[HOST INTRO] Does it get too hot to grow salad greens in a southern Idaho summer? Not according to Clay and Josie Erskine of Peaceful Belly Farms. In this installment of the Market & Garden Report, they tell correspondent Guy Hand some secrets for growing salad in summer.
Freshly picked summer greens
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Cutting tender young greens (they'll grow back).
(Josie) So, right now we’re cutting salad greens, really beautiful salad greens.
(Hand) Josie and Clay Erskine are on their hands and knees with scissors. They’re cutting brightly colored lettuce leaves planted in a long row.
(Josie) . . . This is a green oakleaf and that is red romaine . . .
(Hand) Harvesting tender, young salad greens is something they’ll do all summer — thanks to what’s called successional planting.
(Hand) So what is successional planting. (Clay) Successional planting means that you’re planting every couple of weeks so that as you’re greens are kind of falling off and not being very tasty any more, or going to flower, you have another bed that’s ready to go.
Rows of recently planted lettuces.
(Hand) You plant every two weeks? (Clay) Yea, we reseed our beds every two weeks so that we have a continual harvest through the season.
(Hand) I’d thought that southern Idaho’s summers were too hot for greens. They will quickly flower and go to seed. But Clay and Josie say by continually planting and harvesting young plants, you’ll have fresh, homegrown salad all the way through August.
(Clay) If you have a continuous planting, and you’re just harvesting it as a baby green, after that baby green wants to go to flower or bolts, then you have a brand new bed that’s ready to harvest already.
(Hand) Josie says you just need to keep a couple of gardening tips in mind.
(Josie) If you’re putting the seed directly into the ground, not a little plant, but the seed in the ground, and you’re using an overhead water system, you can grow lettuce all the way through the heat of the summer.
(Hand) Transplants shock to easily in hot weather, so plant seed. And sprinkle you greens with overhead water to keep their leaves moist.
Clay Erskine with a freshly picked salad.
(Clay) So you constantly, every two weeks just make a little furrow in your garden bed, just sprinkle it like you would salt on a dish of food in that little furrow, cover it up and pat it down just with a little bit of soil and you’ll have greens all summer long.
(Hand) Don’t expect lettuces to form heads. The Erskines say just cut the greens young, letting them grow back, then cutting them again until they bolt or get bitter. Then move on to your next, freshly planted bed.
(Clay) So instead of getting into the mindset where you plant once in the season, instead of just planting them once, harvesting them once, you can get into the habit of planting them every two weeks and then that way you’ll have a continuous harvest through the whole summer.
(Hand) Clay says salad seed mixes work great. But the same successional routine also works for beets, carrots, chard, turnips and other fast growing vegetable. Clay says five foot rows planted every two weeks will keep a family of four in salad all summer long.
(Hand) For The Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.
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Guy Hand is a writer, public radio producer and photographer specializing in food and agriculture. |
