Popular Flower Types

Whether your garden is big or small, cottage-style or formal, you can find a variety of beautiful plants that will make you want to get out in the dirt. From seeds to fertilizer, these flowers will bloom from spring through fall.

There is nothing more satisfying for a vegetable gardener in mid-July than tossing together a salad for dinner with ingredients harvested just outside your back door. While cucumber, squashes, and the queen of the Ohio vegetable garden — the tomato — will soon be ready for your dinner table, will your lettuces and other greens such as spinach or arugula be around to join the tomatoes and cucumbers in your salad bowl?

Lettuce and other salad greens are cool-season crops that grow best at temperatures of 59 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit, far lower temperatures than we typically experience in Greater Columbus in July and August. Once temperatures reach 85 degrees, several cool-season crops begin to form flower stalks, a process called bolting.  While bolting can happen to herbs and cool-season vegetables such as onions, beets, leeks and other root vegetables, it is most prevalent in leafy greens such as lettuce, spinach and arugula.

Planting veggies in August? Of course! Cool-season crops are often sweeter

harvest the sweet leaves of lettuce and other greens, while the plant’s DNA tells it to transition from a vegetative state to a reproductive state. Higher temperatures and longer day length are signals to leafy greens that it is time to begin to bolt.

Once a plant begins to bolt, it expends all of its energy into producing flowers and seeds, and does not produce as many tasty leaves for your salad. The leaves that are produced at this point will be smaller, tougher and have a bitter flavor.

Choose heat-tolerant varieties

One method for keeping leafy greens in a productive vegetative state during the dog days of summer is to plant heat-tolerant varieties. Butterhead types of lettuce are among the most heat-tolerant and bolt-resistant types of lettuce. There are also heat-tolerant varieties of leaf and Romaine types of lettuces that can be planted to extend the harvest season into warmer weather. Additionally, other salad greens such as Asian mustards, spinach chard and edible red leaf amaranth are more heat-tolerant and bolt-resistant leafy greens than lettuce.

a corner of your vegetable garden that gets a little more shade in the afternoon than the rest of the garden, consider devoting that space to growing your leafy greens. If there is absolutely no shade on your garden at any time of the day, you might consider planting leafy greens somewhere else in the landscape that is shaded during a portion of the day. 

April weather good for planting cool-season veggies like lettuce

I have a perennial bed with two small trees that provide some shade during the hottest period of the day, creating a cooler microclimate. This type of location would be the perfect place to interplant leafy greens to delay bolting and extend the harvest season. The trick here is to find a location in the landscape that is shaded during the hottest part of the day, but not the entire day, as lettuce and other leafy greens will be stunted when grown in full-shade locations.

Growing leafy greens in containers that can be moved to more shaded areas in the landscape as temperatures increase can also extend the growing season. Containers can be placed in the full-sun garden in early spring and then moved to a cooler, more shaded location in the landscape when temperatures reach 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

Shade cloth is another tool that can be used to create a microclimate and prevent heat stress on leafy greens.  Research at University of Delaware showed that the use of black-colored 30%-shade cloth reduced bitterness and delayed bolting in many varieties of lettuce. Shade cloth will need to be suspended over lettuce rows by low tunnels or some other type of structure or staking. Shade cloth is different from the fabric used as row covers to exclude pests or protect plants from frost.

Top 10 tips for growing a better veggie garden

Sow again in September

Because leafy greens are cool-season crops, they can be seeded again in late summer, right after Labor Day, and they will thrive in the cool temperatures of October, November and even December, depending upon the weather.  If the weather turns cold early in the fall, row covers can be placed over leafy greens to protect them from hard frosts.

Mike Hogan is an Extension educator, Agriculture and Natural Resources, and associate professor with Ohio State University Extension. hogan.1@osu.edu

Source: dispatch.com