Indoor Growing
To begin talking about indoor growing, we need to discuss salad bowls. We’re not discussing the glass or wooden bowl sitting in your kitchen cabinet that you serve lettuce in. What you need for indoor gardening are bowls or pots that you can grow your own lettuce in.
You can repurpose an old traditional salad bowl to grow your lettuce in. Glass bowls don’t work as well since it’s impossible to add drainage holes in the bottom. Your wooden bowls should work well though as do ceramic planter bowls or even pots you’re no longer using for potted plants.
It’s Relatively Simple
The basic idea is extremely simple. You get a bowl or pot, fill it with potting soil, and plant your salad and salad fixings. A salad or lettuce bowl can include several different varieties of lettuce and a few of your favorite herbs. Or you can divide everything up in several different containers and grow a small tomato plant and a few green onions as well. Mix and match as you see fit, depending on what you like to eat, or what you’d like to try.
That’s the fun of growing your own food. You can try different varieties and combinations until you come up with the one that works best for you. As you begin to grow, you get to sample and try different varieties of lettuce your local market doesn’t offer. There’s so much more than iceberg lettuce and spinach available to us when we grow our own.
A Great Way to Give Gardening a Try
Salad bowls are a small and compact way to give gardening a try. They are also an excellent tool to help teach your children and grandchildren about where our food comes from and how it is grown. Get the little ones involved in planting and caring for the lettuce plants. Not only is it a great learning experience, it’s also a wonderful way to get them to eat more greens. They will give them a try because they’ve grown this lettuce.
Lettuce plants don’t have very deep roots, which is why shallow bowls work perfectly for planting them indoors. And since it won’t get very hot – even in a sunny window- you don’t need a large amount of soil to retain moisture. In other words, shallow bowls are a great way to grow a large amount of lettuce in little space or soil.
Get Started Now
To get started with indoor growing, get a nice shallow planting bowl and a bag of quality potting soil that includes a slow release fertilizer appropriate for vegetables. Or if you’re composting already, well-aged compost would make a rich organic way to fertilize your lettuce. Get them started, watch them grow and harvest once they grow to maturity. Last but not least, eat and enjoy! Please share your experience in our facebook group.
If you haven’t read this, here is another article on indoor growing.