FIMBY: How to grow summer salad greens

This is another installment in our Food in My Back Yard series dedicated to edible gardening.

It’s summer salad season – just when lettuce tends to bolt in our climate. What are you supposed to mix with those newly ripe tomatoes?

Heat prompts lettuce and other traditional greens to go to seed (or bolt). Sensitive to higher temperatures, these leafy annuals use 90-degree days as a cue – it’s time to wrap this up and make seed! (It’s what nature intended.)

In addition, their tender leaves get thicker, tougher and often bitter; that thickness is another way to tolerate high heat, but not necessarily please people.

Most garden guides treat lettuces and other greens as cool-season only crops that can’t survive the stress of a Sacramento summer. What’s a salad-craving gardener to do?

Grow your salad in the shade. Instead of planting lettuce in full sun, put it in a pot on the north side of your house or in dappled shade under a tree. Move the plants around so they benefit from morning sun but are protected from afternoon scorching. Remember to water; don’t let greens dry out or their leaves will shrivel.

Look for heat-resistant varieties. Among lettuces, romaine and looseleaf varieties tend to have the best chance of making it through July and August.

Or think outside the traditional salad mix and consider other more heat-friendly greens such as Malabar or New Zealand spinach (both not true spinach, but close enough in taste, especially when cooked). Or plant a real summer star – chard.

Garden podcaster and former Sacramento radio icon Farmer Fred Hoffman has made Swiss chard his go-to summer green.

“Despite the protestations of nurseries that refuse to stock chard plants this time of year, Swiss chard has been a perennial plant for me, planted on the north side of the house,” says Hoffman. “It is a year-round green for us, perfect for salads and sandwiches. It is easy to grow from seed.”

Young chard leaves can be chopped and used in salads. More mature leaves are perfect when braised, sauteed or used in soups.

All chard varieties are drought-resistant, according to UC research. Seeds can be planted any time from February through September. A close relative to beets, chard has large seeds that are easy to handle; plant ½ inch deep, 1 inch apart, then thin as needed.

Chard also can be a colorful addition to the summer garden as well as the summer salad bowl. Rainbow chard mixes include stems in red, yellow, pink or orange with leaves ranging from bright lime to almost purple.

An All-American winner, ‘Bright Lights’ rainbow chard has a milder and sweeter flavor than traditional white-stemmed Swiss chard. This variety originally came from a New Zealand heirloom chard. (Does that make it Kiwi chard?) It also boasts an almost year-long harvest; just snip off leaves as needed.

That cut-and-come-again approach works with most leaf lettuces, too. For summer greens, look for “slow bolt” varieties that can take the heat without going to seed.