The Accidental Salad Bar Garden

The salad bar garden is filled with leafy greens, root crops and herbs packed into just a few square feet

Over the years, the “backside” as we call it, has played host to lettuce, cabbage, spinach, beans, peas, radishes, carrots, and more. Because we let a lot of those plants go to seed, we end up with many seedlings in subsequent seasons. If they’re not obnoxious or threatening to take over the bed, we let them grow for the sake of a little variety.

This year was an unusually warm winter so right now this section is crowded with a crazy variety of veggies; so many that it’s a literal salad bar.

With less than two weeks before spring we have lettuce, carrots, dill, celery, radishes, beans, snow peas, spinach, and even a bell pepper that overwintered there. And behind them is a leafy wall of Lacinato kale that also overwintered.

That’s a pretty good number of vegetables that 1) we didn’t need to plant, and 2) has enough variety that whatever type of vegetable we might be in the mood for is pretty much guaranteed to be available for the picking.

What’s also interesting about this arrangement is that it’s sort of found a balance with no one vegetable overwhelming the others so we never really need to thin the plants. And as long as we keep up on eating them, this part of the bed will keep on growing this way well into the summer before the heat takes its toll on some of the more tender greens.

So, if you’re thinking of planting a salad bar garden, don’t overthink it too much. Turns out a little chaos goes a long way.