© Janet Davis
Tired of paying grocery store price for imported lettuce? Want a little more variety in your salad bowl? Why not grow your own salad?
Easy
to manage, even in small gardens or on sunny to lightly-shaded apartment balconies,
salad greens are the perfect cool-weather crop. In fact, hot summer weather makes them “bolt” or flower, which
causes the leaves to become bitter-tasting.
Salad greens thrive in large clay pots or those inexpensive wooden
half-barrels you can find at the beginning of the season at most garden
centers. They also make lovely edgings
for a flower border, patio or pathway and can be sown as fillers among spring
bulbs and emerging summer perennials.
At the Chicago Botanic Garden, I even saw oakleaf lettuce growing in
hanging baskets.
By salad greens, I mean anything with an edible leaf. Obviously that refers to lettuce and spinach, but It can also include the trendy mesclun mixes which are easy to grow from seed and combine red and green leaf lettuces with things like arugula or rocket, chervil, watercress, beet greens, radicchio, curly endive and oriental greens.
As for lettuce, there’s never been a wider selection of cultivars. “Head” types include crispheads such as Iceberg and bolt-resistant Summertime. Butterhead lettuces have smooth, buttery leaves and include Buttercrunch, Nevada, White Boston and dwarf Tom Thumb. Then there are the leaf lettuces which tolerate more summer heat than head lettuces. Cos or romaine types aperfect for Caesar sald include Olga and Plato. Then there are the loose-leaf lettuces such as Oakleaf, Ruby Red, Simpson Elite, Red Sails, Tango, Monet and Grand Rapids.
Although head lettuce matures in 40-80 days, depending on the type, you don’t have to wait until heads form to begin picking the young, succulent leaves. And as for mesclun, the whole idea is to harvest the eaves when they are young and full of flavor (but not yet bitter) by snipping them just above the soil line, after which new leaves will emerge. That’s why mesclun is called a “cut and come again” crop.
Lettuce
can be seed outside in early spring as soon as the ground can be worked. Cultivate the soil with a spade or garden
fork to a depth of 12-18 inches (30-45 cm).
If your soil is heavy and clay-like, add generous amounts of damp peat
moss, leaf mould or compost. If it also
drains poorly, add sand, working all of that in very well. As with all crops grown for their leaves,
it’s hard to give lettuce and spinach too much nitrogen, so work a generous
amount of aged manure into the top few inches of soil. If the soil seems dry, water it well before
sowing seed.
Head lettuce requires more space to develop than leaf lettuce and much greater spacing than mesclun, which will be harvested early. Check your seed packages for spacing. lettuce seed should be covered very lightly with soil; some varieties require light to germinate. Spinach is planted about ˝ inch deep.
Although lettuce will tolerate a very light frost, gardeners anxious to rush the season can protect against dipping night temperatures by growing seedlings under a gauzy fabric row cover or garden blanket which can be rolled back during the day. Row covers can “float”, meaning they rest lightly on the tops of plants, or they can be fastened over wire hoops. Later in spring, when temperatures become too warm for leaf crops, row covers can be used to shade the plants and extend their lives somewhat. They also keep out certain flying insects which lay their eggs in vegetable crops.
Row covers and garden blankets are available at garden centers and seed houses and through mail-order and online sources such as Lee Valley Tools.
Adapted from a column that was published originally in the Toronto Sun