Grow your own salad!

This article was first published in the May 2012 issue of the Mountain Chronicle

Hey folks, glad to be growing full steam ahead. After last years extended winter it is nice to be full swing into the growing season a little bit earlier than usual. While we are not passed the average last frost date it seems that we have passed that threshold. I could be wrong but I’m taking my chances by planting some frost sensitive plants a bit early. Tomatoes, peppers, beans, corn and potatoes just to name a few. It’s a joy to grow your own food and it’s hard to get anything better than what you pick out of your garden.
This month I would like to inspire you all to grow your own salad, or at least part of it. I recently purchased the book Salad Leaves for All Seasons by Charles Dowding to learn a little bit more about growing salad. I’ve grown my own salad mix for several years and over the years I’ve incorporated more and more into them. The beauty of salad is that there are a lot of things that can go into a salad. So this gives you the option of trialing a bunch of different things and growing what you like. Essentially customizing your salad. The flavors we use in salads come in many different forms from mild and sweet, bitter, mustard or spicy and everything in between. With all of the options available you can refine what you grow according to your palette.
Let’s start with some basics. Lettuce is a great place to start. It comes in many different shapes and colors. It is mostly mild and sweet but can become slightly bitter to really bitter depending on if it has started flowering or if the weather becomes too hot. Lettuce does well in milder seasons. When it is hotter out you can use shade cloth or plant it in shadier areas. You can grow whole heads of lettuce but you can also do a cut and come again harvest for younger leaves and an extended harvest. I prefer the latter method. Other good bases include mustard, Swiss chard, kale, spinach and Malabar spinach. While mustard greens can be spicy mustard greens such as mizuna are more sweet than spicy and have a nice succulent crunch in the stems. They can also be harvested as a cut and come again crop. You can keep cutting the flowering stems back as far as they are tender to prolong the harvest. The yellow flowers add nice color to a salad mix. Mustard greens thrive in cool seasons and will even grow well with intermittent frosts. Kale is a close relative to mustard, which has a sweet and sometimes spicy flavor. It prefers similar growing conditions to mustard, and some varieties do very well in the cold while others usually prefer milder seasons. Baby kale often makes it way into a mix, but you can also use full-grown kale. It’s great in a massaged salad. Spinach likes cooler seasons and will bolt, or flower, when it is hotter out. You can try a cut and come again harvest with it or harvest the whole plant when it is small or big. When the heat is too much for your spinach and lettuce Malabar spinach grows tender and deliciously when it is scorching out and is similar in flavor and texture to spinach. There is a lot more to the basics of a salad and you are just getting the basics here.
Briefly I will delve into other additions that can make a salad great. Herbs offer many different flavors to suite your palette. Basil, cilantro, lovage, mints, oregano, and thyme are just a brief mention of what the world of herbs has to offer your salad. Alliums (onion family) of all sorts are delicious in salads. Chop them back and watch them grow back. There are several flowers that will brighten up a mix and impress your guests. Various violets offer a plethora of colors and have a unique sweet flavor. Calendula petals are bright and glorious in the mix.
As the seasons change so will the flavor of your salad. Who gets spring mix in the fall anyways; I prefer to eat my own fall mix. Whether you’re planting some simple additions to a salad mix that you purchase or growing your whole salad mix you will be filled with a sense of accomplishment as you sit down to eat your fresh harvest.