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Back-off bolt!

Posted on May 20th, 2009 – 9:41 AM
By Jaime Chismar

Warmer weather is good for our tomatoes and peppers, but brings our the worst in our spinanch, lettuce and cilantro — BOLT. This four letter word makes me cringe with the memory of bitter greens and disappointing salads. No amount of dressing can disguise greens gone wrong.

What is bolt? Basically, our garden greens have two jobs. In the spring, lettuce grows leaves and roots to make and store energy. In the summer, lettuce uses this stored energy to produce flowers and seeds. Unseasonably warm temperatures can trigger this change prematurely. It doesn’t matter if your lettuce has 40 leaves or four. Heat means that it is time to reproduce. The plant grows a stalk of flowers and sends a bitter-tasting chemical to the leaves as a deterrent to herbivores. One bite and you’ll never interrupt its reproductive cycle again.

Three years ago, the BF and I visited family over Memorial Day weekend. It was unseasonably warm throughout the Midwest. When we returned to the Twin Cities, I had a garden full of tiny spinach and tiny flowers. My greens’ growing season was over before I could even make a salad. I was bummed.

There’s not much you can do about bolt but cross you fingers. If you planted your greens in containers, you could move them to the shade. If you planted greens in your garden, you could mulch and water. There are bolt resistant varieties of spinach, lettuce and cilantro, but I haven’t had much luck.

How do you beat bolt?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 at 9:41 am and is filed under Greens + Lettuces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

17 Responses to "Back-off bolt!"

Geoff says:

May 20th, 2009 at 9:53 am

Plant them behind taller veggies (behind/under a cucumber trellis, bean towers, etc). Plant in an area that gets afternoon shade.

Not sure how effective this is, but it’s my plan for this season.

Jaime Chismar says:

May 20th, 2009 at 9:57 am

Geoff –

I like your idea of planting under a cucumber trellis. I may have to reseed after this warm weather passes. Do you have your cukes in the ground yet?

I know that broccoli and cauliflower can bolt, too. Do they get super bitter as well?

Geoff says:

May 20th, 2009 at 9:59 am

I don’t plant weeds. ;-)

Jaime Chismar says:

May 20th, 2009 at 10:12 am

Ha! Not a broccoli fan?

Geoff says:

May 20th, 2009 at 10:20 am

I wasn’t until this:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/good-eats/fresh-broccoli-salad-recipe/index.html

Stupid Alton Brown… now I gotta find a few extra square feet in my garden.

Debw says:

May 20th, 2009 at 10:31 am

Broccoli & cauliflower will remain edible as long as you pick the crop before the buds start to open. The good news is that after that first big head the little side heads come fast and furious and don’t ready need to be broken down into bite side pieces. As always it is a combination of timing and water, water, water during the heat.

Jennifer Twin Mom says:

May 20th, 2009 at 11:48 am

Ugh, I am trying not to freak out about my garden, but I think I have really bitten off more than I can chew. Only 4 of my peas came up, so I feel like most of that row is wasted. Now I also fear bolting lettuce.

Last night I spent all this time carefully laying out my soaker hoses only to discover later that I forgot to make them pass through my cucumber area. It’s like a comedy of errors around here!

My garden is long and narrow, and last year I planted my lettuce west of my tomatoes, so that the tomatoes shaded the lettuce much of the day by the time we got to July. It worked really well to avoid bolting, but after a while the lettuce was getting so little light that it wasn’t quite enough and it got leggy.

Allison says:

May 20th, 2009 at 11:55 am

I also noticed my rhubarb starting to bolt, I pulled up the flowering part, in hopes to save some of my rhubarb for this season…

Judybusy says:

May 20th, 2009 at 12:52 pm

Jennifer, don’t feel bad about your comedy of errors: you have plenty of company!

After many years of lusting for one, I planted a tree peony last year and was super-excited about the two buds on it this spring. On Monday, I was putting compost near the plant, lost control of the flow, and broke off one of the buds. I think I’ll just stay away from it.

Mary says:

May 20th, 2009 at 12:56 pm

Can you plant lettuce later for a fall crop?
When is the best time to plant onions? Fall? how about garlic, when’s the best time to plant it? Fall?

Erin says:

May 20th, 2009 at 1:15 pm

I planted lettuce seed (last weekend?) in a container. I know this is late, but I figured I could try to move it around so that it got enough shade to cool it off. It hasn’t sprouted yet–is the heat going to kill it off or is heat only a problem with established plants?

MNmom says:

May 20th, 2009 at 1:28 pm

The fierce winds here are killing me. I sowed morning glory seeds, babied them along for weeks indoors. The vines looked so pretty and healthy and I transplanted the peat pots to planters on my deck, thinking they would thrive and be a glorious screen of heart shaped foliage and pastel flowers. The wind has beaten them to shreds. A lovingly executed bad idea, I see now. I still have parsley seedlings and basil and no way am I exposing them to this wind.

Geoff says:

May 20th, 2009 at 2:37 pm

For anyone interested in recovering bitter greens, here’s some advice from Crooks Illustrated:

————
Published May 1, 1999.

How does blanching improve the flavor of bitter greens?

Shirley Corriher, food scientist and author of CookWise (Morrow, 1997), explained that natural acids in the rabe cause the harsh, bitter flavor. The heat of cooking, said Corriher, weakens the walls of the plant’s cells to the point at which some of them collapse. When the cell walls break, the acids in the plant leak out.

In effect, the large quantity of water used to blanch the rabe cleans it off by washing away those natural acids. When you pour the water down the drain, the acids go with it. In addition, the rabe gets a second rinsing when you shock it in cold water to stop the cooking. Braising, steaming, or sautéing, on the other hand, accomplish none of this because so little liquid, or none at all, is present to wash away the acids. So essentially, blanching in lots of water leaves the rabe cleaner, at least with regard to bitter-tasting acids, than the other techniques.

Amanda says:

May 21st, 2009 at 1:51 pm

MNMom, same thing happened to me. I grew all these great plants from seed, nurtured them ever so carefully only to have them get beat to death by the wind. I have planted stems…no leaves. How frustrating.

MNinNMexile says:

May 23rd, 2009 at 5:59 pm

The green-blanching sounds like a good idea especially since I love wilted-type sweet ‘n sour salads! If you have not tried these they are delicious and work well with leaf lettuces, spinach, chard, and romaine.

Jaime Chismar says:

May 26th, 2009 at 10:17 pm

My lettuce survived. Did anyone’s bolt?

Amanda says:

June 2nd, 2009 at 11:41 am

MNMom, check this out. I recently discovered these grape or cocktail tomatoes that are sold in this yellow cup with a clear plastic domed lid. The lid is easily separated from the yellow bottom and is open at the top and has a few holes in the sides. I was looking at that lid and it occurred to me it would make a great wind protector for new little seedlings. I had a tomato plant that was looking rather sickly after transplanting, put the dome on it and now it’s doing just fine! I went out over the weekend and bought two more containers of tomatoes (luckily I love tomatoes and, for grocery store ones, they’re pretty good). Now my petunias, which I started from seed and were really getting beat up by the wind, are protected from the wind and get a mini green house too.

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