A Very Homemade Salad

As winter dragged itself on I longed for some spring, and decided to grow some fresh, green salad in my windows. My windows turned south, and underneath were a heater, so even though I began this project with minus degrees and occasional snow outside, the salad grew green and beautiful.

This is how I did it!

You will need these materials:

- Jars, pots, cans to grow the plants in

- Seeds

- Dirt

- Water

- Patience

If you want to add fertilizer you can, but you don’t have to. I didn’t do it and it worked anyway.

Planting the seeds took just a couple of minutes.

I dug some dirt up in my mother's back yard. If you do not have access to a yard you can buy dirt at any garden center, and it is usually very cheap. The seeds that I used were bought in a grocery store, but seeds can be purchased many different places. Garden centers usually have the most variants.

The jars I filled with the dirt, almost to the point that I wanted. Then i planted the seeds in the dirt, with a bit of space between them, and added a thin layer on top of that (about 1-2 cm). Then I watered the jars well and placed them in my sunny window sill.

*Unfortunately I lost many of the photos related to this project, as I lost my SD card in Africa. But these photos show the seeds that I used, and I hope that is a least a help.*

Then the plants need peace, patience and WATER. Loads of water – without drowning them. It took about 5 days for my plants to germinate, but as soon as they had started growing it went pretty quick.

The plants gave my room a very nice atmosphere: Some green- spring-ish feeling and a soft-sweet sent. They were living and growing, and every day I watched them grow bigger. It was pretty cozy, and I’m glad there are still some left in my room.

It took my plants 4 weeks to grow into a harvestable size, and the ones I didn’t harvest are still growing bigger.

As the time to publish this instructable was running out, I decided to harvest some leaves early. (This was a treat, as the young leaves are so sweet and fresh!) They had grown into a harvestable size, but they can get much bigger, and when they are at their biggest they get a red colour around the edges of the leaves. I harvested enough for a salad, but left the rest to grow further. Many of the plants had split into two parts, and in cases like this I picked one of them of, and left the other to grow.

Next stop: Salad feasting!

I mixed my leaves with a bit of olive oil, salt, feta cheese, olives, sugar peas and spring onion.

I also added some homemade bread croutons, to make the salad a bit more filling and satisfying. (I’ll soon be making an instructable on that) It was a pretty great lunch!

Food that you have grown are often very enjoyable, as you’ve put some work into creating it. Studies suggest that foodwaste would go down rapidly, if people started growing their own food. We tend to enjoy homemade foods more, and when it takes as little as this project,alot of people could have a good time doing more urban farming.

Homegrown foods are also very safe to eat, as they are organic and and have not been in contack with strange and unsanitize places. And if there are any pesticides or unhealthy manuring on the foods you will know it! ;)