick. Every time that you pull up a plant, no matter what kind it is, you plant another plant seeds or transplant or something, you put more in that ground. That's the way that you can maximize your space.
[0:11:29] Destini Copp: The tomatoes ripen in summer, although they'll grow, plant them in the spring after frost. It just takes them longer to produce. So of course, your sprouts and your microgreens, you're growing those in the kitchen all the time anyway, so that you can have all year round. So it's not just in the summer, you can work around the weather.
[0:11:49] Destini Copp: Okay. When you were going through and kind of describing all this you kept talking about on your patio or in your kitchen or in this container, can you talk about how much space does a mini garden salad need? It doesn't sound like a lot is required.
[0:12:08] Destini Copp: It isn't really. Of course, the more space you have, the more plants you can grow. But you can grow a mini salad just about mini salad, garden, just about anywhere. A flower bed is a great space. And just think how colorful and pretty that would look. Even a front flower bed with all those different plants and the heights and the shapes of the plants and the colors and the textures. I think that would be so pretty. I haven't done it in a flower bed yet, but I have a perfect flower bed right now to use. Planter boxes. You have a couple of planter boxes on your balcony or maybe sitting on a patio table outside, and that'll grow just about everything that we mentioned. Even pepper plants. If you only wanted one pepper plant, they're usually pretty compact and you could plant other things around it and still have enough space. Green onions, you can plant very close together. That's like growing a pencil. They don't take up much space at all.
[0:13:03] Destini Copp: And again, pull one out, plant something else. Just use containers that are big enough for your lettuce and the other greens and your herbs and your flower plant. You can put flowers, flower petals in your salads too. Nasturtiums are perfect. Actually. The leaves are edible in your salad as well. They have like a peppery taste. The seeds look like capers, and they are edible as well. And you can use flower petals of several different kinds of flowers. Not every flower is edible, so make sure you're not trying to eat one that you shouldn't be eating. But there are several different kinds that you can. Pansies are another one, so you can plant those as well. You can even grow carrots in pots, and you just harvest them as baby carrots when they don't take up, as they don't have to be as long and have as deep a container. Did you know that the baby carrots you buy in the grocery store are not baby carrots? They are large carrots that have been chiseled down, shaped into baby carrots.
[0:14:04] Destini Copp: So rather than do that, just grow your own baby carrots. So much better for you.
[0:14:11] Destini Copp: I didn't know that. Yes, I'm telling you, I learned something new every day. I had no idea. And that's all I buy, really, are the baby carrots.
[0:14:22] Destini Copp: Buy the big ones and cut them into carrot sticks. It's much better for you, better buy too. But you plant these closer together than what the seed packet recommends because you're pulling them before they reach full maturity, so they don't need as much space. So you really don't need a whole lot of room of space. Just have as many containers as you have room for or as you want, or squish everything together and just grow a couple of things here and there and just do what you have space for. But it really doesn't take much room.
[0:14:57] Destini Copp: And Kathy, I have to ask you, are there any salad plants that are easier to grow than others, or some of them kind of hard, and a beginner shouldn't start there? What do you recommend?
[0:15:10] Destini Copp: There are some that are easier than others, definitely. I think that the hardest to grow is carrots. I was finally successful with carrots last year. They are so hard to get them to germinate and sprout, and I've been gardening for many, many years, and that was the first time that I take it back. When I was eight, my father and I grew grew carrots. I don't know why they grew, because I sure didn't know how to do it. But since then I've not been able to. This year I did, so carrots can be tricky. I think the easiest are the sprouts and the microgreens. Of course, because they are grown in your kitchen, they need some attention every day. But it's right there next to your kitchen sink, so it's not hard and they don't take much space. Let's see. Microgreens I think I mentioned, perhaps, is that they are really just sprouts, but you're just letting them grow a little bit longer so that they have more leaves. After they have their four leaves, two sets of leaves, you just cut them off at soil level with scissors, and they can be the base for your salad as well. If you don't have lettuce that day.
[0:16:25] Destini Copp: If you start these microgreens, like every week, they take two to three weeks to be big enough for you to eat them. But if you start some every week, when you finish one, you've got another tray that is maturing so that you have plants for the next week. Let's see. Yes, like I said, carrots are hard. Cabbage is also hard. I don't recommend that for a mini garden because it's similar to head lettuce. It gets very large and isn't really the best for the purpose that we're talking about here. But the hardest part about growing cabbage is bugs, and that is a consideration if you're a gardener, depending on where you live. Some plants have a lot of insects, and cabbage worms are a menace.
[0:17:16] Destini Copp: We don't want to mess with that.
[0:17:18] Destini Copp: They are impossible to get rid of. So cabbage is probably one that you wouldn't want to grow anyway. But I think it's a very hard plant growth for salads.
[0:17:28] Destini Copp: So let me ask you this. What would you recommend for a beginner? If they just wanted to get started on their own mini salad garden, where would you recommend that they start? What should they start with? And what do they need to go buy.
[0:17:42] Destini Copp: Okay. First, of course, you have to identify where you're going to grow your mini garden. And if you have a patio that's wonderful, choose the sunniest part of your patio to grow them in. Most plants do really well with sun, full sun. If you're in a hot place like me, they like some afternoon shade, but just sort of figure out where you're going to put it and how much space that you have. Next is to think what season it is, when you want to get started. And this right now is perfect because it's just about spring, just about everywhere, and that is when you can find transplants at the stores to buy. And of course, that's the easiest way. Instead of using seeds, you don't have the same variety, but if you're a first time gardener, this might be where you want to do is to go and buy transplants. Next you'd find pots or containers to use or your planter boxes or identify the flower bed that you're going to use. I'm growing strawberries currently in a big black rubber feed tub. And I say it's big, but it's probably 18 inches in diameter that I got at Tractor supply. And it's just a perfect size pot for this. It's not as expensive as going and buying a large flower pot, which, boy, those things can be pricey. We just drilled some drainage holes near the bottom, not on the bottom, because if you set this on concrete like a patio, it won't drain very well.
[0:19:21] Destini Copp: So we drilled the holes around along the bottom, but on the side of it so that the water can drain. Drainage is important, so that's a thought. You can plant quite a bit in that. It's pretty good sized. Add some soil, get some good soil, not just from the dirt. Pile out and back. Get some potting soil or container garden soil and check the back of your seed packets to see when you should plant this particular kind of plant. A tomato plant, for instance, is not going to survive a frost. If you plant it out now and you have a freeze next week, it's dead, it's gone and you've wasted your money. So figure that out and just start with those cool season crops and work from there and buy your transplants or your seeds, plant them in your garden and go for it.
[0:20:23] Destini Copp: You've given us so much to think about and plan for as we work on our mini salad garden. Kathi, can you let people know where they can find you? And I believe you also have a free gift for them.
[0:20:37] Destini Copp: I do. I have a several page long list of these plants that we talked about and some others as well that are perfect to grow in a mini salad garden. And if they would like to get that, that's free just to be downloaded. And let's see, you said you'd put the link in the Show notes?
[0:20:58] Destini Copp: Absolutely. The link will be in the Show Notes so people can find it and.
[0:21:03] Destini Copp: Download your free yeah bitly. My blog is Oakhill Homestead.com and it has lots of information about gardening and living a simple life, fending for yourself, sort of buck the system, grow your own food kind of a thing on Facebook. I am at Oak Hill Homestead and on Instagram. Again, I am Oak Hill Homestead and.
[0:21:34] Destini Copp: We will definitely make sure that all of the links are in the Show Notes so people can go to your website and they can grab your a free gift. And Kathi, thank you so much for joining us and sharing all of your wonderful knowledge with us. And I know I for 01:00 a.m. So excited about starting my own mini salad garden.
[0:21:53] Destini Copp: I hope you will. It's very easy and fun and there's a great return.
[0:22:00] Destini Copp: Thanks Kathy.
[0:22:01] Destini Copp: Thank you.