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A salad garden is dedicated to anything you’d toss in a salad—leafy greens like lettuce and spinach, plus superfood veggie like kale. Today, we’re focusing on cool-season, spring salad materials. Save money at the grocery store and waste less produce by growing your own salad greens at home. Leafy green vegetables and herbs are easy to grow and take up such little space that you can grow them nearly anywhere! Plus, if you have fresh greens at home, you’ll be more likely to make healthy food decisions since salad greens naturally contain Vitamin A, Vitamin C, beta-carotene, calcium, folate, fiber, and other nutrients.

How to grow a salad garden
Salad gardens are about as low maintenance as they come—plant, water, cut, eat, and repeat!

1. Choose a location
First, choose a location for your salad garden. Leafy greens tend to be compact plants with shallow roots, so you can grow them just about anywhere. Grow a salad garden in a raised bed, a container on your porch, or even a window box—wherever you will be most likely to check on your greens and harvest them.
Leafy greens don’t need much maintenance other than regular watering and occasional weeding, but greens grow quickly, and your salad garden will fare better if you remember to harvest them.

2. Start salad greens early
We have a good selection of lettuce and kale plants at MountainRose Vineyards’ Greenhouse. Lettuce, kale, and spinach are all frost-hardy, cool-season crops that thrive in the cooler temperatures of spring and fall. These plants struggle when summer temperatures soar, and the soil dries out, so get them in the ground early to get several harvests before the weather changes! Sow your greens now- (between two and four weeks before your average last frost.) Sow another succession of leafy greens in late summer to have several harvests before the onset of winter.

3. Direct sow or start seeds indoors
Salad greens are very forgiving—you can usually direct sow seeds in the ground or start them indoors, depending on your personal preference and ability. To get a head start in spring, buy your plants. If you sow seeds outdoors, it’s a good idea to cover them until they germinate. The added protection also helps keep seeds from being washed away by water or wind or eaten by birds and other animals.

Check the seed packet for recommendations on how deep and how far apart to sow specific seeds. As for spacing, plant seeds further apart if you want larger plants, or you can place seeds closer together if you plan to harvest younger leaves more frequently. At MountainRose we usually plant lettuce 8 to 12 inches apart, but a little closer in pots.

4. Plan for sunlight and moisture requirements
There’s an old gardening adage: Full sun for roots and fruits, partial shade for leaves. Fruiting and rooting plants need more sun to be able to photosynthesize more sugars into carbohydrate-rich roots and fruit. Leafy green vegetables can typically tolerate some partial shade since the plants are more focused on vegetative growth than fruiting, especially as the weather warms.

Salad greens do best when they receive between one and one and a half inches of rain per week, just a little more than average garden. Try to maintain a consistent watering schedule especially if plants are in pots!
What to include in your salad garden

When you grow your own salad garden, you can cater your garden to your tastes and preferences! The options are endless: you can grow everything from chives to lettuce in your salad garden. Some suggestions are lettuces, including gourmet blends, spinach, Asian greens such as Bok choi, kale, herbs like basil in pots, chives, parsley, and even onions. A few edible flowers such as pansies, nasturtiums, Mexican marigolds and chive blooms are great as well.

Growing your own salad garden can be a fun and rewarding experience and is a great way to take back your personal health! Whether you’re looking to save money, eat healthier, or live more sustainably, growing your own salad garden is a great way to achieve your goals. What are you waiting for? Get out there and start gardening. Check us out at MountainRose Vineyards if you need plants or help getting started!

~Edited from a Seeds n Such post

We are very pleased to announce that our Cab Franc drought is over! For our Cabernet Franc fans, this has been a long wait and we are excited for you to try this vintage. Our soft dry red Cab has a wonderful red raspberry aroma with hints of green pepper and a pleasing mouthfeel, a ‘hug for your mouth’ as we say!

Please call for tickets and plan to join us Saturday, April 8th for “A Day with Cabernet” where you will enjoy a tasting, parings and oral history of this fine wine with owner Suzanne Lawson! 276.328.2013

Thank you for spreading the word, far and wide, that this tremendous Virginia favorite has returned to MountainRose! We can’t wait to share this classic with you! Cheers!

MountainRose Vineyards competed in the 17th Atlantic Seaboard Wine Competition this year, winning three honors.
Among over 400 entries, the winery took Silver with Dorchester Red and Bear Creek Hard Cider, as well as a Bronze Medal for Blair White.

This is the second entry at this event for MountainRose, with wins for both Kelliokee Sparkling White (Gold) and Bear Creek Hard Cider (Bronze) in 2018.

We’ve had a much better year at MountainRose and we are THANKFUL, especially for our great customers and friends! We harvested about 25 tons of grapes compared to only 8 tons in 2020.

We will bottle Sweet MountainRose soon and hope to have some more old favorites back by year’s end, like Persephone. We also have our fingers crossed for the return of Cab Franc in 2022!

Be sure to mark your calendar for our Annual Small Business Saturday Open House on November 27th. Special Events are back this month as well with multiple Wreath Workshops and Sip N Paint classes. Call to register soon! 276.328.2013

Cheers to a wonderful holiday season ahead!

Check out this seeder David made for the 1000s of cabbage and broccoli plants we are growing! We are growing more green grapevines this year, mostly for us, but some for other folks as well. As a result, we have opened up another greenhouse. We are also growing vegetables for other folks as well.

We still have some greenhouse bench space available so if you want more than 25 of something; grapevines, vegetables or flowers, let us know right away and we might be able to grow for you as well! We will begin selling tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, flowers and more later in the spring.

Stay tuned and see what’s on the bloom, at MountainRose Vineyards!

The sap of our maple trees looks and tastes like water with a hint of sweetness. This sap only flows in late winter. The ideal weather has nights in the 20s and days warming up to the 40s. Different types of maples have different amounts of sugar. Some of our maple sap averages about 1 gallon of syrup per 60 gallons of sap or less. We collect the sap through plastic tubing and boil in an open pan. When the sap is almost ready, we bring inside and finish in a pot. The syrup is then strained and bottled at 180 degrees F.

Maple syrup has about 50 calories per tablespoon with significant amount of minerals, specifically calcium, potassium, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, and iron. There are also trace amounts of vitamins; B2 (riboflavin), B5 (pantothenic acid), niacin, and folic acid- all with no fat and no cholesterol.

Come and tour to see our production and be sure to join us for our Maple Fest and Pancake Breakfast on the first Saturday in March! We can’t wait to share this delicious treat with you!