Southampton - Spring is finally here and we're tired of the hearty soups and casseroles that got us through the long, snowy winter. It's time for lighter fare. When the weather warms up we want salads. Luckily for us gardeners, salad greens are ridiculously easy to grow, and now's the time to plant them. Most salad greens grow best in cool weather, and our cool Hamptons springtime offers ideal growing conditions for them.

How To Grow Your Own Salad

You can buy transplants of lettuce and other greens, but it's easy to plant your own seeds. You can start them indoors (I told you how in my February column, "Gardening Season Starts Now"). Or you can sow your salad right in the garden. Give them a sunny location (most will tolerate some light shade for part of the day, but they're not shade lovers).

Dig some compost or composted cow or horse manure into your garden, and rake it well to create an organically rich, fine-textured seedbed. Keep the soil moist—but not soggy—as plants grow. Salad greens are shallow rooted and dry out easily. If nighttime temperatures are predicted to drop below 30 degrees (it could still happen!), cover the plants with lightweight garden blankets or floating row covers. Or set up a tunnel of plastic stretched over a series of wire hoops. Garden centers have these protective devices and materials in stock, or you can order them online from seed and garden supply companies such as the venerable Burpee Company (burpee.com), and Gurney's Seed & Nursery Company (gurneys.com) in the U.S., or gardening-naturally.com in the UK.

Keep your salad greens thriving by watering them with a fish/seaweed fertilizer diluted according to package directions. Local nurseries and garden centers stock various brands.

Harvesting

The best part of gardening is when you get to go out to your garden with a basket or bowl and pick your lunch or dinner. You can pick individual leaves (start with the outer leaves) or cut entire plants with a knife or scissors an inch or two above the ground when the plants are four to six inches high. They'll regrow and give you another harvest or two…or maybe even three.

If you pick your leaves for baby greens while they're small, you'll be eating salad from your garden a month after you plant.

Inspiration From Across the Pond

Salads can, of course, be built on lots of leafy delicacies besides lettuce. There's a whole world of salad greens out there to explore. French market gardeners have been growing salad greens for centuries. They've given us the term "mesclun" for those delectable salads of mixed greens that so many of us love. It's a snap to grow your own mesclun, either by mixing and matching greens in your garden or by experimenting with some of the mesclun mixes available from seed companies. Three places to find mesclun seed mixes are burpee.com, Johnny's Selected Seeds (johnnyseeds.com) and The Cook's Garden (cooksgarden.com).

What To Grow

Here are some salad fixings to plant in your patch:

 • Arugula. Also called rocket, or roquette. The piquant leaves have a hard-to-describe flavor that's spicy, warm and kind of nutty all at once. You'll either love it or hate it (I love it). Young leaves have a milder taste than larger ones. When the plant sends up flower stalks in summer the flavor becomes sharp and bitter, so pull the plants (or leave them in place to reseed).

 • Asian Greens. The universe of delectable Asian greens available to American gardeners is continually expanding. Use them young for salads, or let them grow larger for stir-fries. Tatsoi and Pac Choi are mild-flavored and are slow to bolt in summer. For a spicy note, try a radish variety that's grown for its leaves, such as Hong Vit (available from johnnyseeds.com). Shungiku, or edible chrysanthemum (yes, a cousin of the ubiquitous fall flowers) has an interesting aromatic flavor.

 • Cress. Watercress is a challenge to grow in a garden. But you can grow curly cress or upland cress, which have a similar peppery flavor. You can buy a packet of cress seeds, or find them in a mesclun mix.

 • Curly Endive. The frilly leaves of endive, or frisee, are pleasantly bitter and a tasty addition to mesclun when they're small.

 • Lettuce. Of course your salad garden must contain lettuce. There are zillions more kinds of lettuce than the Iceberg, Boston and Romaine you find on supermarket shelves. Looseleaf lettuce is the easiest to grow, so start there. You'll find plenty of red- and green-leaved varieties. Why not experiment with a pre-packaged lettuce seed mix? Johnny's Selected Seeds (johnnyseeds.com) offers several, as do Burpee (burpee.com), Renee's Garden Seeds (reneesgarden.com) and The Cook's Garden (cooksgarden.com).

If you want to keep harvesting into the warm weather, try a heat-resistant lettuce like Oak Leaf or Saladbowl.

 • Mache. This mild-tasting leaf (old timers may know it as corn salad) adds a mellow note to the salad bowl. You can find it alone or included in a mesclun mix.

 • Mustard. Add a little heat to your salads with a spicy mustard. Mizuna is an Asian variety with a mildly spicy tang. The slowest-to-bolt-in-summer mustard, according to those in the know, is Green Wave. Use small mustard leaves in salads and cook older, hotter-tasting leaves (cooking mellows the flavor).

Sorrel. For a bright lemony lift, grow sorrel. Use the leaves in salads, or lightly sauté them for a tangy accompaniment to fish.

 • Spinach. Certainly spinach is a stalwart of the salad garden. If you want to let some leaves grow larger for cooking, plant a heat-resistant variety such as Emu or Tyee (from johnnyseeds.com), to keep the plants from bolting to seed as the weather warms (eventually they will, but these varieties postpone the inevitable).

So get busy. It's time to grow your own salad bar. And it's easy! Just be sure to fence in your salad garden to keep out the four-legged competition.