There’s nothing quite like the taste of freshly picked salad straight from your garden. Growing your own salad leaves is easy, rewarding, and ideal for gardeners of all experience levels. Whether you have a sprawling vegetable patch or just a few pots on a windowsill, you can enjoy homegrown greens all summer long — and even into the colder months with a little planning.
Why Grow Your Own Salad?
Growing your own salad is one of the simplest ways to start growing food. It’s quick, space-saving, and doesn’t require much equipment. Many salad crops thrive in containers, raised beds, window boxes, or even small grow bags. Most varieties can be sown from spring through to late summer and are ready to harvest in just a few weeks.
Start by using a good-quality, peat-free compost and keep the soil evenly moist. If sowing early in spring, be sure to protect young plants from late frosts using a cloche, horticultural fleece, or by starting them in a greenhouse or polytunnel.
What Salad Crops Can You Grow?
There are endless combinations to try. For leafy salads, consider:
- Lamb’s lettuce, Iceberg, or Lollo Rossa – a colourful red lettuce with frilly leaves
- ‘Outredgeous’ – a bright red variety that’s even been grown in space!
- Spinach, mustard greens, pak choi, rocket, and mizuna
- Radishes and spring onions for crunch and peppery flavour
Many of these can be grown together in the same container for a mixed harvest. Just choose varieties with similar growing needs and harvest times.
Grow Salad All Year Round
With the right varieties and a little protection, you can keep harvesting salad even during winter. Hardy crops like ‘Winter Gem’ lettuce, mizuna, mustard greens, endive, and salad burnet can grow through the colder months in a cold frame or under fleece.
Alternatively, grow microgreens indoors on a bright windowsill. These are baby leaves harvested at just a few centimetres tall — small in size but packed with nutrients and flavour. Try growing pea shoots, radish, beetroot, cress, or chard for a quick and healthy harvest.
When to Harvest Your Salad
The key to tasty salads is timing. In warm weather, salad leaves can bolt (go to seed) quickly, which makes them taste bitter. To avoid this, keep plants well-watered and harvest regularly.
Use the cut-and-come-again method — snipping outer leaves while allowing the inner ones to keep growing — to enjoy continuous harvests. Successional sowing every 2–3 weeks will ensure a steady supply throughout the season.
Start Growing Today
Ready to start your salad-growing journey? Visit us our at Carpenters Nursery to pick up a wide selection of salad seeds, compost, containers, and everything else you need to get growing.
