In Wisconsin, we cannot really plant our gardens with much confidence until after Memorial Day. It’s tempting fate to put in seeds and get a week or two of tiny seedlings going in early spring. Many of us Wisconsinites have stories of lost crops and plants that were put in too soon, only to suffer and die of a late surprise frost. So, I’ve made it a rule of thumb that I try not to get overeager and put things in too soon. And, to be honest, there’s a good chance there’s still some icy ground into April anyway.
But that doesn’t mean we aren’t plotting and planning said gardens as early as January or before. The seed companies seem to know our hankering for those few glorious days of true summer. The minute the snow and ice begin to arrive, so do the glossy catalogues. They are filled with promises of fantastic moon flowers and fat bumpy tomatoes. It takes real self-restraint to remember that Wisconsin’s growing season doesn’t often allow for tomatoes to sprout and fruit from seed if put directly outside. It’s just too short a season.
So instead, it becomes a side hobby, at least for me and several of my friends, to gush over black eggplants and giant melons, knowing we’ll never get them to grow. Instead, we’ll eventually resign ourselves to the usual tried-and-true carrots, beans and peas, with a few kale and cucumber plants. There’s nothing wrong with being practical.
And that’s where planning the garden for a salad has been part of the joy lately. Planting things I know will come up, but add a bit of delight in the side salad, is all part of the puzzle.
Planning a garden for a salad starts with a base of unique lettuces. I’m a fan of a Romaine variety that is variegated deep reddish purple and emerald as well as a merlot lettuce that is so deep red it’s borderline black. Whenever the rows of lettuce look like they’re getting too tall or going to seed, I pop off the tops and feed it to the bunnies and chickens, which keeps the lettuces from getting overgrown too soon or going bitter. (The lettuce always comes up well before some of my other goodies are close to ready.)
Then I will add in some cucumbers. Any will do, and the smaller the better! Plus, if you get enough, you can put up several jars of pickles as a bonus. Another option is to use mouse melon, or Mexican sour gherkin. These are always a hit (both in salads and pickled!). A few seeds give you uncountable hundreds. They look like tiny watermelons but taste like a cucumber with a little very light touch of sourness at the end.
Sometimes I’ve done radishes. My favorite is the one that’s lime green on the outside and then hot pink in the inside. It’s a Chinese variety called the “watermelon” radish. These can get woody by the end of the summer, so I don’t thin them out, which means they overcrowd and stay smaller longer.
Next comes the tomatoes if they are ready. Even with planting pre-grown small bushes in spring, we just don’t get enough sun in our area to always have tomatoes as much as I’d like.
Finally, the color! Nasturtiums (especially the salmon colored ones) are a favorite for a bit of spice (they are not hot spicy, but they do have a slight kick that’s unexpected for flowers) and borage for pale blue. Borage flowers taste like cucumbers, as do the leaves, which are edible when they are smaller. If you have snapdragons or marigolds, you can toss them in, too. Fun tip: nasturtiums may self-seed if you let them go to seed in your garden, though I admit that’s rare for me. Borage is a tremendously awesome self-seeder, and the bees and hummingbirds love it, too.
When I go out picking, I often take a big copper bowl (of course!) and start with the base and add it up, building the salad in real time, and taking it straight to the table, all pretty and ready to go. We don’t use chemicals or spray anything other than water on our gardens so everything is organic. So yes, sometimes I don’t even wash things. A bit of dirt is good for us in my opinion. (Well, no one has gotten sick yet in twenty years from our salads!)
It’s one of my favorite things to do in summer, eating straight out of the garden. Meanwhile, the planning of it all certainly keeps some winter nights full of green daydreams.