[VIDEO] Seed Sprouting and Succession Planting with Arugula and Salad Greens

I love gardening almost as much as I love eating from the garden!

Today I would like to take you on a short video tour of our garden and the recent sowings of arugula and salad greens as part of the practical lab discussion on seed sprouting for my HERB101 class through ACHS. It doesn’t feel like homework when it takes me out to the garden. 🙂 

I manage our gardens with a combination of organic, biodynamic, and permaculture principles. We use chicken compost from our small flock of 16 chickens to fertilize the garden and supplement with other organic fertilizers as needed. We do not till the garden anymore, but I do incorporate amendments into the top 2-3 inches of soil when planting an entire bed. Otherwise, we just top dress with compost and/or straw as needed. We try to eat from our garden as much as possible year-round so I am constantly sowing seeds.

My favorite thing from the garden is actually salad! None of that iceberg salad that we grew up on around here. Salad around here means leafy greens of various kinds… lettuces of all sorts, kales, beet greens, edible weeds, cilantro, parsley, basil, and whatever else we have growing and that happens to look nice at the time.

This salad habit started when I was pregnant with our daughter twenty years ago and suffered from cramps in my calves. My midwife suggested I consume more dark, leafy greens to get the vitamin intake I needed to prevent them. It worked wonders! I will still get leg cramps from time to time if I am not eating enough leafy greens, so I keep them growing as consistently as possible. When we have to buy salad fixings from the grocery store, they are so tasteless and tough, it makes us feel like we are eating cattle fodder. 😉

I hope you enjoy the video.

For more on what we have going on around the garden, have a look around the site, follow the blog via email, and be sure to check out this recent post: The PNW Garden in May (2016)

Happy gardening, everybody!