Released: February 15, 2002

Also see: Early Spring, 2002 Yard 'n Garden news package

What’s for Salad?

MANHATTAN, Kan. – The spectrum of green salad ingredients in today’s nursery catalogs and seed displays can quickly confuse even experienced gardeners.

Horticulturist Chuck Marr says two things are promoting the confusion:
(1) Researchers are producing many variations and crosses of traditional salad ingredients.
(2) Suppliers are beginning to offer possibilities that are traditional in European and Oriental diets.

Marr is a vegetable crops specialist for Kansas State University Research and Extension.

To give gardeners a starting point for knowing what’s available now, he provides this overview of the major categories:

Lettuce –

* Leaf - earliest to harvest and easiest to grow from seed - may be green (light to dark), green-red, or red (pale to deep) - has loosely arranged, sometimes frilly or lobed leaves.

* Romaine (Cos) - stronger, often sweeter flavor than other lettuces - may be green (many shades), deep red, or green that’s "freckled" with red - has large, thick, crisp leaves that grow upright and bunch - includes a few varieties that are more heat tolerant than most lettuces.

* Bibb - smaller - typically has dark-green leaves in a rosette that can have a yellow heart - includes buttercrunch varieties.

* Butterhead (Boston) - succulent - comes in medium to dark green, green with dark-red tips, and dark red - has tender, ruffly and/or rounded outer leaves and a soft, folded heart in a loose head.

* Head (crisphead, iceberg) - can be difficult to grow in climates with hot summers, taking nearly twice as long as leaf lettuce to develop - tends to have closely wrapped, crisp, light to medium green leaves in a firm, round head.

Sprouts - A wide variety of vegetables and grains, grown without soil until they emerge and develop two leaves. Plants used for sprouts include amaranth, various beans, broccoli, buckwheat, cabbage, canola, cauliflower, some clovers, kale, kohlrabi, lentils, mustards, radishes, sunflowers and wheat.

Cabbage - often added for the "crunch" of rather thick leaves; may taste mildly sour.

* Traditional - depending on type, can mature early to late - ranges in color from a light green to a dark bluegreen to a purple-red - now includes "mini" and "pointed" varieties.

* Savory - thin, crinkled leaves - more tender than traditional varieties - usable "mini" or full-grown.

* Chinese - upright, sometimes column-shaped heads with a cabbage taste and a lettuce-leaf texture - often deep green with white ribs.

Chicory – provides the bittersweet taste prized in French and Italian salads.

* Endive - crisp, deeply fringed (or "cut") green leaves, although some varieties are grown for the frilly sprigs at the plant’s heart.

* Escarole - sprawling, open heads of crunchy, thin leaves - medium green with a creamy heart.

* Italian Dandelion - more upright-growing than true dandelions, but with similar, larger leaves - often dark green with red, white or green ribs and "cut" edges.

* "Head" chicory of various types, shapes and colors, all of which typically have white leaf veins.

Salad Greens - as often as not, also used as a highly nutritional cooked vegetable that has a milder, less "snappy" taste than the raw version in salads.

* Beet - young upper growth (not the better-known root) - includes varieties bred just for their tangy addition to salads - can be green or red with red to red-orange veins.

* Mustard - easy to grow - uncooked, can have hot-to-mild mustard (spicy) flavor - may be bright green, red or almost purple.

* Asian - a huge family that includes plants with edible flower buds, the edible chrysanthemum (leaf) varieties, and the chois (pak choi, bok choi, etc.). Many are not yet available outside of seed catalogs, which typically explain their uses and provide their Oriental common name.

* Kale and collard - can be sweeter than many greens, especially when cooked after the first fall frost - harvested early for salads or use as a garnish - includes varieties that are mostly ornamental and ones that look like dinosaur skin, ferns and strangely shaped roses - can be any shade of red or green, plus colorful combinations of the two - may have extremely curly, "blistered," or tooth-edged leaves.

* Spinach - may have smooth or savoyed (ruffled) dark-green leaves - depending on variety, adds mild to acid-like "zing" to salads.

* Swiss chard - long-stemmed with curly leaves - vies with kale for being the most colorful salad green, with stems and veins that can be white, but also can be gold, pink, orange, purple, or red (pastel to near-neon variations).

* Turnip - young upper growth (not the better-known root) - best when variety has "hairless" leaf.

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K-State Research and Extension is a short name for the Kansas State University Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service, a program designed to generate and distribute useful knowledge for the well-being of Kansans. Supported by county, state, federal and private funds, the program has county Extension offices, experiment fields, area Extension offices and regional research centers statewide. Its headquarters is on the K-State campus, Manhattan.

Story by:
Kathleen Ward, Communications Specialist
kward@oznet.ksu.edu
K-State Research& Extension News