How to grow arugula indoors

Arugula (Eruca sativa) is a leafy-green annual commonly grown as a salad green. Although it’s easily grown throughout the United States as a cool-season crop in outdoor gardens, it also can be grown indoors year round for harvest as a leafy green or as microgreens.

Although arugula is typically considered a fall vegetable, it can be seeded all year long with a little bit of protection from extreme cold or heat. Matter of fact, you can plant arugula every few weeks year–round to enjoy young tender leaves anytime.

Arugula will grow back once cut, so don’t pull the stems. Remember, arugula bolts (goes to flower) quickly in the heat. If this happens, strip the stem of its leaves and use both the leaves and flowers in your salads.

Like many vegetables, arugula needs regular watering for healthy, consistent growth and optimal flavor. Keep the soil consistently moist, watering as soon as the top 1 inch of soil feels dry. In dry climates, this may mean watering every morning.

Because arugula plants are relatively small and have compact root systems, you can plant them close together, or even in a pot. As leafy greens they have less need for full sun and will even grow in partial shade or where tall plants create shade.

Arugula flower buds and flowers are edible, and the petals are particularly good when snipped into summer salads. I pull up or turn under bolted arugula plants in spring, leaving behind at least one pair of plants to produce seeds for my fall crop.

How to harvest arugula without killing the plant. If you want to harvest baby arugula or keep your plants alive as long as possible, the best way to harvest is to pick individual leaves or practice “cut and come again” harvesting.

Planting trap crops, such as radishes, can deter pests away from your arugula. On the flipside, you can sow plants like yarrow and marigold to attract beneficial insects, such as predatory wasps and ladybugs to help control populations on unwanted insects.

Pinch or cut the outer leaves with scissors just above the soil. You can cut up to one-third of the outer leaves at once or harvest a few leaves at a time. If you want to enjoy various flavor intensities, cut only smaller outer leaves, and leave the inner leaves to mature and develop a stronger flavor.

There are three ways to harvest arugula: graze, cut, or pull. Grazing means pinching a couple of leaves off the plants, leaving the rest to grow. You can do this early in the season, as soon as the leaves are a couple of inches long. Later, you can cut up to 1/3 of the plant with a shears.

When Arugula Bolts

It’s the strongest-flavored rocket of all. If your plant has really gone wild and is growing leaves off a thick, woody stalk, don’t eat that part. Just pluck the leaves off the stalk, and use them in that arugula pesto. You can even harvest arugula flowers.

Spinach leaves are heavier, thicker, and more dense than arugula leaves. The calorie, protein, and fiber content of both vegetables is similar, but the vitamins and minerals tip the scale towards spinach — except for calcium. Spinach has more vitamin A, C, K, folate, potassium, magnesium, manganese, and iron.

There are a few reasons why you might feel that arugula tastes like dirt. One might be that you simply haven’t eaten arugula when it’s at its best, which is within a few days of being harvested. The other reason is that you’re just genetically predisposed to not enjoy arugula’s flavor profile.

Tips for Eating or Cooking:

Eating arugula raw will likely provide your body with more of the healthy isothiocyanates than eating cooked arugula. However, by eating lightly cooked arugula, your body will absorb more of certain nutrients and carotenoids than when it is raw.

Arugula is an excellent source of vitamin K and a good source of vitamin A. Vitamin K assists with bone building and blood clotting.

Liver Protection

Arugula is rich in chlorophyll, which can help to prevent liver and DNA damage from aflatoxins, a family of toxins produced by certain fungi that are found on agricultural crops such as corn, peanuts, cottonseed and tree nuts. They are associated to a higher risk for liver cancer.

Outside of their ideal growing season, you’ll see the prices of the crop in question creeping up. That’s because it’s harder to continue growing the plant outside of its growing season. More effort means more money, typically.

Did you know that arugula has more calcium and zinc than kale? It’s also nutritionally equal to kale in iron and magnesium and has fewer carbohydrates and naturally occurring sugars. The good news is we’d never want to replace kale entirely with arugula anyway — just eat more of both.