I was right. A salad garden turned out to be the perfect solution to the problem. Not only did the salad vegetables grow well, but leafy greens interplanted with annual flowers also made a beautiful garden next to the patio. As a bonus, with a salad garden right off the kitchen, I found myself using many more salad greens than in the past, since it was so easy to harvest leaves as I needed them.
To prepare the area for the lettuces and herbs, I had the soil dug up under the part of the tree where the salad greens would go so as to remove as many mulberry roots as possible (something that is possible only when you have a mature specimen of a vigorous species). Then I added lots of compost and put in some low, pop-up sprinkler heads. To ensure a continuous supply of salad greens, my assistant at the time, Wendy Krupnick, set up a nursery area with starter flats so she could replant lettuce every six weeks or so. (We also bought seedlings from the nursery on occasion.) We found that starting lettuce plants by seeds in place in the garden sometimes resulted in spotty germination. Also, in watering the seedlings twice a day in the warm weather we were overwatering the tree and the more mature plants and contributing to fungus problems on the lettuces.
For more than two years we planted different lettuces and salad herbs recommended to me by restaurant gardeners and seed company folks. In the cool seasons all the lettuces, the chervil, the mâche, and the arugula did very well. On the other hand, for a short time in the hottest weather most of the greens did poorly; only the parsley and the ‘Oak Leaf,’ ‘Summer Bibb,’ and ‘Australian Yellow’ lettuces held up, but they needed to be harvested very young, or they would turn bitter.
It was certainly handy to have a salad garden right off the kitchen, but even handier was the method of lettuce harvesting that Wendy showed me. First thing in the morning, when the lettuces are dewy and the temperature is cool, she goes out and harvests enough salad greens for one or two days. She brings them in and washes and dries them in a salad spinner. (The salad spinner, a basket inside a plastic bowl, with a cover equipped with a spinning device, has to be one of the most useful modern kitchen inventions.) Then she dumps the salad mix into a plastic bag and puts it in the refrigerator. By picking the lettuces at their peak in the cool of the morning you ensure that your greens will be crisp and flavorful, and by washing them you make them available for use anytime, whether you’re grabbing a few leaves for a sandwich at lunch or making a salad in the evening.
I wake up to this view of my back patio When I moved the salad garden nearer to the kitchen I found myself harvesting from it more often. The rows of lettuce transplants shown here will be ready for harvesting in about a month.
At some point your baby lettuces will stop resprouting because the weather is too warm or because they are played out. You can prepare the bed for the next crop in two ways. The first is to simply turn the lettuces under, after which they will decompose quickly. The other way, which I prefer, is to leave the lettuces in place and gently plant your summer crops, like tomatoes and peppers, around them. This is called the “no till” method, and its benefits are that it cuts down on erosion and is easier on your soil structure. Another bonus is that the decomposing lettuces will feed your next crop.
After growing my backyard salad garden I became so enamored with these greens that in 1995 I designed a large garden full of them. It consisted of beds arranged between an array of planks encircling a birdbath. This garden became the focal point for the front yard. The salad greens and herbs were grown mostly in rows encircling what finally became called the “magic circle.” The rosettes of dozens of varieties of lettuces were interspersed with scallions, chives, spinach, mâche, and edible and purely decorative flowers. Of course, this garden produced much more than my husband and I could ever have consumed; it fed many of the neighbors, and we even had extra to take to the food bank. By growing so many salad greens at one time, though, I finally had a chance to compare many varieties and see how they tasted and held up to growing conditions in my microclimate. Alas, that garden is now gone—it went on to become a new garden, one filled with American heirloom vegetables and 18 flowers. I still grow many salad greens, however. They are interplanted among my other beds, in containers, and sometimes back under the tree near the patio.
My front yard “magic circle” salad garden in late spring provides us with copious amounts of greens, but also creates an exciting welcome to my home. There are salad greens in the containers by the tea house and rows of lettuces, endives, and scallions around the paths at the left. The beds at the right contain mâche (now in bloom and covered with tiny white flowers), nestled up to chives with their lavender flowers.
The magic circle is made of three-foot-long tapered boards that are connected by two concentric circles of bender board. After the greens were planted, laser drip tubing was snaked among the plants. Spray heads were used to irrigate the blue star creeper ground cover among the boards.
After years of growing hundreds of salad greens, I’ve found that I really enjoy mâche, miner’s lettuce, spinach, perpetual spinach, dandelions, many of the Oriental greens, and most lettuces. I’m less enamored with the strong-flavored arugula and shungiku greens, preferring to use them as herbs rather than as a chief ingredient in salads. Further, I find I seldom plant some of the heirloom chicories, as they are so unpredictable, and I still haven’t developed a taste for purslane (I’m put off by its slippery texture). In contrast, I’ve yet to meet a lettuce I don’t like. They are all so lovely and tasty, and each gives its own look to a salad. The romaines have a crisp texture, the butterheads are velvety, and the leaf lettuces are beautiful and tender. If forced to grow but a few, I guess I’d choose ‘Oak Leaf,’ the Batavians, and the velvety ‘Buttercrunch’; still, I’d miss all the others for all their great shapes and colors.
The same area as viewed from the front walk is shown about ten weeks later, after the greens have filled in.
The garden looks different when viewed from the tea house looking toward the front walk. Here rosemary, Japanese red mustard, Vietnamese coriander, and the blue flowers of an ornamental campanula create a background for the greens.
interview
Shepherd Ogden
Shepherd Ogden and his wife, Ellen, run a seed company in Londonderry, Vermont, where they specialize in salad vegetables and carry the seeds of more than forty varieties of lettuce. Shep’s family has grown vegetables for many years, and his enthusiasm for salad greens is obvious when he talks about them.
At one time Shep supported himself while writing poetry by driving a cab in Cambridge. Then in the early 1970s, during a summer visit to his grandfather, Sam Ogden, a garden writer who had a small market garden, Shep planted the garden for him. The work was so satisfying that he took over the garden the next year and sold produce to local restaurants and vacationers. Unable to obtain some of the specialty lettuces he wanted from other American companies, he started his own seed company a little while later.
Shep talked to me about the different types of lettuces, dividing the many varieties into categories. First he discussed