Five favorite salad and cooking greens
Notes from the Sonoma Garden
Arugula – Home grown tastes so much better than store bought pre-package arugula. Once they are fully established you wont’ be able to keep up. Keep harvesting and cutting them back. Good for both salads and cooking.
Red leaf lettuce – Best grown in winter and spring. They bolt too quickly in winter. I love them for the color they add to a salad.
Kale – Still the trendy super-food. Great cooked with garlic and then mixed with sour kraut! In a salad you can massage them with olive oil to make them easier to digest. Fantastic juiced with cucumber, ginger, lemons and apple. Cut them back to their base when they get old. They will regenerate.
Chard – I love chard. It cooks up a lot faster than kale and has a milder flavor. The young leaves are good in salad too. I recently have had problems with white fly and leaf miners in my chard so I harvest them early and often to stay ahead of the bugs.
Beet Greens – Double delight. Harvest the greens for salad, soup or cooking greens and then bliss you with the beet roots later in the season.
— Karen Boness
