Garden of Eatin'

When I start craving a lunch like this...

I start here - in the garden!  This is the main "salad" raised bed, with a chicken wire hood to hold shade cloth a bit later in the season.  Keeping the lettuces shaded prevents early bolting and also produces more tender leaves. 

On the left is "Salad Bowl", a large, fast-growing loose-leaf with really juicy leaves.  In the middle is "Merlot", the most succulent burgundy lettuce I've ever put a tooth in.  Then comes "Baby Cos", small romaine heads. 

On the other end of the bed are some herbs tucked in with the lettuces and other greens.  Several curled parsely plants and "Fernleaf" dill add bright sparks of nutrition and flavor. I like to grow the herbs right with the greens that will become salads, because I can snip them all at the same time!  In another month, this bed will also be providing bright red peppery "Empress of India" nasturtium blossoms and sweet little purple/yellow violas to add to salad creations.  A mixed flower/herb/greens garden bed is a HAPPY bed!

 "Fernleaf", on the right, is a small growing dill, unlike the "Mammoth" dill in another part of the garden.  Mammoth is typically used for producing - yep, dill pickles!  It grows well with the cucumbers it will partner with in a few months.

A newer greeny to my salad bed is "Mizuma", a fine-leafed Japanese green.  It is so tender, a bit nutty and spicy but not as spicy as Rocquette.  Mizuma has become one of my favorite "grazing" plants, can't help eating a leaf or two every time I pass by.  Fortunately, its is VERY fast growing, adding new leaves so quickly I can't tell the next day where I pinched some off!

An update on the front patio herbs and salad pot.  The weather has been really nice for the greens, even if a bit daunting to the 'maters!  They are still hanging out under plastic covers on the south wall - patience required!

Salad Bowl, Merlot, and Baby Cos are at the stage where I can cut off individual leaves from the outside sworls - a half dozen or so of mixed leaves make a fine individual salad bowl!

Chives grow in several places around the garden beds, always handy for snipping.  For lunch I included some of the onion-y flavored chive flowers in the salad makin's.

Filling a bowl with a mixture of greens and herbs is an exercise in taste, scent, and artistic enjoyment.  I always seem to end up with more than I can eat in one sitting!  With a topping of sweet fresh shrimp meat and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice - this is a primo salad.

This is the season when I crave fresh succulent salads at least twice a day. Nutritious tonics of greens and herbs!  Sometimes even a breakfast salad sneaks in - with hardboiled eggs and crunchy home-made whole grain bread croutons!