Growing salad greens is a profitable venture for many in the farming space. Being able to grow a “spring” salad mix year round is even a financial game-changer for some farmers. That mix is usually going to involve plants like arugula, lettuce, spinach, and chard; however, a spring mix simply means tender young greens, which can include a wide variety of other options too. All this begged the question: Can I grow that in my apartment hydroponic system?
The answer is, of course, yes.
I chose to grow lettuce to see how quickly I could create a salad harvest. I used Spotted Aleppo Syrian Heirloom lettuce seeds from Baker Creek. It took 3 days to sprout the lettuce seeds in my Ahopegarden hydroponic system, and I had a 100% germination rate. The package says that the expected sprout rate is 7 to 10 days under traditional circumstances, which a major advantageous reason to grow hydroponically.
A full head is expected to mature in 50 to 65 days in soil, but my hydroponic system can not sustain a full sized head of lettuce, so I aimed for harvesting tender young plants. The problem for my first time growing was in knowing when that is?
As you can see in the picture, my young plants were very crowded in because I was trying to maximize my system’s output. I decided to harvest the leaves following a “cut-and-come-again” method after they had reached 6 inches at about 30 days. My first attempt at harvesting from a single plant produced enough lettuce for a single bowl of salad, but I worried that I had cut the leaves to early and too short. Fortunately the remaining crown, which I had cut to about half an inch above the deck of the growing station, did begin to produce new noticeable growth after a couple days.
I harvested the remaining five plants and collected enough lettuce to fill a 1 gallon Ziploc bag. My wife and I each enjoyed a salad, and I had a second the next day and still have about a fifth of a bag remaining. The cut leaves in the refrigerator held firm for two days, but after three days they began to get soft and rubbery.
The flavor was crisp and bright, but I felt like it lacked distinction. I worry that this is the byproduct of my growing process. I feel like the nutrients I am feeding my plants with are enough to sustain grown but they are not producing flavor. The leaves taste like water and lack that bitter-green flavor. Although, I have also read that a bitter flavor is a sign of overly mature spring mix greens. I think at this point it is a matter of taste preference rather than purely technique. Dialing these details in through my apartment-based hydroponic set-up is great because I can keep regrowing year round and experimenting with different harvest timings to see when my optimal flavor-to-speed of harvest ratio is.
I do plan to revisit my fertility amendments at some point, but for now I simply use Ahopegarden’s companion plant food which consists of:
Part A (Macro): Contains Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, and Magnesium.
Part B (Micro): Contains Calcium Oxide and other (non-specified) micro nutrients.
I’m still new to the chemistry of growing in the hydroponic environment, so I can’t really say if this is good or bad. Also, there’s a lot more freedom to focus on other parts of the process right now since I’m only growing for personal consumption. Right now, it is still cost effective and practical to simply use the manufacturers plant food.
Overall, the Spotted Aleppo Syrian Heirloom Lettuce was a great crop for me. It was fast growing and is low in calories while being high in nutrient density over other types of lettuce. This variety tends to range high in vitamin A, vitamin C, and moisture content. For all these reasons, I intend to keep growing it and fine tuning my production because I think it is definitely worth growing at home to supplement part of my grocery bill.
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