You can grow your own salad fixings. Lettuces and greens tend to be very adaptable to a wide range of growing spaces, and many don’t mind a short life in tight quarters. If a lack of light is your issue, try leaf lettuce varieties that you can harvest small. mâche is a diminutive, tender green that does well in small pots and will grow well into the coldest months of the year. Arugula is a tough green that can survive the hot summer months when everything else has called it quits.

My books You Grow Girl, Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces, and Easy Growing: Organic Herbs and Edible Flowers from Small Spaces all contain instruction on growing lettuce, greens, and salad fixings in small spaces on a tiny budget as well as recipes for making your own homegrown dressings and vinegars.

The following articles on this site will help get you started and maybe even offer up some new ingredients to try that you have never heard of.

You can also try searching key categories and tags such as: greens, lettuce, leafy greens, herbs, edible flowers.

• What a difference a cloche makes.
• Allow some of your lettuce plants to bolt (produce flowers) and grow your own seed for next season’s crop.
• How to extend the harvest.

• How to grow salad greens in a repurposed recycling bin. Note that I switched to binder clips to help keep the protective mesh on and squirrels out while the seeds germinated. There is also an update on this project.
• How to grow microgreens on a windowsill.
• Grow a crate of mâche.
• Grow ‘Sea of Red’ lettuce in an old enamel kitchen colander, rigged for hanging.
• Grow colourful lettuce in the top of a strawberry pot.
• Tips for growing lettuce in a pot.

• 5 Edible Flowers for Your Early Summer Salads
• Basil (seedlings and flowers)
• Bloody dock (Rumex sanguineus)
• Borage (tender greens and flowers)
• Brassicas (young leaves and flowers)
• Calendula (flowers and young leaves)
• Chives and chive flowers
• Dill (flowers and young greens)
• Edible weeds
• Garlic (early season greens)
• Garlic mustard (young leaves)
• Kale (young leaves are best)
• Lemon balm
• Lettuce ‘Four Seasons’
• Lettuce ‘Mascara’
• Nasturtium (flowers and young leaves)
• Onions (young greens and flowers)
• Pansies and violas (petals)
• Add young pea shoots and colourful pea flowers to your salads.
• Roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa) (young leaves)
• Spigarello (young leaves and flowers)
• Swiss chard
• Thyme (flowers)
• Violet (flowers and young leaves)

• A hearty lunch salad from the garden.
• Breakdown of a homegrown greens and edible flowers salad.
• Herbal Vinegars