Fresh salad ingredients that last?

[Morning Glory]

There's a brand here that sells living lettuce, still has roots attached. It comes in a hard plastic box with a little divot where the roots are that I think you are supposed to put water in when you get home. I think it's some type of butter lettuce.

Yes we get that here - usually a selection of different lettuces. They are more expensive though.

 

[Mountain Cat]

For me: cabbage lasts really well. (this is the type that comes in the ball shape, whether red or white/green).

Parsnips do well. I'm sure carrots last well, too - they're just not around my home very often...

Onions and potatoes do pretty well if stored in cool dark places.

Yes, the rooted lettuce does well with water - sort of a home hydroponic system after all.

Amazingly, the bag of cut leaf lettuce I got from local farmers is still surviving - nine or ten days after acquiring. (I mean what remains of it....) I hope to get a recipe up today where it's on the plate as a garnish for the dish I made for breakfast this morning.)

 

[JAS_OH1]

When I buy green leaf, romaine, or similar types of lettuce, I generally just cut what I need from it and keep it in the refrigerator crisper drawer, and then I take the bottom portion and put it in a rocks glass in my windowsill with about an inch of water. It grows new leaves! With scalliions I cut off the bottom section about 1 inch from the roots and put those in shot glasses or plant them in my garden.

You can do this with a lot of salad vegetables, apparently. And you can grow ramps from garlic cloves, too. I learned about this from an article I found online and was delighted to be able to get more use out of my salad veggies, especially since the weather here in NE Ohio is so unpredictable in spring. We had a bit of snow and the temperature was down to around 30F one night last week. Today it was 74F, LOL!

 

[Morning Glory]

When I buy green leaf, romaine, or similar types of lettuce, I generally just cut what I need from it and keep it in the refrigerator crisper drawer, and then I take the bottom portion and put it in a rocks glass in my windowsill with about an inch of water. It grows new leaves! With scalliions I cut off the bottom section about 1 inch from the roots and put those in shot glasses or plant them in my garden.

View attachment 40796

View attachment 40797

You can do this with a lot of salad vegetables, apparently. And you can grow ramps from garlic cloves, too. I learned about this from an article I found online and was delighted to be able to get more use out of my salad veggies, especially since the weather here in NE Ohio is so unpredictable in spring. We had a bit of snow and the temperature was down to around 30F one night last week. Today it was 74F, LOL!

I've been doing this too lately with lettuce and also pac choi. Oh and currently some celery which has grown little roots. I hadn't thought about the garlic bulbs. Do you mean plant them in soil?

 

[MrsDangermouse]

When I buy green leaf, romaine, or similar types of lettuce, I generally just cut what I need from it and keep it in the refrigerator crisper drawer, and then I take the bottom portion and put it in a rocks glass in my windowsill with about an inch of water. It grows new leaves! With scalliions I cut off the bottom section about 1 inch from the roots and put those in shot glasses or plant them in my garden.

View attachment 40796

View attachment 40797

You can do this with a lot of salad vegetables, apparently. And you can grow ramps from garlic cloves, too. I learned about this from an article I found online and was delighted to be able to get more use out of my salad veggies, especially since the weather here in NE Ohio is so unpredictable in spring. We had a bit of snow and the temperature was down to around 30F one night last week. Today it was 74F, LOL!

I hadn't thought of doing that with lettuce - I'm going to try it.

If by ramps you mean wild garlic, you can't grow that from ordinary garlic cloves because they're different species. You can plant garlic cloves and 6 months or so later you'll get a bulb of garlic - it needs a period of cold weather to form cloves though so its probably too late for this year. We often grow it over the winter on our allotment.

 

[Morning Glory]

You can plant garlic cloves and 6 months or so later you'll get a bulb of garlic - it needs a period of cold weather to form cloves though so its probably too late for this year.

What about the green shoots - they must be edible like wild garlic? Maybe you get green shoots if you put a clove in a little water...

 

[TastyReuben]

I hadn't thought of doing that with lettuce - I'm going to try it.

If by ramps you mean wild garlic, you can't grow that from ordinary garlic cloves because they're different species. You can plant garlic cloves and 6 months or so later you'll get a bulb of garlic - it needs a period of cold weather to form cloves though so its probably too late for this year. We often grow it over the winter on our allotment.

I'm interested in trying to grow some garlic. So I could stick a sprouted clove in the ground now (Spring here) and maybe get a full head in November? How do you know when it's ready to pull? Just a good guess? Thanks!

 

[JAS_OH1]

Yes, ramps are the green shoots from garlic cloves. I have some growing in the window now.

 

[JAS_OH1]

I've been doing this too lately with lettuce and also pac choi. Oh and currently some celery which has grown little roots. I hadn't thought about the garlic bulbs. Do you mean plant them in soil?

I think you could with the garlic but mine is in shot glasses in the window. It's got green shoots (ramps) growing. For now I'm going to leave as is and cut the ramps to use in dishes for garlic flavor. Probably nutritious too since they are green?

 

[MrsDangermouse]

I'm interested in trying to grow some garlic. So I could stick a sprouted clove in the ground now (Spring here) and maybe get a full head in November? How do you know when it's ready to pull? Just a good guess? Thanks!

I think its probably too late for this year - garlic is usually planted in November or very early spring (depending on the variety) because it needs a good couple of months of cold weather below 10C for the clove to split into a bulb. I'm not sure what you'd get if you tried to plant one now.

 

[MrsDangermouse]

What about the green shoots - they must be edible like wild garlic? Maybe you get green shoots if you put a clove in a little water...

Possibly....I've never tried it though. Garlic leaves are very very tough so you'd want to eat them young.

Just out of interest I googled ramps because its not a vegetable I'm familiar with.....it turns out ramps are a wild onion/garlic native to North America (allium tricoccum). The wild garlic we have here in Europe (and I think in Asia too) is allium ursinum, but from what I've read they are similar in terms of growth habits and flavour.

I don't usually do Latin names for plants, but its useful when it comes to the alliums because there are so many of them! "Ordinary" bulb garlic is allium sativum - its grows very differently to wild garlic and the leaves are totally a different shape and texture. Here's an old photo of one of our garlic crops drying:

 

[JAS_OH1]

Good to know! I wrongly assumed garlic greens were ramps. I'd read it somewhere and accepted it as fact. Oops!