Grow Great Salads Year-round
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Plants usually won’t overheat under fabric row covers, but you’ll need to ventilate plastic covers on sunny days when temperatures are above freezing. They will need to be closed again in the early evening, but many garden supply companies offer products that make this an easy job. (If you choose to construct your own tunnels, use UV-grade plastic so it won’t degrade quickly in the sun, and if you expect heavy snows, opt for metal conduit or rebar instead of plastic pipes for the hoops.) As the temperatures climb, you’ll need to pay more attention to ventilating your tunnels. Once nighttime temperatures are consistently near 30 degrees, you can remove the plastic but keep the fabric row cover in place. Remove the fabric cover after daily low temperatures consistently are above 30 degrees.
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Winter Sowing
Fall-planted seeds begin to bolt (produce seed) with the long and warming days of spring, but succession planting will ensure a steady supply of the naturals. Most years I sow these seeds during January or February, but occasionally winter’s grip holds me back until March. You also can sow some cooking greens, such as chard and beet leaves, during these mid- to late-winter plantings. For continuous harvests, sow a new round of seeds every two weeks or so. It’s best to prepare these plots during the fall and cover them with 4 to 6 inches of leaves that will insulate the soil. You also can install a plastic tunnel over the bed to keep the soil warmer.
You’ll get the best production by planting each type of green separately, but it is possible to mix them all together. Just keep a couple of plant idiosyncrasies in mind: spinach gets lost in almost any crowd; salad brassicas will overwhelm your lettuce; mustard and mizuna will quickly dominate any bed of greens; and claytonia can make even these look timid!
Come Harvest Time
Depending on weather, your location and the varieties you’ve chosen, you’ll be able to harvest some of your fall-planted greens by the end of fall. And you can keep on picking most of these right through the winter. Others will overwinter and mature as early as the first of March. But even if you don’t get any of your salad greens in the ground until mid-February, you’ll still enjoy delicious, homegrown salads by early April.
Although most of the fall-planted naturals will be bolting by mid-spring, some — particularly corn salad and claytonia — will suffer little or no loss of quality other than the inevitable decline in production. Indeed, the tender flower stalks and buds of several brassicas are a delicious treat. Arugula flowers have a sweet, mild flavor even after the flavor of the leaves has become harsh. And the stalks and buds of overwintered collard greens may even rival asparagus!
Plant salad greens for cut-and-come-again harvests by sowing seeds just a couple inches from one another. When the plants are 4 to 6 inches tall, cut the entire plant but leave about an inch of leaf stubs for regrowth. For cooking greens, just snip off the oldest leaves each time you harvest them.
