Yes, they will probably bolt in early Spring. Once the flowers open, the leaves will get bitter. So I think your plan is a good one. The flowering stems make delicious cooked greens, if you snap them off while they are still green and crisp, before the flowers open. It's really important to keep all the mustards well fed and watered. Otherwise they will be small and bitter.

If you let your plants set seed, they will self-sow, and you will never get rid of them. You'll never have to plant seeds again. But you may need to thin out the seedlings. They disperse their seed in summer, and it germinates in early fall, and then they flower the next spring.

I use cut-and-come-again for arugula, but in my market garden I plant weekly anyway up until December. Arugula will bolt for several reasons, including the stress of continuous cutting. If you take only the largest leaves from each plant, it should last for several harvests, but the leaves will get progressively more spicy. New plantings will be more mild and tender for the first cutting. If you use a lot, I would incorporate multiple plantings in your garden plan.

I'm also in zone 7 and started my first veggie garden last summer. In the fall, I sowed a 4x4 raised bed with Even'Star Farms (in southern Maryland) Winter Arugula seeds from Southern Exposure Seeds. I sowed every few weeks in the fall, and we have had a bumper crop of arugula all winter with a garden blanket over hoops on the few cold nights.

My question relates to ikea's: my first sowing is now in flower. I let it go to flower because I read that the flowers are delicious too. We plan to eat them and make pesto with the leaves. Should I then pull out the plants so I can do lettuce in the bed? Will it come back in the fall or do I need to leave a few flowering plants to go to seed?

The later sowings are thick and lush and still providing us with cut and come again salads every couple of days. If I leave it and clear small areas to interplant good size lettuce babies (4-5 inch romaine) will they all coexist? If it is still going strong later in the spring, can I do the same thing with tomato plants? My idea is to treat it almost like an edible ground cover. I know it will also go to flower eventually and throw up tall stems, but I would love to be able to plant my summer stuff while keeping the arugula train on the rails.

Oh- and I have to share a salad idea for arugula lovers. In the fall when my arugula first started growing, I went on a work trip to Chicago and ate at the fabulous Atwood Cafe. I had a delicious salad of baby arugula, mint leaves, and a light champagne vinaigrette. There may also have been bacon involved, contributing to the yum factor:) I was knocked out by the combo of arugula and fresh mint (proportion was about 80/20). I had a head slap moment when I realized I have mint growing right next to my arugula bed. How did I never think of this perfect combo?

When arugula bolts, the leaves get tougher, sometimes a bit "hairy", and the flavor intensifies to a point that some find unpleasant, but the flowers have a nice arugula flavor that can be a welcome component in salads. I grow arugula for micro-greens, salad leaves and edible flowers, using different methods and spacing for each.

For cut-and-come-again, as the weather warms, the quality starts to diminish. You may find that it is less than ideal for a cover crop, but you can easily plant in openings in the established bed once you create them. Once your arugula bolts, it will stop producing more basal leaves, and the roots won't revert to that growth habit. Save seed from some of the plants, or allow some to self-seed, but most of them should be pulled or cut at the soil level to create space for other crops. I replant arugula under cover until mid-November, this gives me a supply of greens all winter, when it rarely bolts.

Thanks bi11me. That is the info I was looking for!

I saw a farm here in Austin Texas that was planting Arugala in the 100 degreeJune weather last year. I was floored. I would not have pegged it as being able to deal with the heat. She picked it to make bagged small salad greens for sale.

Yep, and you can do the same with lettuce, but you only get one cutting, and they use a lot of water. A very expensive way to produce a crop, even with shade cloth it's going to bolt fast in any kind of heat. If growing for flowers, a very thick planting would produce a good crop, but that's a specialized and limited market. Maybe white arugula pesto would be cool, though, with garlic, pine nuts, arugula flower petals, olive oil, and sea salt? Have to pass that one by one of my chefs.

When it bolts it attracts beneficial insects with it's bright white flowers. What billme said about using it as a cover crop works well. It doesn't complete with larger plants. I usually sow arugula first, then after a few cuttings when the weather warms the summer vegetables go in, but I don't bother removing the arugula. I mulch right over the top of it.

It's prolific, so you'll have lots of self-sown plants even if you collect some of the seed, too. If you don't want them, keep it cut back & don't let it flower or make pods.

It looks like my arugula is already sending up flower stalks. Flavor is still nutty and mild but I will have to plant another round for mid/late spring. Now I am swimming in arugula. Besides salad and pesto, what else can you use it for?

To answer Blue Swimmer: yes, the best use of bolted arugula is pesto. Then spiciness is a feature, not a bug. IME, it does not store for months, even in sealed jars in the freezer. But if you make it now, spaghetti with arugula pesto and any number of spring things (fresh anchovies, or asparagus, or pecorino cheese, or shiitake) is a very spring kind of dish, and you can use the last of it on the first potatoes or zucchini.

Mine were planted last spring, produced abundantly, flowered and died. Their offspring grew in late summer, flowered in the fall and were buried under leaves. However I found live shoots coming from the roots when I cleaned off their bed yesterday. So, I am looking forward to a lot of arugula this spring. Is it normal for the plants to act as biennials?