Summer Green Grow List 2019
 

Spring 2019 was exceptional for greens thanks to the flooding rain and relentless chilly weather :no:


I am sorting thru my seeds for starting a summer greens garden in an area with morning only sun. So far on the table:


4 Seasons Romaine
Tatsoi (new to me)


Looking for inspiration. What salad greens are you growing in the heat of July?


- Lisa

We are trying some head lettuce from Wild Garden seeds. Head and Romaine types that are said to get great taste reviews and do OK with summer growing (but southern WI summer is a lot different than Nebraska!).

I tried Tatsoi a few years ago, it was ok. I found I like swiss chard better, especially when picked younger.

Last seasons challenge was getting back in the hot pepper game. That being solved
I've been trailing many salad greens this spring. Started my first 1010 36 cell tray early February.
Then again early March. Another last weekend. (indoors)
First early tray I potted up a while ago and are still going strong. Outside for a while now
on the deck. Some in grow bags, some still in 4inch deep pots.

Goal is to have head lettuce year round along with my microgreens. Not more than 2 dozen
heads for real estate issues. Just testing the best pot size. And varieties.

I've been picking outer leaves for a month now. Nothing in the ground yet, so, so far so good
on harvesting. Anything related to bok choy has bolted right out of the gate even in the cold.

A few dozen will go in the garden salad bed tomorrow. Too many varieties to list but will
know once the heat of July hits what does best. (I use shade frames) One bed gets afternoon
shade from a fruit tree.

The indoor seeding head start has been an eye opener. Harvesting for weeks before the
garden is even ready for them.

Bok Choy is such a notorious bolter. You have to eat them as soon as ready, or before! I'm thinking of growing some Yu Choy Sum again as the weather gets warmer. At least when they bolt, they're ready to eat. :D Also thinking to stick with romaine, since Mom seems to like it and they are slower to bolt than other lettuce. And I'm definitely sowing some more gailan. We are really liking those tender flowering shoots. I've read that you can keep harvesting the side shoots all season, so I want to give that a try.
One of my romaines at the moment is an F1 cross of Red Romaine and Merveille des quatre saisons. Very nice, but it'll be even more fun to pick what is interesting in the F2, so I'll be keeping some going until they produce seeds. Oddly the color is very different under LED compared to the window with fluorescent and natural light. But I guess that is typical of Mde4S anyway - it seems to be a different color in every circumstance.

Last summer I purchased a Bok Choy plant at an end of June garden center closing sale for a dime, and it grew and grew and never bolted. I ended up giving it to a visitor and she said she never saw one that large. It inspired me to buy seeds for this from Baker Creek Seeds:
Chirimen Hakusai - Chinese Cabbage
I have two plants with just a few leaves on each. It is still tender. Flavor unremarkable, but I'll take it over store bought.

I started an empty 4X4 raised bed with lettuces last night. One row was only Yugoslavian Red and another was Black Seeded Simpson. For the remaining rows, I gathered all my older lettuce seed and combined three varieties into one package and made a few rows of each combination. I watered it in very well in lieu of soaking the seed overnight. We ended up getting over two inches of heavy rain in the middle of the night. More rain to follow tomorrow night.

Here is the raised bed on the north side of my house that is out of tomato rotation this year, I have a row of 4 beds but only three have the covers :

Those are some happy looking greens, Lisa! :D

It would be nice to keep this thread alive or at least monthly. I do like my macro greens for
my daily salads year round. Dense and healthy.
Just looking for some variety. Some leaf larger to go with.

I did notice even the head lettuce I've been harvesting in the deep pots,
(twice the volume than red cups), have roots out the bottom very quickly once potting up.

Indoors winter will slow down growth...

I've had pretty good luck growing lettuces through the summer using 40% white shade cloth over the bed supported with hoops and keeping the soil moist. Last year, Jericho, Pandero, Muir, and more did really well. Trying lots of new ones this season, so I'll try to remember to post which ones last the longest- I'm not a fan of bitter lettuce. Also, Perpetual Spinach and Verde de Taglio chard kept pumping out little leaves to mix with the lettuce all season long from the early spring plants! Not only that, but in the late fall I potted them up and brought them into the greenhouse and they continued to provide greens until aphids got the better of them this spring!

The only thing I can keep going now is chard. Come October I’ll start other greens again.

[QUOTE=kath;735993]I've had pretty good luck growing lettuces through the summer using 40% white shade cloth over the bed supported with hoops and keeping the soil moist. Last year, Jericho, Pandero, Muir, and more did really well. Trying lots of new ones this season, so I'll try to remember to post which ones last the longest- I'm not a fan of bitter lettuce. Also, Perpetual Spinach and Verde de Taglio chard kept pumping out little leaves to mix with the lettuce all season long from the early spring plants! Not only that, but in the late fall I potted them up and brought them into the greenhouse and they continued to provide greens until aphids got the better of them this spring![/QUOTE]

Time to start more seeds (indoors) for greens during the dog days of summer. In the 4 packs are Burpee Four Seasons Romaine, a pack of mixed older seed, and Sandy.
I'm going to go all out with many varieties for fall growing towards the end of June/early July, starting inside and transplanting in vacated spaces.

The lettuce in the photo a few posts above was destroyed by hail except for the plants in the corners. The Metchi Cabbage on the upper left is in flower now. It never produced heads, just large leaves. Chirimen Hakusai - Chinese Cabbage barely produced a handful of leaves and it tastes strange to me. An oakleaf head (which is not my preference) is resisting the heat admirably.

The 40% white shade cloth sounds interesting. Lowes across town sells 80 percent in various colors in bulk for $1.99 per foot. My local garden center doesn't stock it, but a fancy one a few miles away has 50 % for $3.99 per foot. Expensive!

- Lisa

Anyone have new lettuce variety recommendations now that it's late July?

I've had one standout in the garden this year for greens, Maruba Santoh. Of about 2 dozen varieties of brassicas and lettuces trialed, this one is the best tasting, the easiest picking, and is the only one that not yet bolted.

I’m sowing mustards that resist bitterness, like Miz America.

I've never really found mustards to be bitter. Perhaps they get some bitterness with more mature leaves, but with those larger leaves perhaps the heat intensifies where I cannot detect bitterness.:?!?:

oakley,

for your indoor lettuce, what have you learned about best pot size to use for maximum growth in limited. i have a plant stand, plus a table set up in the basement for my spring plants.
plant stand may have to come upstairs for winter growing. basement is in the mid 40s wintertime.

also would the shop lights be enough for growing. i typically use one cool light, and one full spectrum 40 watt tube in each fixture.

types of lettuce that do best indoors. i know you mentioned trying hundreds of different varieties. leafy vs butter crunch vs romaine type, something like that.

long winters here, and the price of organic lettuce at the co-op have me thinking, i need to grow some lettuce during snow season.




keith