Organizing salad greens by yield

When looking at yield data collected this past spring, I found the salad greens I've grown could be roughly categorized into three groups: heavy, mid and light weight.  These distinctions could be useful when building a unique salad mix with some lessor known salad green varieties.

The highest yielding greens were the lettuces and loose headed cabbages.  These make a good basis for a salad mix because they are a) heavy and b) mild tasting.

Medium yield greens contain some of my favorite greens.  Ok, they are all my favorites and when mixed together they make a nice salad.  None of these have any spicy-ness, but they do offer good tastes and nice curvy leaves.  And beets and chard just so pretty.

Spicy mustards, arugula and kale make up the light weight category.  They are 'lofty' and add texture, color and interest to salad mixes.  Often, these are the greens that you don't want too much of in a salad anyway.  I've tried the mainly-mustard-greens salad and it was too much. The keyword there was 'tried.'  Other varieties of kale may produce a heavier yield, but the russian kales have rather spindly leaves when they are young.

What would you choose to put in your salad mix?

Where have I been?

It has been awfully quiet in the wintergreens blog world recently.  First, because I was sick and then because I was busy catching up on everything I put off while being sick.  

Last week I helped with the planting of a school garden.  Over the course of a day a few hundred kids trooping in and out of the garden to plant lettuce, spinach and tatsoi.    In the picture rows or greens are marked with string and the tatsoi beds are hidden under row cover.  I was chuffed that the greens planted followed the same pattern as the greens I primarily study: a lettuce, a spinach and a brassica.  The kids remembered eating lettuce and spinach in previous years, but not tatsoi.  The day was fun, but rather exhausting.  I forgot what it was like to work with kids.  I also forgot to put on sunscreen.

The daffodils are finally blooming in New Hampshire, and the growing season is about to being for most gardeners.  The beginning of the outdoor growing season means the end of the indoor wintergreens season is quickly approaching.  Last week was the last big harvest of greens.  Yesterday I took my last leaf length and harvest weight measurements.  The greenhouses are emptying rapidly.  Soon I will be spending most of my time on the computer crunching numbers.

Salad mix of the week

This week has got me a bit blue.  Maybe because it's cold and grey outside.  Maybe because all the spinach is dying.  Or maybe because all the tat soi is gone.  Tat soi has such lovely small round leaves.  When paired with frilly fun jen and bright red beets I am cheered right up!

In this mix tokyo bekana could easily be exchanged for fun jen.  With age beet greens get even redder, and taste more beet-y.  If you took out the lettuce, all of these could be quickly wilted in a hot pan.  I'm starting to get hungry.

Thanksgiving salad mix of the week

No one wants to eat salad on Thanksgiving.  Or so I heard on a radio program a few days ago.  I totally understand that there are already plenty of foods to eat during Thanksgiving dinner.  And, if you're a purist, the pilgrims and indians probably did not have salad at their dinner (but I'm sure they didn't have marshmallows on their sweet potatoes either).  There are still plenty of opportunities for salad eating in the next few days.  Namely, the snack before Thanksgiving when you're hungry, but want to save your appetite for the Main Event, or the day after Thanksgiving when you're feeling guilty for eating those marshmallowed sweet potatoes and calling them a vegetable.

This weeks salad mix is full of such pretty greens.  My mom says the best thing about beet greens is that they taste like beets.  I think their color is the best part (maybe you've noticed by the number of pictures I've taken here, here, here and here).  Swiss chard is almost as beautiful, if not quite as photogenic.  Vitamin green adds volume to the salad, without adding distracting flavor or color and tatsoi leaves are perfect, small circles.

Pak choi - a green for next winter season

I'm getting together a list of greens to try out during the next winter growing season.  Pak choi is definitely on the list.  The greens on the left of the picture above are variety of pak choi called joy choi (tatsoi is on the left).  Pak choi part of the Brassica rapa var. chinensis group.  Originally we didn't think it would be a very good baby green because it forms heavy heads.  It seemed to work out in the tray above and grew faster than the tatsoi!  The stems were thick and crunchy but the taste was mild.  Pretty much exactly what I want to be eating in the middle of winter.

The brassica family

Many of the greens I grow come from the huge brassica family.  By no means is this 'family tree' of brassica's complete.  It's mainly the greens I have grown, the greens I'd like to grow, and some other branches that are substantial/important.  Have I gotten anything wrong?  Anything you would like to see added? 

tree picture

Graphing the growth rate of greens

I have now measured 14,400 leaves and weighed 8,505 grams of harvested greens, so it's about time to make some graphs out of all that data. (8.5 kg is almost 20 pounds, which is ALOT of greens.  You could make many, many salads.)

I love making graphs.  Partly because they get to be colorful, but mostly because they take a whole bunch of numbers and organize them.  The graphs below took 12,200 numbers to make. Think about that for a while.

(The y-axis is leaf length in cm.  I forgot to label it.)

This graph shows the growth rate of each variety of green that I planted on 3/20.  I didn't start measuring until the plants had harvestable leaves, which was around the 12th/13th of April.  If you remember my overview of this experiment post at the beginning of April I was hoping to see the growth rate level off.  From this graph you can see that did not happen.  The greens just kept growing and growing.  I had to stop measuring leaf length, not because I ran out of greens, but because the greens ran out of nutrients and looked ugly.  (As shown in the stressed out greens post.)  The little black x's mark the best harvests. 

(The y-axis is harvest weight in grams.  I forgot to label it.)

The graph of harvest weights shows a general trend of continued growth for most varieties.  Toyko benkana and Outrageous lettuce have weird, unexplainable dips in harvest weight near the end.  I don't know what happened to cause that, but it does show why I have to do experiments a few times.

These two graphs aren't everything.  Now that I'm done measuring and harvesting four times a week I'll be using this data (all 14,400 numbers) to extrapolate things like: potential harvest weight, optimal harvesting time and how much money it cost to do all this.  Pretty cool stuff eh?

tat soi florets for dinner

Since the winter (when I started saving mizuna seeds) I learned that you can eat all brassica florets.  After I read that I felt a bit stupid.  What did I think brocoli was?  Not a very tasty flower in the brassica family that is a staple in my refrigerator? 

  When I threw out all the flats of over-the-hill greens a few weeks ago I save a few of tat soi because they were just starting to flower.  Oh boy, do they taste good!  Like sweet broccoli, and with no sharpness that broccoli sometimes has.  I quickly learned that you have to pick the florets when they are small, otherwise they get tough and fibrous.

I ate most of the tat soi as snacks when working in the greenhouse, but some made it home for dinner one night.  I sautéed them with garlic and asparagus (from the store) and spring onions (from another research project at the farm).  I mixed the sauté with a piece of chopped bacon and middle eastern couscous (which I just discovered this year and are my favorite).  Then we ate it all up.

See us grow!

Five varieties, three weeks.

Stuffing myself full of greens

If you remember, a few weeks ago I was lamenting that I have too many greens and was searching for new ways to eat them.  Coincidentally, a few nights ago there was a "Super nourishing greens cooking and wellness" class a few towns over.  (It was held at the Blue Moon Cafe.  I've never eaten there before, but the menu sounded amazing.)  Now I'm full of ideas how to use up all our greens.

Last night we had mustard green pesto for dinner.  I guess pesto isn't really that original.  For whatever reason I didn't think that I could use mustard greens to make it.  Maybe because no one else does?  Mustard greens (all five varieties!) have been the hardest to get rid of because they can't be put into a smoothie.  We tried, but it just didn't taste very good.

My mustard green pesto with sunflower seeds and LOTS of garlic tasted pretty good.  It didn't photograph so well, and just looked like green goop.  You'll just have to believe me when I say it tasted good.

Beauty shots

All those cloudy days last week were good for taking pictures.  I took lots.  Not the kind of pictures that will someday be useful for presentations or paper writing, but the super-close-up kind. (Actually, I did take lots of 'useful' pictures too, someday maybe you'll see them.)  

Ruby streaks are my favorite green to photograph right now.  I love their bright green stems.

I have lots of data right now, but haven't done anything with it beside enter it into excel.  Once the semester is really over I'll have time to do something with it.

Stressed out greens

I came into the greenhouse on Monday to find I wasn't the only one stressed out this week.  I'm working on finishing lengthy term papers for the end of the semester.  The greens are stressed out because they are running out of nutrients.  In some varieties stress is shown by leaves turning purplish, in others the leaves bleach to bright yellow.  The tokyo bekana, kale, arugula and tat soi above are all brassicas that were first to reach harvestable size (Mizuna was as well, but I didn't take a picture of it looking stressed out).  So, it makes sense that they would use up all their nutrients first.  I am growing the greens in compost, which should provide all the nutrients needed.  If I were growing these to eat, or for sale I would have harvested them last week before they got stressed out.  

Happily, the lettuces still look good.  Most of the year I am not a supporter of lettuce - it is bland, or bitter and doesn't have as many nutrients as other greens.  At this time of year though, it is perfect!  All green and leafy tasting.  Lettuce is in the Aster family, along with dandelions.  I don't think they are close taxonomic relatives, but I do think that lettuce smells a bit like dandelions.

Everything that's growing (except arugula)

Scarlett frills, tokyo bekana, mizuna, red romaine, red russian kale, 

green romaine, tatsoi, spinach, ruby streaks

four weeks of growth - it's time to eat!

All the greens are not 'full size' yet, but the kale, mizuna, tokyo bekana, tatsoi and scarlett frills are!

two weeks of growth!

What a difference just one week can make!

Growth rate of greens (or experiment number two!)

Even though the weather right now is not very winter-like I've started a second experiment.  Describing this one is much simpler:  I am going to see how different varieties of greens grow in the 'cold.'  The same kind of work was done last spring and fall and I'll be doing a lot more of it next winter.  

A few of the greens I'm growing are in this mixed flat.

The goal is to be able to estimate how long it will take green to reach a harvestable size as light and temperature levels change drastically in the fall and spring.  By the end I'd like the be able to say "if you plant lettuce in September you'll be harvesting in late october, but if you plant in october you won't be harvesting until december."

Arugula grown spring 2011

The chart above is a snippet of the data collected last year.  The temperatures are when the greenhouse heaters turn on.  You can see that keeping the greenhouse ten degrees warmer makes a big difference in growth (leaf length).  The length of the arugula grown at 40 degrees seems to be leveling off at around 40 days of growth.  If you knew it was not going to grow anymore you would harvest it at forty days.  Leaving it in the ground won't mean it was going to grow anymore.  The same observation can't be made for the arugula grown at fifty degrees - which is why we need more data!

What's going to happen:

I am growing ten varieties of greens:

1. spinach
2. kale
3. green romaine lettuce
4. red romaine lettuce
5. arugula
6. mizuna
7. tokyo bekana
8. tat soi
9. ruby streaks
10. scarlet frills

I'll make eight harvests at 3 - 10 weeks after planting.

At each harvest I will measure:

• The length of 10 leaves of each species 
• The weight of each species harvested

Pretty simple!  Are there any greens you would like to see on the list?  Leave a comment below and I'll take it into consideration for the next round.

one week of growth

These little guys are only one week old!  They are part of  the new experiment I am working on.  I'll start posting about it in the very near future.

plant profile: tatsoi

During last week's heatwave it took only three days for most of the brassica species I've planted to sprout. Three days!  Tat soi was one of those greens.  Until last year I thought tat soi, pak choi and and bok choi were the same thing.  Obviously then this is a variety of green I need to know a bit more about.

image from http://www.stonofarmmarket.com/tat-soi.html

Tatsoi is a another green in the Brassicaceae family.  It makes up the Narinosa group (Maybe - apparently there is some debate - see the comment below.  This kind of debate is typical in organizing plants which is why I don't study botany!)  It forms a head of compact spoon shaped leaves at maturity.  We'll be growing it as baby greens, not as a head.  It can be grown as a microgreen too.  It likes cool weather which is why we are growing it for the wintergreens project.

image from Johnnyseeds.com

Tatsoi is apparently really easy to grow.  I followed the sowing directions from Johnny's for baby greens when I planted last week.  In a few weeks I'm hoping for some spoon shaped leaves to photograph and eat!