These days lettuce and other fresh produce items are increasing in price daily. Sometimes it feels like you can’t even afford to eat a salad anymore! Thankfully, growing lettuce and greens indoors is an affordable alternative to help ensure you always have fresh, healthy food for you and your family on hand. Keep reading to learn what you can do now to still get your greens!
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growing lettuce indoors
Lettuce is quick-growing and easy to care for. Some of my favourite heirloom lettuce varieties include Buttercrunch, Salad Bowl, Drunken Woman, Simpson Elite and my all-time favourites, Freckles and Red Sails. If you want to learn more about saving money with lettuce, check out my post about saving lettuce seeds: How to Get Free Lettuce Seeds for Life. And for even more advice for gardening quick-growing vegetables (including lots of delicious greens), check out this post: 15 Fast-Growing Vegetables. Now, let’s learn how to save money on your grocery bill!
Indoor Growing STRATEGIES to Beat Inflation
1. Grow Sprouts
To grow sprouts at home, you’ll need seeds for sprouting, a mason jar with a sprouting screen and ring, and a small bowl for tipping your sprouts. Loosely fill the bottom of the jar with sprout seeds and rinse them two times, twice daily (each morning and night). Repeat the process for anywhere between 2 and 7 days, depending on the variety of seeds you purchased.
Ready to start? Get everything you need for sprouting here!
Related: Two Easy Tricks to Prevent Mold in Home-Grown Sprouts
Check out this short video to see how I grew the sprouts in the photos above:
2. Grow Microgreens
You don’t have to have a huge space or trays upon trays to grow microgreens. Any edible crop (think of your favourite homegrown vegetables, fruits, and herbs) can be grown as microgreens. This small grow light paired with microgreen seeds, sprouting equipment, and this free guide to growing sprouts and microgreens from West Coast Seeds will be the key to your success! Microgreens can be harvested anytime after the first set of true leaves appears.
3. Dust off your grow lights & grow in soil!
Yes, it’s really that simple. Get out your potting soil and lettuce seeds, and turn on the grow lights. Your results will be better if you have one of those fancy grow rooms, but it’s not necessary.
Note: more soil = bigger lettuce. Don’t expect full heads of lettuce indoors, but you can harvest at the baby size for delicious greens!
4. Use Click & Grow!
When I first got my Click & Grow box in the mail, I was kind of nervous about it. I was pregnant at the time, so I waited until after the baby to get started because I assumed it would be like regular grow light growing–where you have to be really on top of things, and the chance of screwing things up is really high.
I couldn’t have been more wrong!
When I finally opened up my box and assembled my Click & Grow, I realized that it had a self-watering system (meaning I only had to water once a week) with a timer in the grow lights; it was just so easy! Can you plug in an outlet and water your plants once a week? If yes, get a Click & Grow and grow yourself some joy this winter! There’s no better feeling than waking up in the morning, seeing the grow lights already on, checking on the lettuce, seeing how the tomatoes are doing, and seeing if I can pinch some basil. The Click & Grow makes a long and dreary winter much more tolerable.
If you want your own setup, use my discount code SHIFTINGROOTS10 for 10% off at www.clickandgrow.com. They have different sizes, shelving units, and price points, and all of their setups are 100% free of plant hormones, pesticides, and other harmful additives. They have kits for herb, fruit and veggie gardeners, salad and tea lovers, and more!
Get your Click & Grow today and start growing an impossibly easy, fresh, and enjoyable indoor garden!
5. The Tower Garden
If you have a little more space indoors or an unused basement corner, the tower garden may be a more practical solution for you. The Click & Grow would make more sense if you have a tiny house because it takes up much less space. But of course, you can grow much more food indoors in this garden tower! The tower has a cage of lights surrounding it and is a great option for seniors in larger homes. For seniors in smaller homes, Click & Grow all the way!
Related: Growing Better with Age: Gardening for Seniors
other indoor growing options
You can get into hydroponics and fancy grow rooms and year-round greenhouses, but that’s just not feasible for me with a new baby, so I won’t try to write about it. If you want to learn more, check out Ashley of Gardening in Canada, who has an indoor growing series and a super informative YouTube channel, and the Arkopia YouTube channel, which is an extremely useful resource.
Like me, both gardeners are in Zone 3 and in and around Saskatoon, so their content is well-suited for Shifting Roots’ readers. I had the pleasure of visiting Arkopia recently and was blown away by their setup. Check it out in the photo below!
If you liked this blog post, find me on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram for more cold-climate vegetable gardening tips, delicious recipes, and cut flower goodness! I also make weekly videos over on my YouTube channel. I hope to see you there!
HAVE YOU TRIED SEED STARTING, ONLY TO BE LEFT WITH STRETCHED-OUT SEEDLINGS AND DEAD PLANTS?
You’re not a bad gardener–you just need a little know-how. For the price of a few seed packets, you can stop wasting time and money and start growing seedlings that actually live, and you get to harvest. Don’t miss out on another growing season. Get your copy of Seed Starting Success now (videos included)!
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