Plant a Container Salad Garden
How to plant a container salad garden on your patio, deck or back yard. Easy and fun for the kids. Have your salad garden right at your kitchen door for easy access to salad ingredients quick.
This container salad garden is so easy to grow. You can plant in one big container like I did or cluster several smaller pots and containers together to fill with homegrown salad ingredients. Most are super easy to grow. Or grow what you like to eat!
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I know you love a good summer garden as much as I. Fresh lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and sugar snap peas make for a quick and delicious salad. Toss in some Lime Basil Grilled Chicken with Homemade Croutons and you have a meal.
Planting a container salad garden mere steps from the kitchen is as fresh as it gets.
Container for your Salad Garden
First you will need a container. Or more than one if using smaller pots. No worries, my next container garden will be in a few pots instead of one big barrel like this.
This is a little rough around the edges but it will work just fine. Once I fix the metal ring by screwing it back on we will be ready to roll. There is already a few large holes drilled into the bottom. I would say they are about 1/2″ around in size.
Fill container with Soil
I fill it with some soil, my DIY potting soil. Or you can go with bagged soil if you prefer.
Plan Your Container Salad Garden
Once the container is filled with soil then I lay out my garden plan.
In this salad garden I am planting a Super Sweet 100 tomato, a Tye Dye tomato, Persian Fingers Cucumber seeds, Black Seeded Simpson lettuce seeds, an Italian Basil seedling and 2 Sugar Snap pea seeds.
It sounds a bit crowded but with a good feeding program and judicious pruning as things fill in, it should work just fine.
Placing Salad Garden Plants
Start with placing your tomato cage in the center, this is a 48 inch tomato cage. It is a lighter weight cheapie but it will get the job done. It was on sale for $2.99 so I figured it was perfect.
Now plant a tomato on each side of the cage.
Firm them in by pressing out the base of the plant. Now use pantyhose strips or other garden ties to connect the tomato as needed to the tomato cage. Keep a few ties handy for future use, I just tie them to the cage and use them as the tomato plants grow taller and need more support.
Plant Salad Garden Seeds
Next you will want to put some Black Seeded Simpson seeds into your hand and sprinkle them along behind the tomatoes and the tomato cage.
You may wonder why you want to place them behind…
Lettuce is a cool weather plant and the shade produced from the tomato plants will keep the lettuce from getting too hot. Black Seeded Simpson is tolerant of warmer temps and slow to bolt but still needs some shade in the hotter part of summer. You may be able to sow all summer long, depending on your climate.
Plant your cucumber seed near one of the front posts of the tomato cage and I put sugar snap peas by the other front post.
I also included a basil for fun. I love Caprese salad and thought it would be nice to have it handy on the deck too.
Once everything is planted then water well. And wait…..
Before you know it things will be popping up all over….baby tomatoes
Delicious lettuce seedlings popping up in droves….
They may seem a bit close together but you can easily harvest some as they grow effectively thinning them but still getting to eat your thinnings.
In the video, I share what it looks like 2 weeks after planting. This past week we have had very cool temperatures so it slowed it all down a bit but with it warming up I am sure I will be eating salads for months.
Next up I am planning a Salsa Garden…want to know when I post that…then sign up to be on our VIP list and be the first to know.
Don’t forget to PIN this post so you can refer back to it.
Want to see how it turned out? Well, it failed! Big time. Hop over to this video and I tell you why.
Salad Garden Fail
Happy Gardening!
