It's time to fill my beds again, and I'm going for fast-growing leafy greens!

Bad weather makes me feel slightly demotivated to go into the garden, but it always feels good afterwards. A nice sense of accomplishment that I can carry with me for the rest of the day. The weather has been just awful lately, with lots of strong winds and rain. But I had already been putting off planting my fast-growing leafy greens for a while now, so I decided to take the bull by the horns and went outside at 6:30 in the morning.

This is my own little cottage garden, right outside the house I'm using as an office space. I grow both vegetables and flowers in this spot!

Read more: How to grow baby spinach

I harvested my garlic, and now it's time to put some fast-growing leafy greens in this bed!

More about cottage gardens: A beautiful Swedish cottage garden

The bed I'm using for my fast-growing leafy greens was made from scratch last year. I decided to grow lima beans and cucumbers here in summer, and then garlic in October. You can learn more about how I planted the garlic in the video below. The garlic has been growing so nicely in this bed and I got to harvest around 60 of them this year! I'm going to post a video of how I harvest my garlic soon too.

Fast-growing leafy greens

I want to keep harvesting fresh vegetables in late summer and fall too, so it's time to start adding some fast-growing leafy greens to the mix! Hopefully, it won't get much colder than this in the near future. One potential problem with planting in summer is that the plants might dry out if we don't make sure to water properly. We should be fine as long as we get a little rain now and then though!

After harvesting the garlic, I just even out the soil and add two watering cans of comfrey tea fertilizer to give the soil an extra boost.

I made the bed with grass sod I turned upside down, and then added a layer of grass clippings on top. Then I just flattened the soil a little after harvesting the garlic.

I'm going to fertilize my fast-growing leafy greens with comfrey tea.

I'm putting a nice mix of vegetables in this bed. Parsley, a few lettuce varieties, kohlrabi, beets (grown for the leaves), chicory and bok choy. I also broadcast-sow lamb's lettuce between the plants, to really utilize the entire space.

Read more: 10 Cabbage varieties and how to use them

Where are the plants?

One of my followers on Instagram wrote to me and asked where I keep all my plants. This year, I decided to put a lot of energy into creating beds and growing new plants. But I didn't really think much about organizing them. I dream about making a large bench for them in a sheltered spot, but I'm not there yet. I don't have that much space to do it either, since the garden is quite small and windy. So instead, I put my plants on top of the gravel right next to a bushy plant and the house wall. This area is at least partly shaded. Some of my plants seem to be extra attractive to slugs. I put these on top of concrete stools to keep them safe. We keep my plants in my large kitchen garden on a table in shade.

Read more: Lamb's lettuce – The best greens of the season

I put all of my plants on top of the bed before planting them, so that I know where to put them. Fast-growing leafy greens and many other vegetables are going to grow here.

The lettuces come from my own seed collection called Sow all year round. I started the seeds in a plug tray and now I have lovely little plants that I can put in my beds.

The bed is ready! I left the cottage during the day and scattered plenty of slug pellets around the bed. I don't want it to be completely ruined when I come home of course!

Not too late!

If you don't grow yourself, it might look a bit strange that some parts of my garden are so lush and others look more or less empty. But this is actually something to strive for. The plants are in different stages of development and I move them around as they grow. This actually helps me prolong the season.

It's not too late to sow new vegetables in plug trays and troughs and plant them outside later. There are plenty of fast-growing leafy greens out there you can try!
/Sara Bäckmo