Spring has felt like it has gone on awhile this year. It is only now really warming up to a point where you break a sweat. With the nighttime temps creeping up to 70, the summer plants are ready to start growing.

Meanwhile we are in the heart of one of our more luscious May’s. The word “greens” is used a lot to talk about the shares, and here in our household we have been taking advantage of the savory dishes we can make with them.




A head of lettuce

While greens on their own with only a little oil, salt and pepper can be quite satisfying, it is when you add some umami that things kick up a notch. This flavor sensation can be added with ingredients such as mushrooms, bacon, fish sauce, seafood, fermented vegetables, toasted nuts, balsamic vinegar, cheese, and more.

My goal today was to make a wilted lettuce salad out of the biggest head of red leaf lettuce that we picked today. Well it turns out that our frying pan was filled before I cleaned the whole head. It tasted great, and a couple of helpings later and the whole thing was gone. It is a great way to eat up your lettuce.

I used the wilted lettuce salad recipe from our June 11, 2013 blog with a few modifications—I used bok choi instead of hakurei turnips, and I only cooked the lettuce on high for 30 seconds and then let it wilt in the hot pan for a few minutes.

Grandpa the tractor with our Tortella spader.

Meanwhile, out in the fields we continue on with the SARE cover crop project. One of our test blocks is shown below. In the right half of the bed we rolled down/crushed the cover crop (rye/vetch) to form a mulch. On the left we mowed and spaded in the crop to incorporate it into the soil. The rye grass did not germinate well and our crop is mainly vetch this year. Lower in biomass but high in nitrogen content. 



SARE cover crop test plot