Super Spring Salad Garden Planting Plan

, written by Barbara Pleasant us flag

Garden Planner spring salad plan

As soon as you can smell spring in the air, it’s time to get moving on one of the most rewarding projects of the year – planting a spring salad garden. Arugula, lettuce, spinach and other salad greens make fast progress in the lengthening days of spring, and growing them under protective row covers prevents setbacks from nasty weather.

You won’t need a lot of space. The sample layout here utilizes one roomy raised bed, but if you are limited to tiny beds or containers, try Ben’s vertical salad gardens, which are planted in low towers. Also keep in mind that a spring salad garden comes and goes quickly, with the space freed up for planting something new in midsummer.

Ready to begin? Here are my top tips for a spring salad garden, and a sample planting plan that brings them together.

“Red
Dark red lettuce varieties bring beautiful contrast to a spring salad garden growing under a tunnel

Choose lettuces with contrasting colors

In the garden or on the plate, it’s great to have different lettuce varieties with varying colors and textures. Use lettuce varieties with dark red or chartreuse leaves for eye-catching contrast.

Plant for a long harvest season

Fast-growing arugula and radishes are ready to pick after only a month, but slow-maturing romaine or crisphead lettuces take twice as long. Including a variety of greens extends the season and changes the character of your homegrown salads from week to week.

“Onions
Use onions sets or seedlings to separate plantings, and pull them young to enjoy as scallions

Use onion sets for structure

Companion plant salad leaves with onions, and plan to pull them early, as scallions, before they are shaded out by neighboring leafy greens. Upright scallions make excellent companion crops for crisphead lettuce, which needs time to reach full size.

Include herbs and edible flowers

Annual herbs like cilantro and dill are naturals for a spring salad garden, and you can use them as greens or for flavoring dressings. Grow perennial herbs such as chives in containers so you can move them elsewhere when the salad garden is renovated in midsummer. The same goes for Johnny jump-ups (also called mini-pansies or violas) and other long-blooming edible flowers.

“Image
Include fast-growing annual herbs like dill in your salad garden

Be picky about fertilizers

Because salad greens are cleaned in cool water and eaten raw, they must not be exposed to the kinds of microbes that lurk in undecomposed organic matter, particularly manure. Use a thoroughly processed organic fertilizer, or better yet, go plant-based by using alfalfa pellets or organic chicken feed as fertilizers in your salad garden.

Use a tunnel for weather and pest protection

Spring weather is notoriously changeable, and those changes often come with wind, hail, or heavy rains. You can protect your spring salad garden from violent weather and animal pests like rabbits and deer by using row covers, held aloft with hoops and secured along the edges with boards or bricks. When you stay busy with other things and don’t lift the cover for a couple of weeks, you will be astounded by the progress your plants make under their cocoon covers.

“Row
Protect spring crops from unpredictable weather using row covers

Water often

Salad greens and radishes are surprisingly thirsty crops that grow best when soil is kept constantly moist. Keep a hose or watering can handy so you can water your salad garden should the surface soil appear dry.

Weed regularly

Weeding early and often is a joy in spring, when the sun is shining and birds are singing, and a small salad garden cleans up quickly if you give it a good going over once a week. Because spring is slug season and slugs love mulch, it’s usually best to keep a salad garden in open cultivation, and save your mulch for heat-stressed summer crops.

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Comments

 
"I am a subscriber to your planner. It would be nice if you offered pre-planned gardens, such as these, to subscribers. Planning is half the fun, but sometimes having access to planned out beds like this could be beneficial. Maybe it is the platform I am on, but I am not able to click on plan for a plant list or dimensions. Thanks."
Eric on Sunday 28 March 2021
"Eric, thanks for the suggestion, which we've already been discussing. If you go to the plant guides section, where each plant is profiled, you will find recommended spacing which is built into the Planner. "
Barbara Pleasant on Monday 29 March 2021
"I would love if the plan in this article was downloadable, or if there was a list with key available so it was easy to identify the plants chosen in the first image."
kris on Wednesday 8 February 2023
"Hi Kris, thanks for your suggestion. We have recently introduced Sample Plans into the Garden Planner and may add more in future, so I will forward your suggestion on to our development team. In the meantime, please message us using either the chat icon at the bottom right of your screen or the contact page and we'll send you a version of the plan image with plant labels."
Ann Marie Hendry on Friday 10 February 2023

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