Salad Garden

Creating a Salad Garden

Creating a salad garden is a wonderful adventure for both kids and adults, no matter how much gardening experience they might have. In fact, if you get the kids involved in creating a salad garden, they're much more likely to eat the fresh vegetables that they've helped to grow.

There are no hard and fast rules for salad gardens either, because everyone likes different types of vegetables in their salad. There can be so much more to a salad than lettuce and tomatoes.

Now if you're the type of person who prefers primarily lettuce and greens in your salad, then you might want to create a simple lettuce garden instead. This can be created in a container to sit outside on the patio, or to hang from the window in your kitchen. Or you can plant it outdoors in the ground if you'd prefer instead.

When creating a salad garden - whether you plan to just plant lettuce or not - try to plant at least three to five types of lettuce and salad greens. There is iceburg lettuce of course, and most people are aware of that type. But there are so many more types of lettuce out there that are no only beautiful to look at, but they're very interesting to eat too.

So try different types such as Romaine lettuce, curly leafed lettuces, red or purple lettuces and so on.

While we're on the subject of lettuce, you might even want to try planting some cabbage and spinach in your salad garden too. Fresh spinach leaves are wonderfully tasty in a salad, and cabbage also comes in different colors, shapes and textures too. Cabbage is actually fun to grow in a garden just for the beauty, so try selecting various types to try in your own gardens this year too.

The next thing you'll probably want in your salad garden is tomatoes. Now these too come in various shapes and sizes, plus they have different tastes and textures too. Some tomatoes for instance, aren't bad to eat fresh but they work better when used in sauces and canning. Some of the best tomatoes to grow in salad gardens are the small cherry tomatoes.

To spice up the taste of your salads and give them a bit of zest - not to mention creating even more beauty while they're growing in the garden - try planting various other vegetables too. Excellent choices for salad gardens include radishes, purple or red onions, regular or garlic chives, and carrots. There are some excellent little "cherry" type carrots out there now, which grow into small balls similar to the way cherry tomatoes do. Alternatively you might try baby carrots, or grow full sized carrots and simply shred them when it's time to make the salad.

If you're really adventurous, trying growing various types of mushrooms in damp, shady, or woody areas tool. These go wonderfully in salads as well.