If you are working with sandy soil, you will need the compost to add organic matter, and help slow drainage rather than start it. As a break between the arugula and next planting, I put down a pot with sage, partly for decoration, mainly to discourage the dogs from trampling the bed. After disappearing from summer glare, dandelions returned to my lawn in September. Sowing in a second spring. Then I remembered why I don't and won't. Soon earthworms that had long ago abandoned the lawn would move in. As the seedlings appear, I find myself rushing out each morning to water them. I covered the broken-up clay with a mix of roughly 2 inches of compost and one of manure, and chopped it in, an overall ratio of six of soil to one of compost and manure. Mix of lettuce and other greens crossword clue. The dandelion is, in fact, a food plant and close relation to many of our favorite salad leaves. By God, you look delicious already! I thought of every bad moment of bad days and swung the pick and swore. Three colors: red, yellow and white.
Soon this bed would be covered with dewy heads of lettuce, arugula, radicchio and endive. Nowhere near enough. I swear solemnly to them that I will routinely weed to keep the Bermuda grass at bay. Once I realized that these too were perfect candidates for Southern California's second spring, there was only one thing left to do: tear up a good chunk of lawn out back and put in a salad garden. At 8 inches, I felt like Prince Charles, champion of organics. Mix of lettuces and other greens crossword clue and solver. How to get your garden growing.
The first clue was that the lettuces at farmers markets somehow contrived to get lusher, frillier, more tender every autumn. In the next stretch of newly tilled earth, broccoli raab -- those strong-flavored trim-line florets the chefs serve with lemon, olive oil, garlic and chile peppers. Both are peppery, the arugula for salad, the nasturtiums to use whole or diced as slightly hot and vivid garnishes. Mostly I cursed my refusal to use Roundup or other herbicides. To know how much to buy, measure your plot, then look for a key on the side of the sack to calculate how much it will cover. Yo, courtier, pass the beer. By contrast, a shovel driven hard into my "lawn" went in maybe an inch. Then there were the intriguing asides on the back of some seed packets: "Plant again in fall in mild climates. I dimly realize that it will take more springs, first and second, to figure out what I can grow and what I will lose to my particular combination of pets and pests. Breaking up the clay, picking out the rubble and, with increasingly ragged fingers, pulling out the Bermuda root took days. Here are some sources for a starter salad garden: Renee's Garden "California Spicy Greens" seed mix with arugula, mizuna and endive is available from Orchard Supply Hardware and leading Southern Californian garden centers for $2.
Once I'd dug in all those fragrant improvers, I felt less like Prince Charles, or Alice Waters, and more like a walking advertisement for Band-Aids, Neosporin and mentholated muscle rubs. In fact, the health of any plant isn't the result of fertilizer or even seed type. It feels a little greedy, but I could do a jig that I live in a place where you can plant salad greens in autumn. I edged the bed with pieces of concrete to discourage encroaching Bermuda grass, and began marking out my salad zones. These were usually the good-for-you foods: kale, spinach, cabbage.
Compost made from recycled grass clippings is given away by the county at four sites: Central Los Angeles (2649 E. Washington Blvd., open 9 a. m. to 5 p. ); San Pedro (1400 Gaffey St., at entrance of Harbor District Refuse Yard, open 24 hours); Northridge (at Wilbur Avenue and Parthenia Street, open 24 hours); and Lakeview Terrace (11950 Lopez Canyon Road, open 7 a. to dusk). Recommended reading: "The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping" by Rosalind Creasy (Sierra Club Books, $25); and "The Organic Salad Garden, " by Joy Larkcom (Lincoln Frances, $24. It's taken four years to realize that I've moved to a place where summer is followed by spring. A pick swung harder, maybe 2 inches. Like so many Angelenos, I come from somewhere else, a place where summer is followed by fall. I remind myself that my lip-smacking little seedlings have weeks to go, snails to survive, before meeting a glorious death under oil and vinegar.