Take a Bite Out of Your Grocery Shopping Budget with ...

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!

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!

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.

The Smart Garden 9

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!

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!

P.S. If you love the content I create for Shifting Roots, consider joining our community on Patreon. Your support means the world to me and I am grateful for each and every one of you!

For more information, please visit lettuce purple.

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)!

Growing all&#;or even a portion&#;of your own vegetables and herbs at home pays you back in freshness and convenience. You'll save money by eating what you grow and making fewer trips to the grocery store. In addition, you make a small contribution to overall energy savings in reduced fuel consumption and transportation costs of market items. And, a home garden lets you control what pesticides, if any, you will use.

Try These for Maximum Savings

If space is limited, containers are an ideal way to start veggie and herb gardening. All you need is sun and a source of water. From a small apartment balcony to the deck of a retirement-community home, containers can be productive, fun, and easy. Combining vegetables and herbs in containers gives you an attractive planting as well as a nice variety of edibles. An easy combination is a leafy plant such as Swiss chard or lettuce with rosemary, or a tomato with a basil plant in a 20-inch or larger container.

And if your goal is to grow vegetables and herbs to save money on groceries, check the veggies and herbs listed below that rank at the top for savings. Remember that many times your vegetables are coming in at the same time that local farms are producing, which tends to lower market prices at the peak of season. You can save money by freezing or canning your harvest for later use and buying local produce at in-season prices.

Tomatoes

This is the most popular home-garden vegetable in America. We have a picture in our office of a Bonnie Original Tomato that easily yielded 50 pounds of tomatoes. The average homeowner can expect to pick 10 to 30 pounds of medium-size slicing tomatoes from most varieties, depending on the length of the growing season. Most people will plant and enjoy the first tomatoes, but may not fertilize again or spray for diseases to keep plants going longer. Gardeners with a long growing season would do well to include some disease-resistant indeterminate (vining) varieties in the mix, because they bear all summer and continue until frost if given a little midsummer care.

Big Beef is a popular indeterminate tomato that performs well in many parts of the country and makes a big slice. Grape tomatoes such as Bonnie's Juliet and cherry tomatoes such as Sweet 100 are pricey at the grocery store but in the garden they are very prolific. A 1-pound box of organically grown grape tomatoes contains 30 to 40 tomatoes. At $3.69 a pound, that is 9 to 12 cents per tomato. All of a sudden a cluster of grape tomatoes in your garden starts looking like "money growing on trees," only it's tomato plants.

Currently there is a lot of publicity about heirlooms because many of them have unbeatable old-fashioned tomato flavor. A popular Bonnie heirloom variety is Brandywine. Keep in mind that there can be a trade-off, because some heirlooms also have old-fashioned fruiting habits, which tend to be skimpy compared to hybrids. If pure volume is your goal, hybrids are probably the best bet.

Whatever your tomato preference, you'll find a good cross-section of hybrid and heirloom varieties of Bonnie tomatoes.

At several cents apiece at the grocery store, a homegrown cluster of grape tomatoes adds up to big savings from the garden, especially if you buy organic.

Yellow squash and zucchini

Although squash plants don't produce as long as tomatoes, they are very productive when it's time, and you have to pick every day. This is one of those vegetables that is expensive to buy out of season, so it pays to freeze. Generally, yellow squash freezes better than zucchini, but both should be cooked prior to freezing. You can also use your extra zucchini (an almost guaranteed phenomenon) to make zuchinni bread to store in the freezer for later use or last-minute delivery to someone in need.

Lettuce

Leaf lettuce (as opposed to head lettuce) just keeps on bearing leaves as long as the weather is mild in spring or fall. This is a great savings for people who eat a lot of salad. The number of pounds produced will vary depending on the length of the growing season. Per pound, Romaine is the highest-yielding type of leaf lettuce. If you pick their large outer leaves, a couple of leaf lettuce plants will produce enough to make a salad for a family of 4. Leaf lettuce grows fast, and so in a week or 2 the same plant will be ready to harvest again. A row of 10 plants will keep your family in salad just about every other night for as long as the growing season lasts. Many gardeners have found ways to extend their lettuce harvest far into winter under the cover of a cold frame or fabric row cover. The same is true for other greens such as mustard, kale, and collards. These are highly nutritious, too.

Planting leaf lettuce in wide rows allows you to get more in a limited space. Leaf lettuce is so easy to grow, there&#;s no need to buy it at the grocery store.

Specialty peppers

Poblano, jalapeño, serrano, Cubanelle, chili peppers, red bells, orange bells, and other specialty peppers are the ones that command top dollar in the grocery store, but they are also easy to grow. The hot peppers are especially high-yielding and productive in areas with a long, hot summer. Last year one of our staff harvested more than 40 poblano peppers from a single plant! Hot peppers such as Tabasco are also nice because you can use the peppers to make gifts of hot pepper vinegar or sauce to give at Christmas&#;an indirect way to use the garden to save money and add a personal touch to your gifts.

Cucumbers

Grown on a cage or trellis, a single cucumber plant will produce 5 to 10 cucumbers. Most of the time you can get 2 or 3 plants on a cage that measures about 18 inches in diameter and 4 feet high. So that rewards you with 15 to 30 cucumbers from a slice of ground no bigger than an end table.

Herbs

Fresh herbs are very expensive to purchase at the grocery or market, yet economical to grow at home. With the exception of basil, one plant of each of the following is enough for most family cooks' seasonings. Sage, rosemary, mint, thyme, chives, and basil are very easy and fun to grow in containers, a raised bed, or in the ground. Basil is particularly economical if you like pesto because making it from your own basil is a lot cheaper than buying the little jars at the grocery store. Making pesto takes lots of leaves, so grow at least 6 plants. There are several varieties of basil. Good choices from Bonnie are Sweet, Cinnamon, Thai, and Lemon, each with a unique taste.

Tabasco is a big, shrubby plant that bears many little peppers. Just one will give you plenty of peppers to make sauce for yourself and as gifts.

Four No-Brainer Techniques for High Yield

Trellising Any time that you can grow a vegetable on a trellis, it increases your yield per square foot. Plants that trellis well include cucumber, cantaloupe, tomato, and sweet peas.

Wide rows Growing small, leafy plants such as leaf lettuce, spinach, and arugula 3 or 4 rows abreast (without walking aisles in between) gives you more food per square foot.

Raised Beds Raised beds organize the garden, letting you concentrate on the most productive items. Because a raised bed allows you to use near-perfect soil, your plants will be their most productive, too. Raised beds can be easy to build, nicely incorporated into the landscape, and certainly lots of fun to harvest and show to your friends. See our section on raised beds in Gardening.

Start with transplants: Transplants buy you lots of time. Plants are several weeks old when you put them into the ground, giving you a head start to harvest time for most plants compared to starting from seed.

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