I never knew what a variety of wonderful early salad veggies are available. This year I ordered Mizuna, Lady Murasaki, Yu Mai Tsai, and a few lettuces that were new to me. Here are pictures of salad waiting to be picked:
…along with a few poppies that we’ll let go and some weeds I need to get gone!
For those who, like me, were unaware, Mizuna is the frilly green in the middle. It’s spicy like cress and good fresh, steamed, or stir fried. Yu Mai Tsai is also called sword leaf lettuce. It’s the bright green, long-leafed green next to the red leaf in the top picture. Very tender, buttery. Lady Murasaki is a “mustard-spinach” (according to the Fedco description) and is the lovely, deep purple oval-leafed one. And of course there’s some kale, regular spinach, and some red lettuces, some bibb, and some pak choi. The colors alone make the mix worthwhile, but I’m also of the mind that there are some nutritional benefits to red and purple veggies!
Those are great looking greens! I agree that the different color greens will provide us with a different nutritional profile. Eat the rainbow. My wife and I eat a daily salad for lunch, then another salad for dinner several days a week.
Here is my salad bed. Seven types of lettuce, three types of kale behind them, rabe to the left, and peas behind. The bed to the right has onions, mustard blends, arugula, tokyo market turnips, and peas on the trellis.
At least I hope it was a deer, can’t see any tracks because of ground cover. Will know if it is a woodchuck soon enough because it will be back for the rest if that is the case…
This is Falstaff, great in the heat and iceberg like texture.
These are from a selection I made from Double Density that was extra spotty, got seeds in '14 and there was some variation between plants still. Have several distinct lines now that are probably 1-2 generations away from stability. You can see the one standard form there also, seeds I got in '16 are stable.
