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Your 'Mini' Salad Garden
by Stephania Munson-Bishop
With a minimum of space, you can have your own salad garden. Think edible landscaping! Some of us nix the idea of planting anything, for lack of space. But you don't need an area the size of a football field. For salad fixings, you can plant almost anywhere you can find a few square feet, even along a stone wall or on either side of a walkway. Think 'edible landscaping'! Plants can be decorative as well as hearty ingredients for an easy-to-gather salad.
Buy a small packet of seeds for some or all of the following: Buttercrunch, Black-seeded Simpson, Royal Oak Leaf, and Cos Romaine lettuce. Include New Zealand Spinach, parsley, mustard, and kale. 'Broadcast' the seed, even mix it all together if you wish, water occasionally, and watch a lush quilt of verdant green textures blossom before your eyes. The great part about lettuce is that you must thin it out and use it, to discourage your assorted lettuce patch from going to seed. With a little attention and care, you'll harvest more salad greens than you can probably use.
Be adventurous and throw in radish, beet, carrot, and chive seed. Plant sugar snap peas to grow on a small trellis. Later, plant green pepper, cherry tomato, a few cucumber or squash plants in containers. Almost anything will take root and thrive in a rich mix of potting soil. Use Miracle-Gro. You don't even need a green thumb!
Blueberries and Alpine strawberries are hardy plants that grow effortlessly, as do Rugosa roses and nasturtiums, both of which are edible providing you never use pesticides. Imagine a beautiful poached fish garnished with nasturtium blossoms. Nouvelle cuisine, from your own garden.
After your first 'mini' salad garden, you'll be planning the next in December, and counting the weeks before planting! For more on edible flowers, including important cautions, go to: www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/hortnews/1995/7-21-1995/eatflow.html
About the Author
Stephania is a human service professional with nearly 40 years in the field. She publishes a content-rich ezine, "Tidbits from the Pantry," about self-help, growth, and relationships to over 11,000 subscribers, and offers a life coaching service. To subscribe to her ezine, mailto:info@humansrv.net?subject=SUB Visit her site at http://www.humansrv.net
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