How to Plant, Grow, and Harvest Mesclun

When we are buying bags of this from the store for our salads, we refer to this as "weeds" or "salad weeds." There are several seed mixes available on the market. We like Lettuce Baby Mesclun Gourmet Certified Organic Heirloom Seeds from Botanical Interests. But there are plenty of others. By the way, we still call them "weeds."

The following is an excerpt from Pat Welsh's Southern California Organic Gardening (3rd Edition): Month by Month, a book which we highly recommend to our neighbors here in Southern California.


"Mesclun" (pronounced mess-cloon) is the colloquial term for "mixture" in Provence and refers to mixtures of young lettuces and salad greens. Traditional Provencal mescluns contain chervil, arugula, lettuce, and endive in precise proportions. American mescluns and those from northern France include a wide selection of exotic greens and even edible flowers.

• Purchase ready-made mesclun mixes or individual packages of salad greens for making your own mix. Choices include lettuces, arugula, endives, mustards, purslane, chicory, cresses, parsleys, fennel, escarole, mache (lamb's lettuce), miner's lettuce (Claytonia, perfoliata, Montia perfoliata), and others. (Shepherd's Garden Seeds and The Cook's Garden carry seeds. Addresses are listed on page 307.)
• Prepare a wide row in full sun. Or plant in a raised bed, half barrel with holes drilled in the bottom, or pots. Dig wide rows or raised beds deeply, mix in a 4-inch-thick layer of well-aged compost or nitrolized soil amendment. Apply organic fertilizer recommended for vegetables according to package directions, work this into the top 6 inches of ground, and rake smooth. For barrels, cover each drainage hole with a piece of broken crockery and fill with potting soil appropriate for vegetables. Mix in 1 gallon of commercial bagged chicken manure and an organic vegetable fertilizer according to package directions. Fill other containers •with the same mix. Water seedbeds and containers deeply and let the ground settle overnight.
• Divide the seeds into two or three batches so that you can plant successive crops. (Store remaining seeds in a cool, dry place.) Thinly broadcast the first planting of seeds in a block and rake gently into the ground, or cover seeds lightly by sprinkling the ground with fine compost or potting soil. Pat down.
• Some greens, including mustards, kale, chicories, and certain lettuces, grow larger and more vigorously than others. Plant these separately so you can harvest some when they are young to add to mesclun and let others grow larger for use in salads and other dishes.
• Sprinkle the bed and bare areas surrounding the bed with a bait labeled for the control of slugs, snails, and cutworms in the vegetable garden. Or use organic controls (as described on page 91). Optional step: Cover the seeded area with floating row cover, such as Reemay, available by sheet or roll at garden centers or through mailorder catalogs. Peg down the edges to protect from wind and birds, or build a lightweight, reusable wooden frame the size of the seeded area. (Use a staple gun to attach the floating row cover to this frame.) Remove row cover when plants are 1 or 2 inches high.
• Sprinkle daily or twice daily to keep seed moist. Water regularly by drip system, overhead watering, or hand-watering. Continue to control slugs and snails.
• Begin harvesting by thinning to package directions (pulling up whole plants) when they are 2 to 3 inches tall. When the plants are up 5 or 6 inches, begin regular harvesting by shearing the greens 1 inch above the roots; the plants will regrow and you can continue harvesting for several weeks. Or, for slightly larger plants, 5 to 6 inches tall, harvest by picking individual leaves from the outside edges of plants.
• Feed the bed once a week with a balanced liquid fertilizer diluted according to package directions. Or, alternatively, apply dry organic fertilizers onto the ground around the plants after harvesting and before rain. When rains aren't adequate, wash the fertilizer into the ground by watering overhead.
• Plant another patch for future harvests. Meanwhile, your first seeding of mesclun will provide salads for several weeks.

10 Reasons to Raise Chickens

We enjoy our chickens very much. Here are some of the reasons why (excerpted from My Pet Chicken Handbook: Sensible Advice and Savvy Answers for Raising Backyard Chickens:

Chickens make great pets. They have personality galore, and they're extraordinarily easy to care for. They're bright, funny, quirky, friendly, loving little balls of feathers-and they're entertaining, too. When you have a flock, you'll find they have their own friends, their own cliques, their own favorite nests. Chickens come in such an array of colors, patterns, shapes, and sizes that some of them look more like exotic tropical birds-or even alien life-forms-than farm animals.

Keeping chickens is a lifestyle choice. Having chickens helps fulfill a positive, back-to-the-farm way of living that's about becoming more sustainable. It's also a way to celebrate local, slow food, and reestablish a constructive connection with your neighbors and your neighborhood.

Raising chickens allows you to have more control over the type of food you put on your table. You want organic? You want non-GMO? You want cruelty-free? These choices are all yours to make when raising your chickens.

Chickens will eat your table scraps and convert them into eggs on the one hand, and fertilizer on the other. If you grow vegetables or flowers, you'll find that composted chicken manure is great for your home garden, adding organic matter and nutrients to the soil. Plus, chicken manure from layers tends to be relatively high in calcium, which is helpful for plants, warding off blossom-end rot on tomatoes, for example.


Chickens will cut down on the number of insects in your yard. Anywhere chickens are allowed to forage, they'll snap up spiders, ticks, beetles, grubs, worms, grasshoppers, and more. They love to dig through lawn clippings and yard waste, too.

The eggs from hens raised with access to your backyard will be tastier and more nutritious! Research shows they're not only higher in omega-3s, beta-carotene, and vitamins A, D, and E, but they're lower in cholesterol and saturated fat. They taste better, too. It's something you can see: All that extra nutrition gives backyard eggs a dark orange yolk-not the pale yellow color you see in store-bought eggs.

You'll be eating really fresh eggs—sometimes just minutes old-as opposed to the eggs you get in a grocery store, which can be 6 weeks old or more.

You'll be giving your children positive values. Just as with other pets, keeping chickens can help kids learn about responsibility. But because chickens give back in such a tangible way-eggs!-your kids can also learn about reciprocity and how the care they provide impacts their pets directly. Once they taste the eggs, they'll also come to learn that store-bought isn't always better. Some things are worth doing yourself.

You'll have control over how humanely your wonderful egg producers are treated—and how healthy and clean their environment is.

Chickens are so easy to care for. No walking, no pooper-scoopers, no grooming, no boarding when you go away; they won't scratch up your furniture or chew your favorite slippers.

Shade Tolerant Veggies and Herbs

If you have a spot in your yard that doesn't get much sun, you could try growing the following veggies there:

• Lettuce
• Arugula
• Spinach
• Broccoli *
• Green onions
• Cabbage *
• Parsley
• Sorrel
• Garlic
• Mint
• Collards
• Endive
• Cress
• Cauliflower *
• Peas *
• Currants
• Pak Choy
• Beets *
• Kohlrabi *
• Brussels Sprouts
• Mustard greens
• Thyme
• Coriander
• Tarragon
• Radishes
• Cardamom
• Potatoes *
• Rhubarb *
• Swiss Chard
• Kale
• Turnips *
• Carrots *
• Sweet potatoes and yams *
• Gooseberries
• Cilantro
• Dill
• Lemon Balm
• Strawberries *
• Beans *
• Blackberries and raspberries *

These need about 4 hours of direct sun each day (some can get by with even less) as apposed to eight hours for the sun-loving plants. Even sun-loving crops will tolerate light shade, but they'll provide a smaller harvest. These are noted below with an asterisk (*).

Take Control of Your Future

Our Newest Additions

First time in the water under mama's watchful eye.

Our brown Muscovy duck brought her babies out of the nest today. There are 27 little balls of fluff!

Anecdotal evidence and our experience indicate that Muscovies are usually better mothers than other ducks. Many say it's best to keep the drakes separate from the ducklings because they may sometimes unintentionally trample ducklings. Be that as it may, our Muscovy drake, Socks, is a great dad.

This brood, however, has been adopted by our Pilgrim gander Westley. His mate, Buttercup, died last year, so he has been rather lonely this spring. Westley has been nervously standing guard over this brood all morning. Poor guy, we need to find him another Buttercup.

Westley helping with the chores --
 "As you wish."

We supplement our ducklings with a chick starter After a few weeks, the ducklings can be switched to a chicken grower feed, although ours will have access to all the tender grass and weeds they want. At about 4 months they'll be ready to harvest, especially if we supplement with a grower feed.

Muscovies are excellent livestock for backyard homesteading, mini-farming purposes.

Buttercup, a Pilgrim goose

While they are often referred to as a duck, they aren't related to the Mallard like the other domestic duck breeds. They have some characteristics of ducks, but are also similar to geese. They don't take to deep water like ducks, though they enjoy having plenty of water to wash in. Like other waterfowl they need water deep enough to submerge their nostrils and eyes to keep them clean. Like ducks, they like to mix their food with water--what a mess in the brooder pens. Muscovies are South American birds that like to roost in trees at night, and have fairly sharp claws that enable them to do so. They're not strong flyers, but they have no trouble clearing our five- and six-foot fences, if we don't remove the flight feathers from one wing.

One thing is for certain, Muscovies are much quieter than either our ducks or our geese. In fact they make no sound except for a rare, short "peep" and a warning "hiss." This is a good animal to have in a close neighborhood. Muscovy drakes weigh up to about 15 pounds and ducks weigh about half of that. They come in a variety of colors, and in our experience color of the offspring is not dependent on the color of the parents.

Muscovies have less fat than Mallard-type ducks. The breast on a Muscovy is large and almost fat-free. We think it tastes very much like beef. In fact, cooked properly and served with a little horseradish sauce, it is reminiscent of prime rib. The darker meat of the Muscovy tastes more like chicken. (Doesn't everything taste more or less like chicken?)

April Garden Tasks

• Give flowers and vegetables a foliar feeding of liquid seaweed or compost tea; spray the liquid nutrients on foliage early in the day before it gets too hot.
• Plant black-eyed, purple hull and crowder peas, okra, peanuts, sweet potatoes, squash, melons, cucumbers, and corn—all can withstand the heat that will arrive in less than 2 months.
• Keep planting basil—it loves the warm weather.
• Keep adding kitchen scraps and grass clippings to your compost pile.
• Replenish your mulch!
• If slugs and snails are decimating your plants, collect them in the evening, when you're most likely to spot them.
• Plant pumpkins, summer squash, melons, and other vegetables that thrive in heat.
• Every 2 weeks from now until late summer, plant small blocks of bush beans and sweet corn to extend the harvest until frost.
• Thin fruits on fruit trees to increase their size and keep branches from breaking.
• Sow seeds of nasturtiums, marigolds, portulaca, amaranthus, salvias, vinca (Catharanthus roseus), sunflowers, and zinnias.
• Attract beneficial insects to your garden: provide them with their chosen  foods and habitats. Umbelliferae family members such as anise, carrot, caraway, coriander, dill, fennel and parsley, with many tiny flowers arranged in tight umbels, and those in the Asteraceae (Compositae) family, such as black-eyed Susan, goldenrod, and strawflower, with a central disc flowers surrounded by many ray petals, attract many beneficials. Mustard flowers attract lacewings that control aphids and parasitic wasps that keep down cabbage caterpillars and coddling moths.

Fertilizer Facts

 In our Southern California gardens, March is a great time to fertilize. Plants that are beginning to grow can really use the boost in nutrients: Lawns turn greener. Flowers almost immediately bloom. Veggies grow quickly. Fruit trees set more fruit. Citrus green up and look happy.

To many, especially to those new to gardening, figuring out fertilizers can be a challenge. There are so many different kinds on the market: General purpose, multipurpose,  specialty fertilizers for lawns, shrubs, flowers, for citrus, acid-loving plants, tomatoes, azaleas, and so on--add to this the choices of slow-release, quick release, organic, non-organic, granules, liquids, soluble powders, spikes, stakes, beads, gels, concentrates...yikes! So many choices. We just want to fertilize our plants.

By law, the fertilizer label must show the percentage of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P; phosphoric acid), and potassium (K; potash). These percentages are listed in order (N-P-K) on the label in large numbers, such as 10-10-10, or 12-4-2. So a 5 pound bag of a leading brand's 24-8-16 fertilizer will deliver 1.2 pounds of nitrogen (24% of 5), 0.4 pounds of phosphorus (8% of 5), and 0.8 pounds of potassium to your garden soil. So that's 2.5 pounds of N, P, and K -- what is the rest of the stuff in the bag? Basically, it is filler, so figure the cost per pound of nitrogen when choosing your store-bought fertilizer.  For example, suppose five pounds of 10-10-10 bag and a 12-4-2 fertilizer costs the same. The 12-4-2 is a better buy, especially if you are adding the fertilizer to the surface of your garden soil (more on this below).

There is persistent garden folklore that says that nitrogen encourages green growth, while phosphorus and potassium encourage flowering and fruit growth. The fact is that all three are necessary for all growth. Also, there are at least a couple dozen other minerals that are necessary in trace amounts for healthy plant growth.

Thirty years ago, Sunset magazine asked researchers at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo to test various fertilizer formulas on various plants. It turns out that in California's soils, only nitrogen makes a difference in the size and amount of fruit.

Because of the alkalinity of our soil, phosphorus and potassium when added from above the ground do not migrate to the root zone of most plants. Nitrogen, however, moves quite easily with rain and irrigation. Therefore, nitrogen needs to be added a few to perhaps several times during the growing season (depending on rain and watering practices). Phosphorus and potassium should be added at planting time in the bottom of the planting hole, or dug deeply in to the garden bed.

Since potting soil often contains little or no natural soil, plants in containers are more dependent on a balanced fertilizer providing all three main minerals, N-P-K, along with other minerals, added throughout the growing season.


 All that having been said, here is what we do:

First of all, we don't use chemical fertilizers--only organic. We prefer to use our own homemade compost. 

At planting time we add a bit of 10-10-10 or 5-5-5 organic fertilizer (usually this one) and/or compost. We also add trace minerals in the form of Sea-90 at planting time and once during the growing season.

During the growing season we add compost around the plants and mix it into the top layer of soil. For extra nitrogen, we add coffee grounds (N-P-K: 2.0 - 0.3 - 0.3) or tea grounds (4.0 - 0.6 - 0.4). You could instead add blood meal (15 - 1.3 - 0.7) which is a quick release fertilizer or cotton seed meal (7 - 2.5 - 1.5) which releases over time. Cotton seed meal offers us the added benefit of acidifying our alkaline soil, perhaps helping P and K to migrate down into the root zone more effectively.

We also rotate our crops. Legumes (peas, beans, clover) fix nitrogen in the soil as they grow and release more of it into the soil as they decompose, so we plant these in each raised bed every three years or so.

Here is the bottom line from the Sunset article: Since phosphorus, potassium and micro nutrients don't need to be added to the soil frequently, the only element we need to provide with regular fertilizing is nitrogen. For us that means getting the best deal on high-nitrogen fertilizers. We have a constant supply of coffee and tea grounds, and grass clippings, and compost, all for free! Pretty good deal. If you have to buy your fertilizer, get the most nitrogen for the money and follow the label directions for application rates and frequency--too much nitrogen at one time can "burn" your plants.

Additional resource:
52 Weeks in the California Garden by Robert Smaus, pp.137-139.