Growing Leafy Greens With LED Grow Lighting

Scootch over iceberg lettuce, the world of leafy greens has so much variety, flavor and nutritional punch that you’ll never go back to tasteless and nutritionless iceberg lettuce again. (We’ll grant you that iceberg lettuce does pack a nice crunch when it’s fresh.) Check the article “Leafy Greens : 7 Uncommon & Delicious Varieties to Grow In Your Indoor Salad Garden. (All Year-Round!)” for some eye-opening beauties that we’ve grown and love.

Once again, passive hydroponics is an ideal method for growing leafy greens.

Here’s an example of a typical amount of leafy greens we try to keep planted for our weekly use in a household of two people. We will plant 4 jars with 5-6 leafy greens seeds. In four weeks, we can start harvesting from these jars. It’s a no-brainer to use some leafy greens with every meal since you have it readily available! We might harvest about half a jar per meal. With four jars, we have enough leafy greens for the week. We will plant a second round of four jars about a week and a half after we planted the first round of jars. Some leafy green varieties are strong performers and can be cut and will “come again” after about a week. We typically find leafy greens become less tasty after the second cutting so that’s when we will dismantle a jar and replant. Everyone will get slightly different results and will consume leafy greens in different amounts, so we urge you to set up a rotation of jars on a schedule that makes sense for you. (If you aren’t getting enough production from a setup such as this, simply move up to a larger container such as a 3 gallon bucket with a net cup or use a slightly different method of growing with coco coir and vermeculite.

Overall, growing leafy greens requires very little time and the rewards are definitely tasty and economical!