BD Now! Podcast Episode 026, Peter Burke, Author of "The Year Around Indoor Salad Garden"

Peter Burke has been teaching garden classes since 2006, when he started presenting workshops on Indoor Salad Gardening, Square Foot Gardening, Extending the Garden Season, and many more techniques that empower gardeners. He also started the dailygardener.com website to support the need for specialized seeds for Indoor Salad Gardening. Peter lives and gardens in Calais, Vermont, with his family. His book is on Chelsea Green. It's called: Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening: How to Grow Nutrient-Dense, Soil-Sprouted Greens This book is an inviting guide for both !rst-time and experienced gardeners in rural and urban environments. No matter what size home you live in, there’s room for a garden of soil sprouts. In fact, Burke has grown up to six pounds of greens per day using just the windowsills in his kitchen and mudroom. Soil sprouts are also an engaging project for kids and can be used in the classroom to teach students basic educational concepts like math and science. Year-Round Indoor Salad Gardening offers detailed step-by-step instructions to mastering Burke’s method (hint: you can’t mess this up), including tools and accessories to have on hand, seeds and greens varieties, soil and compost, trays and planters, shelving, harvest and storage, recipes, scaling up to serve local markets, and much more. As we look to become more sustainable and self-sufficient, Burke believes this is one small step we can all make and be rewarded for the effort. Give soil sprouts a try and discover the fun and productive world of indoor salad gardening. Forget about grow lights and heat lamps. Soil sprouts are the easiest and most productive way to grow salad greens “ all year long. ” Growing “Soil Sprouts”—Burke’s own descriptive term for sprouted seeds grown in soil as opposed to in jars—employs a method that encourages a long stem without expansive roots, and provides delicious salad greens in less than 10 days. Of all the ways to grow immature greens, soil sprouts are the easiest and most productive technique requiring the least amount of work. The secret: start them in the dark. The result: healthy, homegrown salad greens at a fraction of the cost of buying them at the market.