By Jenny Spring
It’s salad season and it’s the best time to be eating it!
All types of lettuce grows well at this time of year. Lettuce likes the cooler temperatures and often bolts if it’s too hot.
Right now you can find butterhead, iceberg, red and green romaine, and salanova heads at the market in Huntsville.
My personal favourite lettuce is butterhead. There are many different types of butterhead that can be grown, all having amazing flavours. My favourite thing to do with butterhead is use the large leaves as wraps, supplementing bread.
Garden tips: I plant my seeds in cell trays, one in each cell (like the photo below). They stay in the cell tray for 30 days and then I transplant them into the garden and space them 12 inches apart. Lettuce is a heavy feeder and likes lots of compost. Every three weeks in the summer I start seeds so I have a succession of lettuce harvests throughout the entire summer.
Harvest at the bottom nub of the plant. Leave the nub in the ground for a second growth and harvest. (See photo below.)
Butterhead Lettuce Buddha Bowl
The bowl:
4 cups of cooked rice, chick peas, quinoa, millet or your preferred grain
2 cups of shredded raw beets
2 cups of grated raw carrots
Diced radishes (optional)
1 cup of sliced almonds
2 cups of spinach leaves
Chopped avocado (optional)
3 large butterhead lettuces (for wraps)
Take off outer layer of the butterhead lettuce leaves and assemble all ingredients into bowls. Add dressing (ingredients below) on top.
Dressing:
½ cup of nutritional yeast flakes
1/3 cups of water
1/3 cups of tamari
1/3 cups of apple cider vinegar
2 garlic cloves
2 tbsp. tahini
½ cup of olive oil
Combine all ingredients in a blender except olive oil. Blend. Then add olive oil.
Jenny Spring and Oliver Wolfe are co-owners of The Spring Farm with Andrea and Brian Currie. Each week, Jenny will share a recipe featuring in-season, Muskoka-grown produce from their local farm, which is just five kilometres from downtown Huntsville. She’ll also share a gardening tip about the chosen vegetable. You can find these vegetables and more at the Huntsville Farmers’ market on Thursdays after Victoria Day in the Canadian Tire parking lot, or at The Spring Farm gate on Bethune Road North starting in June.
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