Nancy Bubel - Grow super salad greens

Nancy Bubel

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Cover design by Carol J. Jessop (Black Trout Design)
Text illustrations by Carol MacDonald

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bubel, Nancy

Grow super salad greens / by Nancy Bubel
A Storey Publishing Bulletin, A-71
ISBN 978-0-88266-285-5

Any way you look at it, garden greens are a bargain. For a quick spring crop, of the maximum amount of food from a small garden space, for a nutritious, low-calorie food, garden greens cant be beat.

For less than the price of a weeks supply of grocery vegetables for your family, you can buy seeds that will grow a season-long supply of greens, with extras for freezing and sharing. Because few varieties of greens are fancy hybrids, the seeds for these vegetables are quite inexpensive. Some of these greens are gourmet vegetables that, in most communities, cannot be purchased at any store for any price. And you will not have to lay out additional cash for insect deterrents: the greens in this bulletin are relatively pest-free.

Best of all, greens by which we mean green, leafy vegetables grown primarily for their edible foliage are a nutritional bargain. Low in calories, but very rich in vitamins, especially vitamins A and C and folic acid, greens are one of the few foods in which the calcium and phosphorus contents are well balanced. Many other good foods seeds, nuts, meats, cheese, for example contain much more phosphorus than calcium. The calcium we need for strong bones is more likely to be retained if it is not overwhelmed by too much phosphorus. Greens also supply significant amounts of iron less than meat or blackstrap molasses, but more than most root vegetables. Adding more greens to your menu will give you more healthful fiber, too.

Greens that have been shipped across the country have surely wilted, and thus lost important nutrients on their way to the store. Once on the produce counter, they are cosmetically revived with a sprinkling of water, but tremendous amounts of their original vitamin value have been lost and cannot be regained. When you grow and pick your own greens, right outside your kitchen door, you eat them before they wilt and save all those vitamins for yourself.

Then, too, the right green touch on the menu adds an elegance usually associated with posh restaurant meals. Endive salad with spaghetti... parsley snipped into soup... sprigs of watercress on thinly sliced, buttered, homemade bread... tender leaf lettuce worthy of your homemade dressing. You neednt tell your family how good it is for their health. Just serve it up proudly as the gourmet fare it is!

Just to give you an idea of the food value of garden greens in general, here is a selected list that will show you the vitamin and mineral content of easily grown greens. (All figures are from the USDA Handbook of the Nutritional Contents of Foods, and refer to a 100-gram edible portion.)

There are greens you can grow in every season even winter. Some garden greens, like spinach, grow quickly and last just a short time. Others, such as chard, remain ready for picking all season long. Heat lovers, such as amaranth and New Zealand spinach, need warm weather to grow in; but they are the exception. Most greens thrive in cool weather. Some, in fact, such as kale and Chinese cabbage, are at their best after frost.

With some planning, you can pick your own fresh greens from spring through winter. The secret of a continuous harvest is succession planting. You might, for example, plant early spring spinach, followed by green beans bearing in August, with a quick crop of radishes put in after the beans finish. Your summer greens can be grown in the rows where spring peas or scallions have finished. For a fall harvest, you can transplant kale, cabbage, and other good fall greens into spaces left by early radishes or beets. Fall spinach and escarole can follow summer-harvested onions. Most green vegetables do well when seeded right in the row, but you might want to raise some seedlings in flats and have them ready for transplanting to the garden, both to get an early spring start and to save growing time in midseason.

Another way to fit more greens into your garden is to tuck a quick-maturing leafy vegetable, such as spinach or leaf lettuce, in the wide space between your tomato, melon, or squash transplants. By the time the spreading vegetable needs all the room you have allowed for it, the leafy vegetable will have been picked and eaten. Shade from larger vegetables nearby sometimes helps to keep some spring vegetables, such as spinach, producing for an additional week before going to seed in the summer warmth and longer days.

By using succession planting and intercropping, you can grow an extensive variety of greens in a small space.

If your garden space is limited, here are some more ways to find room for the new greens you want to grow.

Grow green vegetables as part of your flower border. For example, a perky edging of curly parsley really sets off a bed of bright blossoms, and rhubarb chard would be a handsome addition to a bed of perennials. Lettuce rosettes look good among the petunias and are usually ready to pick before the petunia plants spread.

Look for odd, unused corners of your yard that can be turned into productive mini-gardens. That square of ground by the back step, for example, a neglected strip beside the garage or back fence, or the narrow piece of earth bordering a driveway can make a miniature garden.

Even in an apartment or condominium, you can have a windowbox. Fill it with the best soil you can find, with a layer of sand and gravel at the bottom for good drainage. Try leaf lettuce, parsley, scallions, escarole, or spinach. But avoid planting deep-rooted greens, such as chard, and large growing ones, such as kale and collards. A single kale plant in a large pot, though, could liven your soup for months.