Garden Notes

Arugula in early December garden, still growing and being harvested

Arugula is one of my favorite salad greens. I remember it from my childhood, except then it was called the rocket (the rockets being a corruption of the French roquette). My dad was particularly fond of this peppery lettuce and planted it every year. It had spicy green leaves with sort of a peppery-mustard flavor and needed to be mixed with milder greens to create a more balanced salad because it was too spicy on its own.

Now as an adult, I have been planting a mesclun mix of lettuces in spring that include arugula and enjoy the peppery taste that it adds to my salad. My lettuce patch usually performs best in spring and early summer and bolts when the hot weather arrives. I replant, but the hot summer weather is not kind to my lettuce patch and I don’t have much luck.

This year I decided to wait until autumn to replant and started my seeds in early September. They came up promptly and once again, we had fresh greens from the garden for salad. All the lettuce grew more slowly as the weather cooled down, but none of plants went to seed, which was a nice surprise. Then came a hard frost, which killed most of the lettuce except for the arugula. We had a few frosty days and the weather warmed up a bit and once again I was harvesting my peppery arugula, except now I was adding it to salad greens from the grocery store.

That arugula was still growing in early December, right up until the first snowstorm. Since they proved to be so hardy, I will be waiting for the January thaw to check my arugula patch for possible survivors. I am really hoping for winter lettuce!