Mina

By dawn most Tuesdays and Thursdays during the past summer, you could find me on my hands and knees in the middle of the "greens" field on the local farm where I work. Every six weeks we would rotate-in seven to ten more rows of lettuce, spinach, arugala, chard, and braising mix, so there would be a continuous harvest of greens from June to the end of October. 

Most can be harvested 1 - 2 cuttings per week for up to six weeks. After that the greens grow too tough to eat without cooking them to death.

Tangleweed Farm Lettuce Mix

Lettuce seems like an easy crop, but the leaves are as delicate as flowers and one good frost can take out six weeks of growth. It takes less than a week to germinate the tiny two-leafed seedlings which is best planted two weeks after the last frost.  Most commercial lettuce seed mixes use about fifty percent curly leaf which is more prolific than mint and really more of a filler since it doesnt pack as many nutrients as purple or green romaine. Beware though... too much of this copious plant and it can suffocate other varieties. On the other hand, it can stand up to just about any weather in summer, making it a farmers favorite friend!

If you control the curly leaf in the seed mix by combining your own variaties, you can balance your crop for a nice harvest. If you use a standard lettuce mix, the best method to prevent an over abundance of curly leaf is to wait until the seedlings are about two inches tall and thin as you weed around the plants. Both of these things aerate the soil around your lettuce making it both stronger and healthier. 

Youll know the lettuce is ready to harvest when the greens are about three inches tall, unless youre growing head lettuce. Its easy to harvest by cutting an inch and a half above the soil line. Just remember with any green, never cut it when the ground is wet because the roots on greens are more delicate than a lot of other vegetables and if you cut when the ground is wet, you could lose the entire plant.

My favorite tool to harvest any green is similar to a hand held sickle. The blade is about two inches long and curved at the top. For left handed gardeners, this can also double as a weeder because it is sharpened on both sides, so it flips over nicely. 

Spinach is one of the most versatile vegetables! You can use it in soups, salads, sauté it, cream it, and it freezes well, too. However, its a bit trickier to grow in that the weather determines the flavor. Cold springs and early autumns grow the sweetest spinach because the cooler early morning temperatures trap the plant sugars in the leaves instead of making them grow larger or being used by the roots. The larger the spinach leaf the more fiber you will be eating, which is why baby spinach is the sweetest; it has less fiber. Like lettuce you can cut several times on the plant before it gets too tough to eat. My mom likes to grow the greens out after they are too tough for human consumption and harvest them to feed to our animals. Ive noticed they like to see her coming! 

On the farm where I work we grow a special mix of greens (bok choy, arugala, and purple kale), perfect for sautéing and mixing with vegetables. We package them together because they compliment each other perfectly, bringing a wonderful array of flavors. In this mix, the arugula can outgrow the bok choy and kale, but by trimming the tops you can get an extra harvest of arugula. The goal with the combination is to keep everything the same size, so that the greens are proportionally mixed.