What better time of year to try your hand at a growing spring mix than spring?
Spring mix is an excellent hydroponic starter crop. It grows abundantly and tends to have more airflow through it than lettuce.
You’ll get a variety of textures and colors that look beautiful on a plate.
Spring mix can be grown from premixed seed, or you can choose exactly which varieties are in high demand and mix the produce after harvesting. There are brassica mixes that stay fresh and crisp even longer than lettuce.
We typically grow the Cheap Frills mix from Johnny’s Seeds, it’s one of our favorites here at ZipGrow. Cheap Frills is a brassica mix that’s a little spicy, it includes red and green mustard, mizuna, and tatsoi; Brassica mixes are generally more resilient to temperature and humidity swings, whereas lettuce can be more likely to wilt. Other varieties we recommend (from the same supplier, Johnny’s Seeds) include Five Star, Rouge D’Hiver, Garrison, Deer Tongue, and Celinet.
Overall spring mix has a rapid turnaround rate and will give you a high volume per square footage of ZipGrow Tower space. If you grow commercially, spring mix can demand a higher retail price than head lettuce.
Step by step to spring mix success
Seeding
Germination
When you finish seeding, put the trays inside a germination chamber. If you don’t have one, humidity domes work great as an alternative. The plants need high humidity to germinate, but as soon as they pop, you will want to get them into a seedling station and under lights as quickly as possible.
Seedlings need moisture to germinate, then light to grow.
Seedling station
Once they are in your seedling station, it takes about two weeks until they are ready to transplant.
The signs you are looking for proper are root penetration.
Once you’re ready to put your seedlings in the ZipGrow Tower, make sure the roots are touching the wicking strip; this allows for an even distribution of water throughout your Towers.
Transplanting & growing
When it comes to transplanting, spring mix is a crop you can plant very densely, so you can place plugs about an inch apart, which is around 40 plugs per 8 ft Tower.
Note that high-density planting means you need to be extra diligent about cleanliness and monitoring crops.
Optimal growing conditions for spring mix are:
- EC 1.0 - 1.4
- Ph 5.5 - 6.5
- Light 14-18 hours
- Temperature 20 - 22 °C
- Relative humidity 65%
Harvesting
The mix will be ready to harvest around 3-4 weeks after transplanting into the Towers.
You can generally do up to three harvests from the same crop of Spring Mix and the second harvest would be two weeks from the original harvest. In a commercial operation, we recommend doing a single harvest, as it’s the simplest way, and yields the highest quality crops.
