Growing your own food is easier than you might imagine, and it is very quick and easy to get started. One of the easiest and quickest things to do is to grow your own salad. You can do this year round, even without a garden. Anyone can learn how to grow a little salad on their windowsill to supplement dishes throughout the year. 

Getting Started: Finding Places to Grow Your Salad

No matter where you live, and even if you do not have any outside space at all, you can grow your own salad. 

Growing Salad Indoors

If you are a complete beginner when it comes to gardening, you may be wondering where to begin. The good news is that anyone can grow at least some of their own food at home, even without a garden or outside space. All you need is some seeds, some containers (you can use household waste for the purpose), water (ideally rainwater) and a sunny windowsill. 

Growing Salad Outdoors Under Cover

Growing salad year round becomes a lot easier if you have some sort of undercover growing area in your garden. A greenhouse or polytunnel will extend the growing season considerably in temperate regions, and a shade house in hotter areas can help gardeners grow salad crops successfully in hot weather. This option will allow you to expand your growing beyond a sunny windowsill. 

Growing Salad in Your Garden

Of course, if you have a garden, you can also grow a wide range of salad crops out in the elements. What exactly you can grow, and when seeds should be sown, will depend on where you live and what the climate and conditions are like there. If growing outside, you should also be sure to think about whether you will be growing in the ground, or in raised beds or containers. 

Which Seeds for Salad Growing Should You Grow?

Once you have determined where you will grow your salad crops and whether you will grow in containers or in the ground, it is time to decide which seeds you would like to begin with. To help you select your seeds, here are some easy salad crops for beginners. All of these options can usually be grown at some point during the year whether you are growing indoors or outdoors, and no matter where you live. Each of the following options are great choices for novice gardeners:

Cut-And-Come-Again Lettuce Mixes

Seed selections with a mix of different loose leaf lettuce varieties are ideal for beginners. These mixes provide a range of leafy vegetables for salads and different varieties can be grown throughout the whole year. One of the fantastic things about these lettuce mixes is that they can be cut and will grow back to be harvested again, offering great value for money. Lettuce is also a very quick growing crop, so you could see rewards in the form of a harvest in as few as four to six weeks.

Asian Greens

Asian greens such as mizuna, mibuna and pak choi also all offer easy leafy vegetables for salads and stir fries. There are a number of different types and varieties to choose from, many of which can be very forgiving of any small mistakes you may make early on in your home growing efforts. 

Chard

Finally, chard is another fun, attractive and delicious option for beginners to grow indoors. It does not take much looking after, and comes in a wide range of enticing rainbow shades. Chard, like lettuce, can also be cut and will come back to be harvested again. While older leaves are best cooked, young chard is wonderful in a salad.

Radishes

Radishes are another easy to grow and quick growing crop that can give great value for money in small spaces on a windowsill or in container growing. If you do grow radishes, don't forget, you can eat the leaves as well as the fiery roots. Plus, if your plants bolt (go prematurely to flower and to seed), you can also gain another abundant harvest from the plants – the seed pods are also edible (and delicious) and just one radish seed can provide a huge number of pods. 

Garden Peas

If you have not already tasted garden peas straight from the pod, then you will be amazed by how sweet and delicious they are! Give peas something to climb up and you can be rewarded with a fantastic yield for very little effort. If space is very limited, you can also plant peas close together in a window box or another container and harvest while young as pea shoots – these are another fantastic addition to home grown salads.

Spring Onions

Spring onions are also relatively east to grow and can be grown even in the smallest of spaces. Like lettuce and other cut-and-come-again crops, you can harvest the tops of your spring onions and they will regrow. If growing outside, grow spring onions (or other members of the onion family) with your carrots – they work well as companions in the garden as well as companions in a salad on your plate. 

Carrots & Other Root Vegetables

Carrots are a colourful addition to a range of salads. Planting them with onion family plants will help keep carrot fly away. Carrots, and other salad root crops like beetroot or turnips can all be grown in the ground (where conditions permit), in raised beds or in containers deep enough to accommodate their roots. Baby carrots can be harvested young for use in salads and can be great for growing in small spaces. 

Tomatoes

Tomatoes are not too difficult to grow and can often do as well on a sunny windowsill indoors as they do outside in a garden. If you live in a cold climate, they may in fact do better indoors than they would do out in the fresh air. When purchasing tomato seeds, decide whether you would like heirloom varieties (from which you can collect the seeds), or would prefer to go with a hybrid, which may have better resistance to disease. Choosing the right tomato seeds for the conditions where you live is key to success in growing delicious tomatoes indoors. While these do take a little more work than some of the above options, they are still worthwhile growing for use in your salads. 

Of course, these crops are just the start. There are plenty more salad crops that you can grow, no matter where you live and how exactly you want to do it.