!!!! What are your favourite salad greens?

I had my first produce from my new garden yesterday - Raab broccoli florets and amaranth thinnings, with purchased romaine and a creamy dressing.  Yum!

My palate seems to be maturimg, and I actually LIKED the stronger flavours. I previously only liked romaineleaf lettuce,  and tomatos and cucumbers.

What do you put in and plant for your salads?

Snacked on more fresh salad greens today which had me wondering if maybe the reason I tolerate them is that I grew them.

I have grown a fewthings in the past I am not fond of usually, and enjoyed them, even if I still wont eat the store version. Something to be said for a garden...

Radicchio is my favorite, but rest of the family does not like it so much. I like rather bitter greens with fruit in the salad.

I have started to appreciate different salad green plants so I haven't had much variety to date.

I do enjoy the strong flavors of endive and the pepperiness of watercress.

I've started growing a few varieties of kale this past year but still figuring out how to enjoy it.

Arugula, mache, lettuce (this year we're growing  Teagan variety), pea shoots, young volunteer garlic tops are what we use most commonly. Arugula does well in the cold frame for us. I also love a variety of chicories for crunch, but not growing any this year.

I second amarinth!  lettuce, spinich, nipplewort, arugola, a twitch of dill, yum!

My favourite greens for salad are the easiest ones to grow. Now it's becoming winter I have lambs lettuce and miners lettuce growing outdoors, and microgreens ('radish' and 'broccoli') indoors.
During other times of the year all kinds of greens are growing wild and in the garden. Everything that's edible raw I mix in the salad.

Last year I tried out different microgreens. Now I know four species at the same time is not a smart thing to do ...

Inge Leonora-den Ouden wrote:My favourite greens for salad are the easiest ones to grow. .... Everything that's edible raw I mix in the salad.

That's exactly what I do too! My husband isn't fond of strong flavours, so anything mustardy or otherwise strong in small amounts. I would let lots of things self seed in the polytunnel for baby leaves. I am still without that at the moment, but have some baby kale, violets, sorrel, bittercress available. Also some perennial greens are good in salad, although not all are available year round. Hablitzia tastes to me like a mild lettuce, salt bush (Atriplex halimus I think) tastes like beet leaves, young Scorzonera leaves are mild and sweet.
We probably ought to eat more raw, but I find picking all the baby leaves a bit of a faff - growing sprouts on the windowsill like Inge would make hunter gathering much more easy!

I haven't met a salad green yet that I don't like and really enjoy creating different combinations.

Where I live our climate means I have a great variety on hand in any season, and always eat seasonally so my salads vary a lot.

I see that many of you are limited by where you live and it is interesting to see how well you all manage to find what grows best for you, permies are definitely a creative lot with their food and aware of the health benefits.

I like to forage and I have a huge ranch and live in the south. So I have greens all year. Wild onions are a favorite to spice up our salads. Arugula is my favorite garden green.

Wow, i cant pick one or two. I would have to list salad burnet, arugula, beet greens, mallow, chard, and so many kale varieties. In full summer we jewel of Opar and giant magenta lambs quarter. I have yet to try radicchio although i would like to grow it on a recommendation. Very early in the spring we do grow some lettuce mostly what reseeds. Its window of yumminess is so short whereas our other greens have a very long season of edibility

I've already posted on some of this, but here's another version:  #1) Radicchio: I have a naturalized grex from seed that was excess from a breeding project that Frank Morton was selecting from. All possible leaf shapes, color range from deep dark maroon to yellow-green, leaves from complex dandelion to broad and ruffled to Romaine.  Y'all ever read John Lennon's "In His Own Right" & "A Spaniard In the Works"? Well if you'd want some seed, I tried this year but the birds got it all! So, if you want some send "A stabbed, undressed envelope" to me at 1921 Port St. Eugene OR 97402, and I will pin it to the wall by my front door so I don't forget next July. In my climate this tasty salad green (er, Red? Mottled?...) went from my garden, where it remains, to my front yard, to the cracks in my driveways, so I'm occasionally tossing seed around where there's only green chicory, to liven things up a bit, if they can't take a joke...
#2 Mitsuba (Japanese Parsley) This one left my garden zone and now dominates the shady margins under my fruit trees, commonly used on top of Sushi in the better Sushi bars, yep, carrot family, so good for pollinator support too. Not much flavor, but damn, it's green and totally edible. Shoots up tall to seed, so contributes to compost well. Hollow stems for invertebrate shelter,
#3 chives or other alliums like garlic chives, if the greens are too strong for ya, save them for soup and put the flowers in yr, salad! (they have a bit of green, eh?

Baby red chard and shoots: pea, buckwheat, sunflower, etc

I didn't think I liked kale and then I stumbled of a kale salad recipe which I find myself craving.  It's so good, that I want it as a late evening snack rather than anything else!  Here is the link: https://smittenkitchen.com/2013/08/kale-salad-with-pecorino-and-walnuts/

Timothy Norton wrote:I have started to appreciate different salad green plants so I haven't had much variety to date.

I do enjoy the strong flavors of endive and the pepperiness of watercress.

I've started growing a few varieties of kale this past year but still figuring out how to enjoy it.

Rick mentioned parsley, which made me think of how much I love parsley.  I always freeze a bunch to get me through the winter, but it makes a fantastic pesto and something I can go overboard on is "parsleyed potatoes."  I almost use them in equal measure; in other words, as much fresh parsley as cubed up potatoes! My mom used to peel new potatoes, but I never do, and they don't have to be new potatoes, either.  I add a fair amount of butter and salt and toss it all together.  It doesn't sound like much, but it is amazing.  I told a friend about it and she tried it and then proceeded to make it for at least the next four nights concurrently!  Try it; you'll like it!

Barbara Simoes wrote:
... "parsleyed potatoes."  I almost use them in equal measure; .  It doesn't sound like much, but it is amazing.  I told a friend about it and she tried it and then proceeded to make it for at least the next four nights concurrently!  Try it; you'll like it!

I've always considered parsley to be a superfood. No wonder your friend was craving it.

For those of us whose growing season is a bit too short, I have found that carrot tops are a great substitute, with similar calcium, vitamin C, A etc.

I should have mentioned them in my preferred greens -- young carrot tops are tender and sweet of course. I often offset the blandness of wild spinach with carrots tops and mustard tops (just plain old yellow mustard seed from your local spice section at a fraction of the price.)

I've never had carrot tops (or mustard tops); I guess I'll have to give them a try.  Parsley is extremely hardy, too.  We've had our first snow and many freezing nights, and it'll be just fine.  It's a biannual so it'll be back next year too.  I had harvested seed and where I dropped some it sprouted and is coming up.  I've never had seed be so successful and easy to grow! I live right below in Vermont where we used to be zone 4.  It's always done well.  

Ra Kenworth wrote:

Barbara Simoes wrote:
... "parsleyed potatoes."  I almost use them in equal measure; .  It doesn't sound like much, but it is amazing.  I told a friend about it and she tried it and then proceeded to make it for at least the next four nights concurrently!  Try it; you'll like it!

I've always considered parsley to be a superfood. No wonder your friend was craving it.

For those of us whose growing season is a bit too short, I have found that carrot tops are a great substitute, with similar calcium, vitamin C, A etc.

I should have mentioned them in my preferred greens -- young carrot tops are tender and sweet of course. I often offset the blandness of wild spinach with carrots tops and mustard tops (just plain old yellow mustard seed from your local spice section at a fraction of the price.)

I like to eat carrottops in soups.

I only like iceberg lettuce.  I am good with other lettuce like romaine if it is mixed with iceberg lettuce.

I like all fruits and veggies paired with iceberg lettuce...

I like arugula with a mix of lettuces.  Hoping for a better lettuce crop this next year.  

I love AhROOGLAH, but it's iffier to grow in my conditions and doesn't reseed much, so it's a delicacy rather than a staple: my staples grow like weeds.

Rick Valley wrote:I love AhROOGLAH, but it's iffier to grow in my conditions and doesn't reseed much, so it's a delicacy rather than a staple: my staples grow like weeds.

Yeah I used to have an arugula-mustatd "landrace?"  thingy that didn't seed well if it wasn't in a barrel, but perhaps that's where came my brassica cross mustard annual that grows a bit better

Wild spinach:. Eat some  paste
while doing your 1st coffee checkup..
Grab a couple handfuls going kitchen-ward

But I've been switching to nettles which love compost! And of course you can't eat them raw

so actually I have been eating much less salad and
just sticking those weeds in my flatbread
as I pass 2nd coffee checkup

There are several traditional heirloom vegetables that were bred for their greens and not their roots. Hong Vit radish, is a fuzz free radish green. Seven Top Turnip is a very hardy turnip grown for its greens instead of it's root. Bulls blood & early wonder beets also make excellent salad greens. Tokyo Bekana is a leafy chinese cabbage grown known for it's salad prowess.

You can use Tokyo Bekana as an indicator of your soil health. If you can grow this green uncovered without pest damage, you're soil is doing excellent.

My hubby is strictly a lettuce fan —- iceberg or romaine. Me, on the other hand, like to make salad out of an assortment of greens, which I grow myself…..
Leaf lettuces, especially the red oak leaf types
All sorts of Asian greens, especially tatsoi, various bok choys, and Chinese cabbage especially one called Tokyo Bekena.
Spinach
Amaranth
Chard/beet greens
A little bit of basil

I’m not fond of arugula or mustard, though I know people who love them in salad mixes. Same for malabar spinach, which I like cooked but not raw.

Force grown dandelion is delightful served with a hot vinegar/bacon dressing. I could eat this every day!

My # favorite salad green ever is sorrel.  It has a slight lemony flavor.
I grew crysanthemum microgreen and they were delicious.
Verdolaga is easy to grow here in mountainous Mexico. (Purslane)
It's ok in moderation, a little on the slimy side.
Very young okra freshly picked in a salad are delicious.
Beet greens!!!
Sunflower sprouts!!!

Warning: the salad green question came up on the very day that winter became real, and the transition from the endless summer slammed home. Salad has suddenly become a nearly exotic treat. To each their own: Some people could never be a wine steward, they prefer fizzy beer. Some tastes are learned. I was partnered with an Arab-American for some years and learned from her recipes for purslane in mixed salads and I can taste how nutritional purslane is. I do agree that hunger makes the best sauce: when I rode bicycles across Canada  for a summer with a younger lover (It was her suggestion, and she rode a 3-speed!) well, on that ride EVERYTHING tasted AWESOME!!! Heaven was any small town with both a bakery and a good butcher shop, or maybe whole smoked fish in the supermarket! Instead of "salad",  we foraged wild greens, and teas. I began wild foraging as a semi-feral child and discovered Euell Gibbons  by the time I was a teen, and I was eating wild asparagus raw, hard to improve on freshness! Some tastes are inherited, and not learned: I'm from generations upon generations who lived on the shores of the North Sea: when I was a kid a bit of bell pepper was considered exotic; but a freshly picked warm green pepper in a summer salad can make you realize god is here with us NOW. Later my Arab American partner and I began learning La Cocina Mexicana from the Eastern Oregon gringa wife of the Tejano/Mexicano who I had met while we were student teachers in the same high school, and whose mom was teaching her new daughter in law how to cook for her boy, a Korea veteran, and we'd sit around eating pickled jalapenos and fresh hot tortillas while the boiled lengua (beef tongue) was being peeled, ground up and simmered en route to inclusion in tamales. The cocina/"cuisine" Mexicana does have salads, but at least as often the salad function is a topping, as in a taco, or the salad is more like a slaw, or the salsa is as much green as red. Parsley and Coriander are strewn about freely. A friend gave me a French Parsley variety and I have my fingers crossed that THAT parsley is going to become weedy- it's WONDERFUL in a salad.  When the reviewer for Best Places: Washington showed up in my friend's restaurant in Olga, and ordered a salad we scored beaucoup points when I told him we'd just run OUT of SALAD so I would be just a bit longer because I would go out to the garden and pick some more -he'd never been told that before! Freshness is indeed a ranking characteristic. And just so, there are major differences between varieties and species, like the spectrum of tastes of the Radicchio Chicories growing (a single species) today in my yard from Frank Morton's grex of Italian Chicory varieties, with tastes from "sweet" to bitter, and color from yellow-green to dried-blood red/near-purple, (How can you call that a salad "green"? ) as well as leaf textures from smooth to frilly, leaf shapes from dandelion-like to Romaine-style, and bite from crunchy to smooth and soft to nearly prickly: What are you supposed to do? Did I mention mints? They're not just for inclusion in dressings! They are a bit hard to nail down as to species, but they find their way into many of my salads. I favor spearmint  types. Another thing: salad is healthful- everybody knows that! I'm a hepatitis survivor, and since then I became a devotee of the Dandelion,  and Not just the roasted root for tea: I eat raw dandelion leaves at every encounter I judge safe from herbicide and/or wandering dogs, and it does me well. I do apologize for this ramble; maybe I'm just reacting to the shock of the endless blue-sky summer we just had turning to winter in a day. I knew it was coming, but it took so long it hit particularly hard. At least my cat has quickly become more snugly. If we are to have a hard winter I'd best find a big tub of Kimchee, soon.