Often times when I prepare a meal in the kitchen, I prefer to have a little salad on the side. This is one of the reasons why we grow a lot of lettuce, spinach, tomatoes etc in our garden. A few years back, we started growing arugula too. This has helped to boost our fresh salad options tenfold.

Arugula (Eruca sativ) also known as rocket is actually not that difficult to grow both indoors or outdoors. Even if you do not have space, you can easily grow some indoors as microgreens. There is two different varieties of wild and common. The later is perfect for cooking whilst the other has a more intense fresh peppery flavor. If you want yours for cooking then stick with the Common one, as it produces more leaves.

Here’s What You’ll Need:

• arugula seeds
• rake
• compost
• organic fertilizer

When planting your seeds directly into the raised garden beds, use the tip of the rake to mark your rows, about 4 inches apart. Sprinkle in your seeds using the packet, and carefully sow them into the rows. Gently cover the rows and then water your garden bed regularly, making sure it doesn’t dry up. The seeds should germinate within 10 to 14 days.

There is no need to thin out the arugula after it germinates. The ideal companion plants are other cool season crops such as lettuce and peas. Keep an eye out for flea beetles they love to feed on the leaves. Within 4 weeks, you should be able to start harvesting. When harvesting you can either pull off individual leaves off each plant, or cut up to a third of the plant or pull out the whole plant towards the end of the season.

You can get more information on the Almanac blog, here…

How To Grow Arugula

You can watch the video below on How to grow Arugula…

You can watch the video below on Arugula – Plant, Care, and Harvest…

You can watch the video below on Transplanting Arugula…

You can watch the video below on Harvesting Arugula…

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