The Best Greens and Lettuces for Unforgettable Salads

Growing lettuce in a home garden can be rewarding because it matures into an edible plant fairly quickly, which is a great feature for short attention span gardeners. It can also be grown outdoors in most places, but can just as easily be grown in an indoor garden or greenhouse.

Grow Greens at Home for Maximum Selection

Avid salad lovers can also benefit from growing their own greens because it gives them more choices than buying them at the store. Using multiple types of salad greens can break up the monotony of everyday salad eating. Planting many different types of greens that mature at different rates can also ensure that you are rarely left without a supply of interesting greens to enhance your diet.

Despite the slim pickings on greens that are available in most grocery stores, salads can contain a wide array of richly colored and flavored greens of many lettuce types. Lettuce types generally include loose lettuce and lettuce that is grown in a head.

Let's explore some colorful choices for growing salad greens in your own garden.

Red Sails Lettuce

Red Sails Lettuce is a deep red and spattered green colored lettuce. This type of lettuce is ready for picking more quickly than many other types of lettuce, so it is a good choice for gardeners who want to get their lettuce selection going fast.

Strawberry Cabbage Lettuce - (Sanguine Ameliore)

A lettuce with an intense speckled look like no other, Strawberry Cabbage Lettuce grows easily in raised garden beds. The taste is buttery and delicate with a light crisp. Strawberry cabbage lettuce is an heirloom type of lettuce that originated from France.

Red and Green Romaine

Romaine lettuce comes in long leaves that are tightly packed within a head. This type of lettuce can have green leaves or red. A mixture of the two can create an attractive and colorful salad. Romaine salad greens do best in a sunny spot that gets some shade and thrive in cool weather and nitrogen-rich soil.

Picking Greens

Some varieties of lettuce produce shoots of loose lettuce as well as a head of lettuce. These stragglers can be picked off and turned into baby greens salads, as long as it does not constitute more than a third of the total plant. Picking more than 1/3 of the greens from a growing plant can damage it to the point that it may not survive.

Resources

Cook's Thesaurus: Salad Greens

Colorado State University: Growing Lettuce on the High Desert

Lettuce Red Sails

In My Kitchen: Freckles Lettuce