Can you feel it? As our calendars turn to April, our days are slowly getting longer, warmer, and sunnier.
Are you starting to feel the pull to be out in your garden? I certainly am! I’m dreaming of the vegetables I’ll add to my garden in just over a month – tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers galore!
But we don’t have to wait until then to enjoy fresh, homegrown produce.
While we’re still waiting for the weather to fully warm up for our summer crops, it’s the perfect time to get a head start with some cool-weather salad greens.
Here are 5 salad greens that are perfect for planting in early April to bring fresh flavors to your table:
1. Romaine and Iceberg Lettuce
Head lettuces, like Romaine and Iceberg, are a classic cool-weather salad green that thrive in the spring. They’re easy to grow and come in a variety of colors and textures, adding both beauty and nutrition to your meals.
2. Spinach
Spinach is an extremely cold-hardy green that’s packed with vitamins and minerals. It grows well in containers and can tolerate some shade, making it perfect for those partially sunny spots in your yard. Since Spinach shrugs nonchalantly at the threat of snow, its seeds are the first I add to my garden each spring.
3. Arugula
Arugula has a peppery flavor that adds a delicious zing to salads. It’s quick to grow and can be harvested multiple times, ensuring a continuous supply of fresh greens throughout the spring.
4. Mesclun Mix
Mesclun is a mix of various young salad greens, such as lettuce, arugula, spinach, and others. You harvest the greens when they’re young and tender, and the variety that you grow provides you with too many vitamins and nutrients to count.
5. Mustard Greens
Mustard greens offer a slightly spicy flavor and are packed with vitamins A, C, and K. They add a little zest and quite a lot of beauty to your early spring dishes.
Tips for Growing Salad Greens in Early April
- Choose the right location: Most salad greens prefer full sun but can tolerate some shade. Keep in mind that the early spring sun is weaker than the sun we’ll receive during the summer, so adding plants to sunny locations is particularly important in our spring and fall growing seasons.
- Feed your soil so it can feed you: Ensure your plants have nutrient-rich, well-draining soil. Make sure you’ve added high-quality compost and worm castings so your plants have more nutrients to choose from than they know what to do with.
- Water often: Keep the soil consistently moist but not waterlogged. Salad greens in particular love water, and you’ll notice that salad greens are only crisp and crunchy when they’re properly watered. Our spring rains will help with this!
- Don’t plant everything at once: Instead, add new plants or seeds to your garden every two weeks. This allows different plants to mature at different times, instead of all at once. I don’t want you to start your gardening season off wholly overwhelmed by all the salad greens you need to eat!
Quick and Continuous Harvests
Unlike larger plants that demand more time, water, and nutrients before producing, salad greens provide lightening-fast harvests just a few weeks from planting.
This means that you’ll be able to skip the produce section of the grocery store by the end of this month and never look back!
Keep Growing!
Love,
