I don’t know about you, but I have a really hard time buying produce that I can easily grow myself. At my house, we eat a lot of salad. As many of you know, I serve a large green salad with almost every meal that goes on the table. All of those heads of lettuce can add up!
So, I recently started looking into some ways to grow my own lettuce indoors and I thought I would share what I’m learning with y’all.
All you need is:
• A large round pot, about 6 inches deep (or a container of some sort with roughly the same depth)
• Organic potting soil (look for the kind with perlite in it—that’s those little round white balls)
• Mesclun mix seeds (or whatever lettuce you like best)
• Water
• A sunny window
You’ll need a window that gets at least 6 hours of sunlight per day. If your lettuce doesn’t get enough sun, it will get tall and spindly and that isn’t what you want.
To grow your lettuce:
1. Fill your container to the halfway mark with soil. You can sprinkle some fertilizer on there if you want to. Moisten the soil and sprinkle a couple of pinches of seeds on top. Sprinkle a little more soil over the seeds and spritz the surface with more water.
2. Water daily and keep the pot in the sun or under a grow light. The seeds should sprout up in about seven days and your first harvest should be ready in about a month.
To harvest your lettuce:
After you cut your lettuce the first time (leave the growing crowns alone!), you’ll only have to wait another two weeks for a fresh crop.
And it’s pretty much just that easy!
Fresh lettuce greens are just the best, aren’t they?
Do you do any indoor gardening? Have any tips to share? Share them here!
PS–You can receive delicious menus (complete with shopping lists!) using those yummy lettuces delivered right to your email inbox by subscribing to Dinner Answers today!
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I am the only one in my family who likes celery so I quite often have a crown wilting in the fridge. When I have a wilted celery crown, I pop it into a jar with a little water in the bottom. Refresh the water each day or two. After about a week I get little roots growing out of the bottom and fresh stems growing out the top, then I pot it into a little tub and water it, and presto, I have a celery plant on my kitchen window ledge – I can then just cut off the stems that I need for myself and leave the rest to continue growing on the window sill. It means I dont have to buy another crown just to have it wilt away in the bottom of the fridge again. When the one in the pot has exhausted itself, I then start over with another one.
Erica,
Awesome tip, thank you 🙂
Start another pot a week or two after the first one, then when you cut a harvest from the first one you still have another one growing which can be cut a week later while the first one is regrowing. This way you can cut fresh lettuce very week instead of every two weeks.
Ander,
Thanks for the great tips!