Edible Salad Garden. Rosalind Creasy

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      A seedling bed of mesclun greens that are about two weeks old sits between a row of heading lettuces and curly endives.

interview

      Andrea Crawford

      Many people grow lettuce, but few do so with as much passion as Andrea Crawford. Andrea, who for years has grown lettuce for some of the best restaurants in the country—among them Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Spago’s in Los Angeles, and the Four Seasons in New York—takes pride in producing the incredibly succulent and dewy lettuces critical to the restaurants’ reputations for using fresh, seasonal ingredients.

      Andrea oversees these gardens devoted to what she considers the best vegetable varieties, the most important culinary herbs, and the tastiest edible flowers. Her real specialty, though, is lettuces. After many years of gardening experience, she has perfected a productive growing technique of leaf-picking baby lettuces. She recommends this method or another referred to as scissor-cutting, or cut-and-come-again, because she feels that home gardeners can obtain high-quality lettuces using this approach.

      Andrea is eager to share her techniques for growing and harvesting baby lettuces. “People ask why I don’t grow lettuce in the standard manner, why I bother with this intensive technique,” she said. “My immediate answer is, aesthetics. People in restaurants love baby lettuces, and my method allows them to preserve the shape of individual leaves. Garden lettuce is beautiful to look at; you can enjoy the lobed blades of ‘Oak Leaf,’ the undulations of ‘Salad Bowl,’ and the frills of ‘Lollo Rossa.’ If you’re going to grow your own lettuces, why not enjoy them to the fullest? Big lettuces taste great, but baby varieties, while milder and usually more tender, taste good too. This method is also an efficient way to produce lettuce in a small area.

      “To grow baby lettuces using my methods, it’s critical to start with optimum exposure and weather conditions and, most important of all, very rich soil. At the gardens I work with, we place a premium on compost, making it as rich as possible by composting continually and digging in at regular intervals. Three times a year we add soil amendments: blood meal and bonemeal or cottonseed meal. I think organic soil amendments are best for growing anything—particularly lettuces, because lettuce can be very bitter if not grown in rich, humusy soil. We never have bitter lettuce because we use so much organic matter—and because the weather never gets very hot in my garden.

      “The only pests we have are aphids and slugs. For the aphids we use an insecticidal soap. Slugs aren’t a problem most of the year because we’re there all the time to control them, but when they’re really active, we use slug bait on the perimeter of the garden, never touching the food plants.

      “For our intensive method of growing lettuce, we don’t let plants get much bigger than three or four inches tall. When we sow the seeds, we space them about a quarter inch apart; then we never thin them. Because we pick them so fast and so often, we never have crowding problems as we would if we just left them to choke themselves and eventually self-thin.

      “Optimum exposure and weather conditions are also essential to producing the best baby lettuce, so we take care to protect the plants in all weather. In cold weather we create tunnels of clear plastic film spread over PVC [polyvinyl chloride] tubing hoops; the plastic is attached to the hoops with giant plastic clips available from plumbing-supply houses. In warm summer weather we shade the beds with commercial shade cloth. Of course, winter weather doesn’t drop much below thirty degrees in either Berkeley or Los Angeles, and our summers are mild, but in cold-winter areas you could do the same thing in a greenhouse or cold frame.

      “Because we produce so much lettuce for the restaurants, I’ve decided through the years against scissor-cutting; leaf-picking is easier on plants because the plants regenerate faster that way. We pick only the biggest leaves, which are still only two to three inches long, and leave the crowns to produce new leaves.

      “Home gardeners can choose whichever method appeals to them, though. If you prefer the cut-and-come-again method of harvesting, take a knife or scissors and just go snip, snip across the plant about an inch or two above the crown. This won’t kill the plant, because enough energy and growing information is left in the crown for it to produce new leaves. New growth will occur in a short time if the weather is right—not too cold or too hot. Cut as much as you need and then separate the damaged leaves from the good ones. Scissor-cutting is great for home gardeners because it’s fast, but we leaf-pick each plant for restaurants and sort as we go so only the perfect leaves end up in the tub.

      “Washing is an important part of the final presentation. Put the lettuce leaves in a sink filled with water, gently slosh them up and down, and then spin several turns in a salad spinner until the leaves are quite dry. It’s important to dry baby lettuces thoroughly because they’ll collapse under the weight of any water left on them. Put the leaves between damp towels and refrigerate immediately. Later, be careful to dress them very lightly with a delicate oil-and-vinegar mixture so they won’t sag under the weight of a heavy dressing.”

      When asked which lettuce varieties she prefers most, Andrea said, “I think all varieties are interesting. There are all kinds of lettuces, and they’re fun to grow because they all look and taste slightly different. I’ve decided that the final product depends not as much on which varieties you choose as on how you grow them. There’s no such thing as a bad lettuce or a terrific lettuce; it’s entirely personal. Aesthetics are important; color, taste, and texture depend on what you want. If you like smooth, buttery, tender lettuces, go with ‘Limestone’ and ‘Bibb’ lettuces. For something slightly more crunchy and succulent, try the Batavians. Finally, in general, the reds may be a little more strongly flavored than the greens. All in all, it’s entirely up to your individual taste.”

      harvesting from the salad garden

      Salad greens may be harvested in many ways. The differences are dictated by the age of the plant, the method used to grow it, and the variety. Let’s first look at the different stages of a salad green’s life and see how to harvest each one. When you start seeds for most greens, you need to plant extra to make sure you have a full flat or bed of greens. Generally many more plants sprout than will fit in a mature bed, and selected baby plants need to be pulled out to prevent overcrowding. This process is called thinning. Once your plants have three or four leaves, you can thin them by cutting the baby plants off at soil level, or just pull the entire plant out of the ground. (This applies to some other vegetable seedlings besides salad greens too. Thinnings of beets, radishes, turnips, scallions, and peas are also good salad material.) Simply remove the root end, wash the baby plants, and add them to a mixed salad.

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