Spring is Budding Around Here!

Spring is around the corner and I have taken on a new adventure, backyard gardening!
Today, I want to talk to you about the easiest way to enjoy your own salad greens. 

Soil Bag Growing! 

With recalls in the past few months on bagged salad mix and heads of lettuce, I felt urged to grow my own salad. However, since the cubs and I live with my parents currently, I needed something that I could control on a small scale. 

A quick internet search landed me on a vlog channel by Roots & Refuge Farm  where Jess, (the "Gardening goddess" as I like to call her) lovingly helps her viewers navigate through the throws of gardening, projects, ideas, parenting, and small livestock. To say I'm hooked to her content is an understatement. 

She posted a video a while back about this simple, inexpensive idea that I had to try. 

Start with a potting soil bag and a clear storage container. I chose one that has a lid. 

 Poke holes all over one side of the bag for drainage and place that side of the bag down on the container's lid. Then, cut a rectangle out of the other side of the bag. Make sure to leave enough of the sides of the bag to keep the soil in. 

Break up the compacted soil and remove enough so that the soil is loose, flat, and not overflowing from the bag. I simply transferred that extra soil into another bucket for later use. 

For this project, I wanted "cut and come again" salad greens. I chose a variety of greens and blended them together in a cup. I chose plants that were frost hardy because Virginia weather changes constantly in January. Low and behold, we had snow in February and they survived under the container cover.

I chose my seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. I like seeing the wide range of colors and leaf designs. 

Then, I Surface Sowed the seeds as evenly as I could all over the bag. By surface sowing, you sprinkle the seeds over the soil, then run your hand over the whole bag to gently cover the seeds. As you can see, mine sprouted just fine right on the surface. 

Since my soil was a little dry, I took a spray bottle of tap water and misted the top of the bag. I would not recommend using a hose or watering can because it will wash your seeds away or create deep cracks in the soil that the seeds could be washed into. This would cause them not to have the right environment to grow.

Once the soil is damp enough, I placed the storage container upside down to act as a mini greenhouse. Allowing for humidity to build and sunlight to warm the space on our mild winter days.

If a bad storm was coming, I would lock down the container to the lid and it was perfectly fine.

Then I let it sit for about 3 days when I started to see sprouts!! Honestly, I was so shocked they sprouted that fast as we had Mid 30- 40 degree nights.  

When the weather was warmer or I felt that there was too much moisture inside the container, I simply propped it up with an old gardening tool to create ventilation

. 

After about 21 days, I had a surface full of seedlings sprouting! A total win for me!

Now it has been over two months since I started this journey and I am now harvesting small, one person, side salads every other day. They taste heavenly! I pick and choose my leaves and simply pinch the off so that the plant will continue to produce. 

This set-up helps with watering as well. When it rains, water collects on the container lid and soaks through the holes in the bottom of the bag. I have only watered this two or three times since I planted.

I hope you will try your hand at growing something this year! Also, I'd like to thank Baker Creek and Roots & Refuge for all their inspiration. While this is not a sponsored article, I highly recommend you check them out. As Jess would say, "Until next time, I bless you."