The Huron Expositor, 1997-04-16, Page 23There's nothing like a salad made
with .vegetable from the garden
What could be better than a
fresh garden salad?
A salad garden.
Make it as small as several
hanging baskets on a patio or the
spots of soil between the shrub-
bery around your house. Put a
salad garden in a box or bed as
Targe as your favorite restaurant
s bar, and it will perk up your
all summer.
lettuce, spinach, radishes,
onions, beets, c
cabbage, deep
turnips.
to
rhub
Add a few cu
plants. or plant so
peas and let these clim
air above the garden or hang down
from a basket overhead.
Grow a few herbs like chives
and parsley and some tasty, color-
ful, edible flowers like nastur-
tiums. Choose any combination of
the foods your family likes best,
and one or two new ones to stretch
their repertoire.
Besides unlimited harvests, you
will delight in better, fresher fla-
vor, the fun of watching seeds
sprout and grow, and the exercise
of good garden therapy.
You don't have to be an experi-
enced or dedicated gardener for
salad success. But your efforts
will be much more richly reward-
ed if you choose and prepare the
site well.
SOIL PREPARATION
Most important is soil prepara-
tion. Whatever soil you have —
clay, loam, or sand — adding
organic matter is the best way to
make it better.
Make a 50/50 mix with half soil
and compost and half Canadian
sphagnum peat moss. This keeps
the soil loose so that air and water
can penetrate. It improves the tilth
and texture of the soil tremen-
dously.
With well prepared soil you can
plant much earlier than otherwise.
In warm weather, a salad garden
planted from seed will begin pro-
ducing greens and radishes in a
month or less.
With mixing your crops and
replanting, a salad garden will
bear from late spring until hard
freeze the next winter. And then
pots of chives, parsley and cherry
tomatoes can continue to add fla-
vor and flair from pots on the
indoor windowsill.
SMALL SPACE
GARDENS
The easiest way to have a salad
bar in a limited space is to plant a
wide swath of mixed seeds: let-
tuce, spinach, radishes, carrots,
beets and chard all stirred togeth-
er.
You can press the little bulbs of
bunching onions into the soil
about three to four inches apart,
across the wide row either before
or after you sprinkle on the tiny
seeds.
Sprinkle the seeds so that they
are about 1/2 inch apart over the
entire seedbed and just barely
covered. Tamp everything down
with the back hoe to bring
the seeds an into good con -
With well
prepared
1 you can
�ant much
arlier than
otherwise
tact with the soil.
Water well with a gentle sprin-
kle flow so as not to wash away
the shallow seeds.
In such a multicrop row, some
crops come up quickly, shelter the
slowpokes, and crowd out the
weeds, so everything grows nice-
ly together. When you are ready to
harvest, you have a whole mixed
salad with one cutting.
The only time that light sprin-
kling helps a garden is between
sowing and sprouting. In hot
weather, several such sprinklings
a day will keep the soil and the
seed moist.
Canadian sphagnum peat moss,
which holds up to 20 times its
weight in water without excluding
the needed oxygen, can make the
difference between good germina-
tion and sprouts that die of thirst
before you ever see them.
nce the plants are up and
'ng, normal rainfall may be
gh if it measures an inch a
week. If not, water deeply and
only as often as needed.
- Well-prepared beds that don't
dry out mean healthier, quicker
growing crops with less work and
less stress for the grower and our
planet.
You can begin to use the outside
leaves of lettuce, kale, spinach,
chard, turnip and beet tops as soon
as they are large enough to be
worth the cutting. A week or so
later, when the plants are well
established, cut most greens right
down to within an inch of the
ground. Start at one end of the
row and cut enough to wash a
good size plastic bagful each time.
By the time you get to one .end
of the row, the part you cut first
will be high enough to cut again.
HOME & GARDEN GUIDE-
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,
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