Skip to main content

How to grow delicious greens in your home garden

Growing a new plant can be intimidating, especially plants like lettuce or collards that seem delicate or harder to grow successfully. Don’t let that stop you! We’ve put together a guide to help you grow and harvest delicious and nutritious veggies like butter lettuce or kale in your own backyard. 

Tools and materials needed

Before you can start the growing process, you’ll need to make a list of the types and varieties of greens you want to try. You can use this guide to determine if organic seeds are for you. You can even check out cold weather hardy greens that you can grow into frost season. 

If you already have a home garden, it’s likely that you’re equipped with all the tools necessary. But to be sure, here’s a list of the items we recommend.

  • Plant seeds of choice
  • Garden fork
  • Row covers
  • Row labels 
  • Compost
  • Fertilizer

prepping garden

Prepare your planting site

Like most plants, greens love well-fertilized and compost-filled soil. If you’re not working with a raised garden bed, this will be the most challenging part of the process. Tilling, working, and amending the soil can be hard work, but your plants and salads will thank you. 

Using a garden fork, work up the soil and add compost and your preferred fertilizer. Mix these amendments in well, and break up the soil as you go. Seedlings have delicate roots that need loose soil to grow efficiently. If there are large clumps or rocks in their way, it will make it much harder for the plants to germinate and develop strong, healthy root systems. 

Plant your seeds

This is a satisfying but time-consuming process, depending on how many rows you have to plant. Here, you’ll be using a pen or finger to open a small hole in the ground. Go down about 1/4 of an inch and pinch in two to three seeds per hole. Use row labels to identify where you placed plants so you can identify them correctly in the future. This  will also allow you to add or subtract plants you did or did not like for the next growing season. 

The row cover is optional but could speed up the germination process. They can also protect seedlings from being eaten by rabbits, squirrels, and other rodents. There are gardeners who swear by them and others who say they never use them. 

seedlings

Cultivate the successfully-germinated seeds

Since there are multiple seeds per hole, the likelihood of more than one seed sprouting is pretty high. This is an excellent problem to have and much better than not having any seeds germinate at all! 

If you’re noticing multiple seedlings growing in one hole, give them a few weeks and then cut the seedling that is the smallest so you have only one plant per 8 inches of garden space. This ensures each plant has plenty of space and available nutrients to grow and produce big, healthy leaves. 

Harvest the greens of your labors

Now that it’s been several weeks and you’ve cared for and nurtured these beautiful green plants to life, it’s time to harvest. There is almost nothing more satisfying than watching seeds you planted grow and thrive into mature plants. It’s also gratifying to then gather and create a salad or other dishes with the food you’ve grown in your own backyard! 

Many greens will allow you to harvest a few leaves at a time, and they will continue to produce more leaves as the season goes on. To harvest in this way, you’ll want to grab the leaf you’ll be harvesting, go down to the soil level, and cut the leaf off without damaging the rest of the plant. If you have to go higher up on the leaf, that’s okay. Damaging the plant can result in it dying or no longer producing any new leaves. 

With a basket full of romaine, Swiss chard or kale, you’re ready to make the best salad or green smoothie you’ve ever tasted! Take these steps and apply them to an already existing garden or a new garden. It’s never too late to start gardening, and everyone, no matter their stage in life, can gain something from a garden — even a small garden just for salad greens!

Editors' Recommendations

Rebecca Wolken
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Rebecca's has written for Bob Villa and a Cincinnati based remodeling company. When she's not writing about home remodeling…
Can you grow a bird of paradise from a cutting? Here’s what you need to know to grow your dream plant
Tips and tricks for successfully propagating a bird of paradise plant
Bird of paradise plant

Whether they're found in their natural habitats in the wild or as the centerpiece in an indoor garden, bird of paradise are eye-catching and perfect plants for adding some color and tropical flair to your home. This plant is native to South Africa and is well-known for its lush foliage and attractive tropical blooms with vividly colored flowers. The plant gets its name from the stunning flower's resemblance to a colorful bird in flight.

For all its perks, the plant also can be costly to acquire and slow to cultivate from seed. So when you find yourself wanting more than one of these attractive plants, what can you do? Take a cutting and grow a new plant! No matter if you're just starting out with a new cutting from a friend or you're adding to your existing plant's family, you can add more of these plants to your collection easily and at little or no expense.

Read more
How will the summer solstice affect your garden? What you need to know
Everything to know about gardening around the summer solstice
Parent and child having fun by garden

While you may be diving into the ocean during summer vacation season, your flowers will be focusing on something different: how long the daylight lasts. Summer solstice gardening is an important concept when it comes to making sure your plants are growing and blooming on schedule. This is the longest day of the year, the time when your garden will be receiving the most light. Unsure about how this will impact your garden? This simple guide will explain everything!

What is the summer solstice?
The summer solstice, also known as midsummer, is the halfway point of the summer. The solstices, especially summertime, is important for gardeners because of the effect on how their plants flower in their garden. The summer solstice, specifically, is the summer day that has the longest sunlight and shortest night, and plants use the length of the nights to cue the release of hormones for flowering and fruiting.

Read more
How to propagate your jasmine from cuttings to spread the fragrant love
From cutting stems to air layering, here's what you need to know about propagating jasmine
White jasmine blossoms

A lovely note in floral perfumes, jasmine is one of the most fragrant plants out there and features a light, sweet scent when in full bloom. You’re definitely not limited to the one plant you have growing in your garden, though. Jasmine is simple to propagate, and there are three different methods for creating more of this beautiful, fragrant plant. If you want to fill your garden with jasmine plants or want to share it with a fellow fragrant flower enthusiast, read ahead to learn how to propagate jasmine.
When should you propagate jasmine?
The ideal time to propagate jasmine is right after it blooms, which is usually during the spring or summer. Around this time of year, you'll likely be pruning your plant anyway, so it's an opportune time to pick out some cuttings from fresh stems while you're shaping your jasmine.

It's best to take your cuttings during the morning when the plant is still relatively hydrated. If you're taking hardwood cuttings from an outdoor variety (such as climbing jasmine), you can start the propagation process during the winter. You can overwinter jasmine for a few months before it's warm enough to transplant outside — ideally, you should wait for the outdoor temperatures to reach 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

Read more