How to Grow a Salad-Lovers Tower Garden

Tower Garden was designed to make healthy living easier and more accessible than ever before. With our vertical gardens, growers of all skill levels can harvest fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs, and more from the comfort of home, year-round.

For salad lovers, this means that crisp, delicious leafy greens are never far away. Say goodbye to the prepackaged stuff from the grocery store and ensure getting the most flavor and nutrition from your salad by growing it yourself with Tower Garden.

Why Grow Your Own Greens?

As nutritionists or dietitians would generally agree, eating plenty of fresh vegetables daily will yield countless health benefits. Some of these benefits include fueling your body with important fiber and minerals, keeping your mind sharp, and protecting you from cardiovascular disease. The nutrients found in salads allow our bodies to perform at optimum levels. Plus, leafy greens also help keep us hydrated!

When we buy our greens from the grocery store, there’s a good chance that the produce has lost a lot of its nutritional value. In fact, most produce loses at least 30% of its nutrients within just three days of harvest. But when we grow our own greens, we can be sure that we’re getting the most out of each bite, as well as helping the environment by reducing food miles and food waste.

20 Plants Salad Lovers Should Grow

To help you plan the perfect Tower Garden, we’ve highlighted some of our favorite plants to grow for delicious, clean salads, and linked to their Garden Plant Guides when possible:

1. Amaranth – spinach substitute that grows remarkably well in warm, humid weather
2. Arugula ­– popular mixed salad green with a pleasant, peppery kick
   
3. Asian greens ­– tasty family that includes the bold mizuna, spinach-like tatsoi, and others
4. Beans – delicious (and healthy!) ingredient in hearty, filling salads
5. Borage – produces edible, cucumber-flavored flowers
6. Broccoli ­– a single serving has about twice as much vitamin C as an orange
7. Cauliflower ­– pale cousin of broccoli with similar health benefits and taste
8. Celery ­– rich with fiber, easy way to add more texture to a salad
9. Chard – top superfood, often included in premade salad mixes
10. Cress – ranked as one of the most nutrient dense foods
11. Cucumbers – iconic summer crop, increase the cool, crisp factor of any salad
12. Kale ­– packed with iron, often shredded to make a simple salad
13. Lettuces – with so many interesting varieties to choose from, you could easily grow a lettuce-only Tower Garden! (And some people do.)
14. Mustard greens – like lettuce, a pretty big family that includes several delicious, spicy varieties
15. Nasturtium – edible flower with a peppery, cress-like flavor, doubles as natural pest control
16. Peas – sweet, snap varieties often added to salads
17. Spinach – perhaps the most popular salad ingredient next to lettuce, very sensitive to heat
    
18. Strawberries – delightful topping if you like sweet salads
19. Sweet peppers – enliven salads with color and crunch
20. Tomatoes – bursting with flavor, cherry tomatoes are a popular variety for salads

When planting strategically, Tower Gardeners can grow many combinations of the crops listed above. Before planting, though, check out each plant’s specific Tower Garden Grow Guides.

How to Arrange a Salad-Lovers Tower Garden

Understanding where to plant certain crops and how to arrange your Tower comes with practice. Typically, a plant’s port position will depend on how it grows and how it’s harvested.

As a rule of thumb, you’ll need to reserve about 2–3 growing ports per family member for lettuces and greens. Below, we’ve provided a rough example of how you can grow the ultimate salad-lover’s garden using the FLEX unit. Feel free to tweak the plan as you see fit, but try maintaining the big-to-small, pyramid-like arrangement for a balanced garden - whether you're growing in the FLEX unit or HOME unit..

(And remember - the HOME unit does well with greens and herbs

Share Your Salad Garden

We love to see how our growers’ gardens turn out. Don’t forget to share your thriving Tower Garden with the community on Facebook or Instagram. Happy growing!