Vegetable Gardening (67 page)

‘Red Salad Bowl':
This is a red version of the classic ‘Salad Bowl'. It's a loose-leaf, open-pollinated lettuce that features frilly green leaves and a mild, tender taste. This attractive burgundy-red-leafed version grows and looks best in cooler weather.

‘Royal Oak Leaf':
An improved version of the old-fashioned oak leaf, the ‘Royal Oak Leaf' is open-pollinated, has bigger, more defined, darker green, deeply cut leaves and is slower to bolt, making it better for warm-weather growing.

Popeye's Pal: Spinach

Spinach is a Middle Eastern vegetable that has been cultivated for centuries. The dark green leaves of spinach (
Spinacia oleracea
) are nutritious (just ask Popeye, Olive Oyl, and Brutus of comic book fame) and stronger tasting than lettuce. It's one of the first crops many gardeners plant in spring. In fact, when the heat comes, spinach quickly bolts. However, if you love spinach and want to eat it throughout the summer, you can grow warm-weather spinach look-a-like crops that produce all summer, such as New Zealand spinach (
Tetragonia tetragonioides
) and Malabar spinach (
Basella rubra
). Though not in the spinach family, they have a similar look and taste.

You can grow two different leaf types of spinach: savoy (crinkled) and smooth. Which is better is a matter of personal preference. The savoy-leaf types give you more leaf surface to hold that salad dressing, but the smooth-leaf types are easier to clean.

Unless otherwise noted, the varieties in the following sections mature in about 30 to 45 days from a spring planting. As with lettuce (which I describe earlier in this chapter), you can always harvest the young, tender greens earlier if you just can't wait.

Savoy spinach

The following are popular savoy-type (crinkled-leaf) spinach varieties:

‘Bloomsdale Long Standing':
This heirloom variety has thick-textured, glossy, crinkled, dark green leaves.

‘Melody':
This hybrid, All-America Selections winner (AAS; see Chapter 4 for more) features large semi-savoy leaves and good disease resistance.

‘Tyee':
This hybrid, slightly savoy-type is a vigorous grower. It's a personal favorite because it's easy to grow and slow to bolt.

Smooth spinach and some spinachlike friends

Following are a few smooth spinach varieties and a couple of good look-and-taste-alikes that are easy to grow:

‘Malabar Red Stem':
Although this plant isn't botanically related to spinach, its vining red stems produce spinachlike leaves all summer. This heat lover grows to 6 feet tall, so it must be trellised and grown like a pole bean (see Chapter 7 for details on growing beans). It can be used as a spinach substitute raw or cooked.

‘New Zealand':
This 1- to 2-foot-tall plant resembles spinach in looks and flavor, but it's able to withstand summer heat. It can be cut repeatedly and still regrow, a method called c
ut and come again.
I talk more about this method later in this chapter.

‘Oriental Giant':
This hybrid variety produces large, smooth, 12- to 15-inch-long leaves and yields up to three times more foliage than other spinach varieties.

‘Reddy':
This smooth-leafed hybrid spinach variety has red stalks and veins that contrast nicely with its deep green, arrow-shaped leaves.

‘Renegade':
This smooth-leafed hybrid spinach variety is faster growing and more disease resistant than the similar ‘Space' variety.