How to Grow Salad Greens

Make your next leafy dish straight from your home garden with these tips on how to grow salad greens.

Excerpted from Ready, Set, Grow! by DK BooksDorling Kindersley
Filed under: Vegetable Gardening, How To, Vegetables

4. Prevent pests.

Cover your planter with fine mesh netting to protect the seedlings from pests such as birds, slugs and snails. This netting will also prevent butterflies from laying their eggs, which hatch into hungry caterpillars. To keep your planter away from slugs and snails, place it on a tabletop, a windowsill or even a couple of bricks, rather than putting it on the ground.

5. Maintain the seedlings.

Two weeks later, thin the first seedlings so your plants have room to grow. Make another trench in the middle of the planter and sow more seeds thinly, then cover them lightly with soil.

6. Harvest your salad greens.

The first leaves will be ready to eat after about three weeks. Use scissors to cut about one inch (2.5 cm) above the base of the stem, leaving a stump that will grow into more leaves.