Sammy,

You can grow any kind of leaf lettuce or mesclun mix using the cut-and-come-again method. Sow the seed fairly thickly, thin as directed on the back of the package, and then clip off the leaves an inch or so above the ground to harvest them. New leaves then will grow. You can grow salad greens most of the year in containers, but the June-August heat is too much for many of them and they will bolt and send up seed stalks, or the leaves will brown out and just "melt away".

Lettuce greens seed mixes and mesclun mixes are available from virtually any seed retailer but I'll link one such company just so you can look at all the varieties offered.

And, by the way, some lettuce and other salad greens that are described as "heat tolerant" and "able to produce all summer long" might be heat tolerant in zone 5 or 6, but they are not all-summer-long producers in zones 7-10 because of the summer heat.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Territorial Seed Co.'s Lettuce Mix page

Dawn is right, even those mixes sold as heat tolerant are going to become bitter in July. But don't forget that you can plant for both a spring (in early April) and a fall (in early Sept) crop of both lettuce and spinach.

You might try arugula if you like a salad green with a little bite to it. It tastes kinda like roasted sesame seeds dipped in hot mustard.

I would use a big enough container that the roots don't get either too cold early in the season or too hot later. I would say at least 10 gallon and however much bigger you can handle would be even better--unless it needs to be portable.

Sammy, I live in the NE corner of the state and decided to try growing salad greens this winter without a hoophouse. They are in a somewhat protected area since our bunkhouse walls sheild them from the east and the north, but they are outside with no cover. On the nights that it is in the 30's, I pull a blanket over them.

There are a mixture of greens in there and I have cut the mustard about 3 times to allow the sunlight to get to the lettuce and spinach which seems to be growing at a much slower rate. The greens are growing in a big tree pot (about 3 feet across) and I only filled it about half way up to allow the pot to give some protection from the weather as well. My biggest problem has been the falling acorns and leaves, and you can see I have lots of them in there. In fact, when I went out to take this pic, I had to shoo away a squirrel. I have a couple of pots of black walnuts sitting in my yard, and now he has found all of these acorns in a pot also. I guess he thinks I am gathering them just for him. Someone tell him to hibernate, will ya.

I could have solved the leaf and acorn problem with a floating row cover, but I wanted to see how long they would continue into the winter without any covering except during those freezing nights.

Anyway this is today, Nov 11, and they look pretty good.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Sammy, I live in the NE corner of the state and decided to try growing salad greens this winter without a hoophouse. They are in a somewhat protected area since our bunkhouse walls sheild them from the east and the north, but they are outside with no cover. On the nights that it is in the 30's, I pull a blanket over them.

There are a mixture of greens in there and I have cut the mustard about 3 times to allow the sunlight to get to the lettuce and spinach which seems to be growing at a much slower rate. The greens are growing in a big tree pot (about 3 feet across) and I only filled it about half way up to allow the pot to give some protection from the weather as well. My biggest problem has been the falling acorns and leaves, and you can see I have lots of them in there. In fact, when I went out to take this pic, I had to shoo away a squirrel. I have a couple of pots of black walnuts sitting in my yard, and now he has found all of these acorns in a pot also. I guess he thinks I am gathering them just for him. Someone tell him to hibernate, will ya.

I could have solved the leaf and acorn problem with a floating row cover, but I wanted to see how long they would continue into the winter without any covering except during those freezing nights.

Anyway this is today, Nov 11, and they look pretty good.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Carol, you and I are kinda on the same wave length this year. I planted some cabbage and lettuce in one end of one of the raised beds. It has been..... well..... experimental.

I understand they're pretty cold hardy but that what is damaging to them is the cold wind. I'm just trying to keep them going till the cabbage heads up. I lined up bags of leaves all around the edges as the plants had begun to poke their heads up above the top of the raised bed, and I've been throwing a blanket and then a tarp on top when frost was forecast. I had originally dug down a bit into the raised bed, planning to be able to just lay a couple of old shower doors across, but I didn't go deep enough. So tomorrow I'll be using the pieces of 2x12's DH found for me and trying to build up the sides a bit, then maybe I can use those shower doors. --Ilene

Carol and Ilene,

The greens look great!

Dawn