You can grow your own salad bar in the valley

Growing your own salad bar is one of the easiest ways to garden in our valley. We all recognize salad vegetables as good sources of vitamins and minerals, often calling them "healthy" foods.

Cindy Dixon and I will be going over the key points to growing salad and other vegetables at 8:30 a.m. Saturday and Jan. 13 at the Springs Preserve at 333 S. Valley View Blvd. Call 822-7700 as there is a charge and a need to reserve a seat.

A salad you've grown is really a feast for your body. Make an "enthusiastic salad" - where you put everything you have into it - or keep things as simple as lettuce and spinach. If family members are not fans of leafy greens, let them have other veggies to put in their own salad. It will whet their appetites.

Salads today go far beyond the simple fare they once were. We now put everything into salads. At the base of most salads is a leafy green vegetable such as lettuce or spinach. Some may not like spinach, so grow iceberg, leaf, romaine, and/or Boston lettuces. Add color by adding orange carrots, red radishes, white cauliflower, green and purple onions, basil, thyme, dill and/or parsley. They really appeal to your eyes and taste buds.

Make your salad garden just the size you want it. If you have a soil problem, grow your salad crops in containers. To continue harvesting salad veggies longer, plan successive sowings of radishes, carrots and lettuces every two weeks until April 1st.

Start your salad crops from seed. Here are some suggestions and their days to reach your salad: carrots, 60-70 days; butterhead lettuce, 50-55; iceberg lettuce, 60-70; leaf lettuce, 45-55; romaine lettuce, 55-60; green bunching onions, 55-60; parsley, 75-80; radishes, 25-30; beets, 45-60; and spinach, 40-45 days. Plant your tomatoes and cucumber in March.

If you don't have a garden plot, grow your veggies in containers on your balcony, patio and/or deck. It's surprising how much produce you can produce in containers in these locations.

In addition, children love growing their own. To keep your child's interest up, put up signs indicating it's "Mary's Garden" (or whatever names are appropriate). To make them even more personal label the stakes as "Mary's beans," "John's zinnias," etc. Labeling like this will minimize disputes over whose plants are whose.

Children love to water but at full force. Remind them to water like a slow gentle rain so water sinks deep into the earth.

"Patience is a virtue," as the saying goes. The wait for vegetables to mature teaches children patience. Children want their carrots now. Let them pull a few to sample until bigger things come along. You'll find they'll love sharing their harvest with friends.

Gardening with your children is an ideal time to really talk to them. Show them how plants grow, and the need for birds, insects and worms to make them grow. The quiet of a garden is an excellent place to just talk about anything that may be on their minds.

Gardening with my parents were some of my choicest moments with them. It's an opportunity to guide children's personal growth and instill an understanding of how nature works and how it affects each of us. It can all begin in a child's garden.

■ GROWING AND PRUNING ROSES RIGHT - Let the Las Vegas Valley Rose Society give you a personal pruning demonstration and show you how to care for your roses the right way in our desert. It's anytime between 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at 1112 Oak Tree Lane (Washington and Valley View boulevards) and it's a free open house. For more information, call 646-6048.

■ PRUNING IN SMALL PLACES - Join Angela O'Callaghan of Nevada Cooperative Extension at 9 a.m. Saturday for a workshop designed to cover pruning fruit trees, ornamentals and desert plants. It's at the Extension Center, 8050 Paradise Road. It requires pre-registration, as seating is limited and a fee of $25. Contact Elaine Fagin at fagine@unce.unr.edu or call 257-5573.

■ MEALS FROM YOUR PORCH - Join Joan Reckling, Sunset Garden Club master gardener, for her talk on "Container Gardening - Meals from your Porch" at noon Tuesday at the Paseo Verde Library, 280 S. Green Valley Parkway in Henderson. The Sunset Garden Club is sponsoring this free event. Go to www.sunsetgardenclubofnv.org for more information.

Linn Mills' garden column appears on Sundays. You can reached him at linnmillslv@gmail.com or call him at 526-1495.