High Desert Leafy Greens

Maintaining a bed of leafy greens in the garden to pick from nightly, is one of the tasty convieniences of home gardening. They grow quickly, have simple feeding needs (nitrogen!), and are one of the first spring crops on the kitchen table. But, here high on the Colorado Plateau, our spring-greens growing season is limited by cold nights and hot days.

Mixed greens behind young leeks

This is how the broad diurnal shift in temperature (difference between daily high and low temp; 60+ degrees during spring in Gallup) really limits a long season for traditional leafy greens- when winter seems over, the days get hot. But clear nights, well into June, let the daytime heat stream into the atmosphere, even to the point of freezing. These frigid night-time temperatures delay the start of planting (without a cold-frame or greenhouse), only to see hot, windy, and dry days in May and June, push the greens to bolt and turn bitter. This year we had an unseasonably wet late-May and June, and so the farmers markets in Gallup and Ramah still had sweet greens of all varieties well into July. In my garden in Gallup, the lettuce greens usually quickly turn bitter, but I've had great luck in years' past maintaining a cold-frame of baby lettuce throughout the winter with nightly heating with an incandescent light-bulb and daily opening of the glass lid. This year I put my greens planting space into Red Chard and Bok Choy. Both great in stir-fry's when mature, but stay consistently sweet when young well into a hot summer. This interesting NPR article described a new study on the dramatic importance of consuming healthy fats when eating vegetables and greens to maximize nutrient uptake.

Home-grown baby chard-- with insect damage -- and local goat-cheese salad

This was my own recipe, but this huge NY Times food article, practically a cookbook, has 101 salad recipes to find a new twist on traditional favorites.