Most gardeners start salad greens early in the spring, though some species and varieties are better started in the summer or fall since their flavor is richer and sweeter when they mature in cool weather. All salad greens need rich, moist, well-drained soil, and the majority benefit from regular applications of compost, small amounts of nitrogen, and supplemental watering. The secret to growing succulent greens is keeping them growing vigorously; otherwise, most get bitter or tough or go to seed prematurely. You can plant salad greens in rows or cast the seeds over a well-prepared bed no more than four feet across. A wider bed is too hard for most people to reach across comfortably and too difficult to weed and harvest.
Most greens are rarely bothered by pests and diseases. The major exceptions would be slugs on ground-hugging greens like lettuces and sorrel, caterpillars on cabbages and bok choys, and leaf miners on spinach and chard.
It is possible to have a wide selection of salad greens growing throughout most of the year through sucession planting. This is a technique for keeping a constant supply of young plants coming along by continually seeding in flats or containers and then using transplants to fill in the holes left by harvested plants. Most of the major seed companies in this country carry a nice selection of lettuces and greens, but for the more unusual species and varieties you will probably want to obtain seeds from the companies listed in the “Resources” section on page 104.
My front yard vegetable garden is filled with salad ingredients. In the middle bed, from left to right, are beets, crisp head lettuces, a small bed of mesclun seedlings, curly endive, and onions.
In the back bed are sprouting broccolis and ‘Ruby’ chard. My assistant, Wendy Krupnick, harvests romaine, leaf, and butter lettuces, parsley, and chervil from my back patio salad garden.
Baby Greens and Salad Mixes
No discussion of salad gardening would be complete without an indepth look at baby greens and salad mixes. The only salad greens that don’t make sense to me to harvest as babies are Belgian endive and some radicchios (they’d be too bitter) and most cabbages (they’d be tough and a waste of expensive seed). That leaves hundreds of different varieties of greens. When reading about growing baby salad greens, you’ll come across a number of terms, which I will run through here to clear up a few misconceptions. As the name implies, baby salad greens are immature plants less than four inches long and usually less than six weeks old. Sometimes they are but the thinnings of greens being salvaged from the seedling row, but more often they are grown specifically with immature harvest in mind. These baby greens can be harvested either in their entirety or in what’s called a cut-and-come-again bed by either scissor-cutting or by picking each leaf by hand. The latter are techniques by which the gardener harvests individual leaves off the baby plants, leaving the crown or growing point to regrow so that new leaves can be harvested again in a few weeks. (For detailed information on growing lettuces by the cut-and-come-again method, see the interview with Andrea Crawford on page 10.)
A bed of baby greens may be grown with only one type of green, say, all romaine lettuces, or the bed may contain a mix. Such a mix might include, say, three different lettuce varieties, arugula, a curly endive, and cress, all together in one bed to be harvested at one time. To grow baby greens in a mix, it’s critical that they all grow at the same rate and taste great in combination. Many mixes have a long tradition in France, where they are called mesclun, and in Italy, where they are called misticanza. In the past few decades gardeners have taken the baby-salad-mix concept and created entirely new mixes. A nontraditional mix might contain the heirloom greens orach, ‘Russian Red’ kale, and miner’s lettuces in combination with bok choys and lettuces, or a wild-greens mix.
Another option is to plant the different baby greens in their own small beds and then mix them in the salad bowl. With this method, you don’t need to be concerned about whether the greens are culturally compatible. While most salad greens grow well together in a mix, some of the choice baby greens do not. Two that come to mind are tatsoi and mâche. Tatsoi grows in a ground-hugging rosette and would be shaded by many taller greens, and mâche grows quite slowly and would never catch up with the rest of the greens. The information in the “Encyclopedia of Salad Greens” (page 23) covers which plants grow well as baby greens and which don’t, as well as which ones work well in a mix.
Seed mixes can be purchased at your local nursery or from specialty seed companies. Many of the seed mixes used by the seed companies are based on the traditional mixes. For instance, mesclun Provençal is popular in the Provence region of France and consists of various mixes of lettuces, arugula, finely curled endive, and chervil. This is a popular mix carried by a number of seed companies and is a good choice for beginners. Misticanza (or saladini), is usually a combination of lettuces and chicories. If formulated in a traditional manner, it would be too bitter for the American palate; however, seed companies in the United States choose a milder blend. The mail-order seed companies Cook’s Garden, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Nichols Garden Nursery, Shepherd’s Garden Seeds, and Territorial Seed Company all carry a number of mesclun mixes.
My kitchen assistant, Gudi Riter, steps away from her recipe testing to plant a small bed of baby salad greens, often called mesclun, in my front garden. First she prepares the soil by applying four inches of compost and a few cups of blood meal and bonemeal, and working them into the soil with a spading fork.
Once the soil is light and fluffy and the nutrients are incorporated, she sprinkles the seeds over the soil so that the seeds average from one half to one inch apart. She then spreads a half inch or so of light soil or compost over the bed, pats down the seeds and the compost to ensure that the seeds are in contact with the soil
Labels the bed with the name of the seed mix and the date. Gudi then waters the seeds in gently with a watering can until the soil is thoroughly moist.
Places a piece of floating row cover over the bed to prevent critters from destroying it. To make sure the row cover won’t blow away, and pests can’t get in under it, secure it tightly by putting bricks or stones at the corners and also along the edges if birds are a problem in your garden.
Of course, you can design your own salad mix. Just buy seeds of your favorite baby greens (remember that the plants need to grow at the same rate), stir all the seeds together in a container, and spread them in rows or in a wide bed. No matter how you grow the baby greens, an intensely grown garden bed of about fifty square feet will provide a very generous amount of baby greens for two people.
Prepare a small bed in full sun by working organic matter and soil amendments into the soil. (The information in Appendix A, page 92, covers soil preparation in its entirety.) Sow the seeds over the bed as you would grass seeds—the goal is to plant the majority of the seeds a half to one inch apart. Lightly rake the area to cover the seeds with a little soil. Pat the seeds in place with your hand, water the bed well, and cover the bed with a floating row cover to keep out marauding birds and digging cats. Secure it at the corners with stones, bricks, or boards. (For information
