This article is about selecting the greens you choose to harvest from your indoor garden, in order to eat from it regularly and still allow your plants to grow. It’s all about shade, really. Both whether or not a leaf is shaded, or whether or not a leaf is shading another plant.
First, you need a proper tool. My favorite is a pair of sewing scissors. They’re perfect, they are long and durable.
WARNING: The use of a pair of sewing scissors that belong to someone who sews for gardening can be life-threatening! Get your own scissors!
Plants shading themselves
Behold this caraflex cabbage that is starting to make a head. This is a compact variety that has been doing well for me indoors.
It is easy to see that the leaves towards the back of this cabbage are not getting as much light as the leaves in front of them, just because they are behind them. If you were to leave them, which they have not been on this plant, they would blanch and eventually dry. There is no good reason to do that! If you take a few minutes, you can remove and eat these lower leaves.
As you can see, from this image, I’ve eaten quite a few leaves from this particular cabbage plant. I tend to gather leaves from multiple plants and mix them together into a salad, usually only taking one leaf from a plant, unless I am harvesting the whole thing. I simply select the next lowest leaf and snip it off with the scissors. I’d have taken a picture but that would be a three-handed operation because I have to hold the other cabbage leaves forward and operate the scissors.
Let’s see what else needs eating.
Plants shading others
This leaf of Golden Frills mustard has gotten heavy enough to lean over and shade a young Avalanche snow pea. It’s just volunteered for the salad bowl.
Unlike the cabbage, I don’t have to hold the foliage on this one to cut a lower leaf. It’s very easy to harvest.
This Red Giant mustard is throwing a lot of shade on other pockets where seedlings have sprouted and I need to remove a leaf.
It’s not as easy as the Golden Frills variety, but still, it is quite simple to isolate and cut a single leaf using sewing scissors.
The end result today, is a salad of cabbage and two mustards.
