What to Plant for a Harvest in 30 Days

Let's be exact about the promise, because exact is more useful than exciting. Sow the right seeds on day 1, look after them the way this course shows you, and inside 30 days you'll be eating:

• Sprouts from a jar, in the first week
• Pea shoots from a windowsill tray, in the second
• Radishes, whole, from about the third week
• Arugula and mustard greens, cut-and-come-again, from the third and fourth
• Baby lettuce and baby spinach leaves, from the fourth
• Beet, turnip and chard leaves, from the fourth
• Pea tips pinched from the plants outside

That's a bowl with six or seven things in it, all yours, by the end of the month. And the slow crops you sowed on the same day (carrots, pea pods, beets, chives) keep coming after it without you planting anything new. This lesson walks through how the month goes, week by week, in plain ranges rather than exact days, because soil, weather and seed all have their own clocks.

The single most important idea in this course is that you plant your slow crops and your fast crops on the same day. The slow ones don't need more of your attention, they just need more time. If you sow carrots on day 1, they sit quietly in the soil while your radishes race ahead. If you wait to sow carrots until the radishes are done, you've added three weeks to your wait for nothing.

So on day 1, sow all of it, slow crops first so you don't run out of room:

• The patient ones: baby carrots, beets, chives
• The climbers: peas, with a small support to climb
• The middle crops: lettuce, spinach, turnip, pak choi, chard
• The fast crops: radish, arugula, mustard

The full depth and spacing for every crop is in the lesson on sowing everything on day 1.

While the seeds are in the soil, start a jar of sproutsSeeds soaked and rinsed in a jar until they sprout, then eaten whole a few days later. on the kitchen counter and a tray of pea shoots on the windowsill. Those two are your first week.

The first week is when most people lose faith, because a garden bed at day five looks like a garden bed at day one: bare soil. But things are happening underground.

What you'll notice first is a faint green line where the radishes were sown, then the lettuce. The slower seeds are doing the same work out of sight, roots first, shoots second. The lesson on the sprout timeline tells you exactly what to expect for each crop and when, so you never dig up a seed to check on it.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, your sprouts are ready in three to five days. Rinse them, drain them, put them on a sandwich. That's your first harvest, in week one.

Sometime in the second week, the tray of pea shoots on your windowsill is ready to cut: sweet, crunchy, and a real handful of food. That's your second harvest.

Outside, most rows are up, and you have two easy jobs. The first is thinningPulling out some seedlings so the ones left have room to grow. Crowded seedlings stay small.. Seeds are cheap, so you sowed more than you need, and now you pull out the extras so each plant has space. Crowded radishes make leaves and no root. Thin them, and eat the thinnings, they're tiny and delicious.

The second job is watering. Damp, not soggy, never dry. A seedling that dries out for one afternoon can be set back a week. There's a whole lesson on the rhythm.

And sow again: a second short row of radish and arugula, so there's more coming behind the first.

Somewhere in the third week, push a finger into the soil beside a radish plant and feel for a round root the size of a marble or bigger. Pull it. Rinse it. Eat it standing in your growing space. That is the moment this course is built around.

The first arugula and mustard leaves are ready in the same week, and so are the young beet and turnip leaves, which go into a pan rather than a bowl. Every leaf you take from the outside of a plant is replaced from the centre.

The last week of the month is the payoff. The radishes are coming in a few at a time. The lettuce and spinach have leaves the size of your thumb, which is exactly the size a fancy grocery store sells as "baby greens." The arugula and mustard are in full swing. Beet and turnip leaves are ready for the pan. The pea plants are tall enough to pinch a few tips.

Harvest the way the plants want to be harvested: pull radishes whole, and snip the outer leaves of the greens while leaving the centre. That way a lettuce you first pick in week four is still feeding you weeks later.

By day 30 you can put a bowl on the table with radish, arugula, mustard, baby lettuce, baby spinach and pea shoots in it, every bit of it grown from a seed you sowed a month ago. We call it the day 30 salad, and it has its own lesson, because it deserves one.

And if you wait a little longer? Here's where sowing everything on day 1 pays off a second time. Without planting anything new, the slower crops finish in their own time: turnips and pak choi at around six weeks, pea pods and chard at around seven or eight, baby carrots and beets at about eight, and chives, the slowest, at ten or so, after which they come back every spring.

You don't have to wait for any of that to call the month a success. The day 30 salad is the harvest. Everything after it is a bonus from seeds already in the ground.

Here's what to take away from this lesson:

• Sow everything on day 1, slow crops included, and start a jar and a tray the same day
• Week one: sprouts. Week two: pea shoots and thinning. Week three: the first radish. Week four: the salad
• Thin your seedlings and never let them dry out
• Sow a little radish and arugula every two weeks
• The slow crops finish on their own after the month, a bonus, not a wait

The one thing that can sink this plan is timing. Sow these crops in the heat of high summer and they'll bolt or refuse to sprout. Sow them in cool weather and they fly. But first, the fastest food of all: microgreens.