The Basics
Spinach is one of the healthiest greens out there. Super nutrient-dense, spinach can be eaten raw in salads or cooked. Spinach is related to Swiss chard, beets, and the grain quinoa.
Cooking Tips
Try spinach in a simple salad, or lightly braised or sauteed with garlic as a side or part of a main dish.
For picky eaters, spinach can easily be incorporated into a wide variety of dishes: chop it finely and add to pasta sauce, meatloaf or meatballs, lentils, beans, or quesadillas or burritos.
You can also try a long, slow cook, and add butter and cream for a creamed spinach dish.
Spinach is an excellent green for making smoothies because of its mild flavor and tender leaves.
Storage Tips
Wrap loosely in a plastic bag in the fridge for 4-6 days. Discard any leaves that are yellowed or soft.
The Basics
One of our spring, fall, and winter season crops is salad mix, a blend of lettuces and colorful greens. A bag of this mix holds much more nutritional value than eating a head of iceberg or even Romaine lettuce. A rule of thumb when picking out healthy salad greens is the darker the green, the more nutritional value.
Dark leafy greens in our salad mix include cress, spinach, tatsoi, ruby streaks mustard, arugula, mizuna, and a variety of lettuces. These greens are packed full of vitamins K, C, E and some B, as well as minerals including iron, calcium and potassium.
Cooking Tips
Salad greens are a great base for larger dishes. Add other seasonal vegetables to make a more filling salad, or use the greens as a bed under a fried egg for breakfast, or a portion of meat, fish or tofu.
The Basics
We grow many types of lettuce, from green frilly heads to deep dark oak leaf to the wonderful red and green New Red Fire. Salads with fresh lettuce are very refreshing in the summer season, and in the winter too, when green is scarce.
Cooking Tips
A simple salad of lettuce and one other ingredient, like thinly sliced radishes, can be wonderful. So can the all-out everything salads with raisins, cheese, chopped carrots, cherry tomatoes, walnuts, chopped herbs, and whatever you have on hand.
The Basics
We grow four main varieties, Green Curly (Winterbor), Red Curly (Redbor), Red Russian, and Lacinato (pictured to the left, also known as Dinosaur or Tuscan). Kale gets and extra kick of taste and sweetness when the weather gets cooler.
Cooking Tips
Kale can be used anywhere you use spinach. You can cook the stems if you want. Use in soup. You can juice it. You can braise it. You can make kale chips (kale baked in the oven with salt and a little oil, till crispy).
We love it sauteed with onions (or green garlic), and sauced up with tahini, soy sauce, and balsamic vinegar.
The Basics
Folks in Europe buy endive like we do lettuce. We don’t grow the pointy pod-shaped Belgian endive, it’s the big green curly head of endive that we have. This plant comes from the chicory family and shares the characteristic touch of bitter flavor that makes it a great pairing with sweeter salad dressings, roasted beets, candied pecans. Incorporate some endive into each salad you make for more flavor.
Endive is high in folate and vitamins A and K. It’s also great wilted or sauteed in any dish you’re making.
Escarole is very similar in flavor and use, but has broader leaves.
A member of the cabbage family, collard greens have a long history in the southern states, yet their popularity has grown recently throughout the nation. They store great in the fridge (a few days longer than more vulnerable greens like lettuce). Packed full of vitamins and minerals, these greens can be used anywhere you’d use spinach, kale or any other dark leafy green.
They’re also delicious raw in wraps, using the collard green like a tortilla.
In this photo, the collards are in the upper left-hand corner.
The Basics
Also known as Pak Choi or Bok Choi, its crunchy stems and delicate leaves are the perfect combo. We like to grow baby bok choys like Mei Qing and Red Choi as well as larger varieties that make a plant larger than a lettuce head. They all have similar cooking properties, though the larger varieties will take slightly more cooking time.
Cooking Tips
Bok choy stir fries quickly and goes very well with garlic and peanut oil. You can work them in with any vegetables you have on hand. Put them in last for just a few minutes to keep some crunch in the stems.
Bok choy is also a wonderful ingredient for kimchi, along with cabbage, carrot, and spices.
Steam baby bok choy whole with minced garlic and oyster sauce for a simple side dish.
Basics
Early season beets come bunched with greens. Later season beets come just as a root. We have three different varieties of beets: classic deep red beets, gold beets with a rich yellow interior, and pink-skinned Chioggia beets with pink and white candy-stripe circles inside.
Chioggia beets are an heirloom variety from an Italian town of that name. Beets and Swiss chard are in the same plant family.
Cooking Tips
You can eat the beet greens and stems from all the varieties, and there are delicious dishes that incorporate your whole beet plant.
Try sauteing beets, and then greens with garlic and onion, and mix it all together with fresh goat cheese over pasta.
Roasted beets, just tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper are great – really brings out the sweetness.
Cooked beets make tasty cold salads with a little vinegar and onions.
Try them juiced raw (mixed with some other veggies or fruit) or grated raw on salads for beautiful color.
If you’ve used up your garlic scapes and can’t find more, garlic cloves would work fine. Also, this recipe is meant to use any greens you have around so spinach, kohlrabi greens, and kale can all be added or substituted for other greens.
1 bunch turnip greens
2 turnips or kohlrabi
1 bunch swiss chard
greens from 1 bunch of beets
4 garlic scapes
1/8 cup oil
2 Tbs. sesame oil
2 Tbs. sesame seeds
1 Tbs. soy sauce
1⁄4 tsp cayenne (opt.)
Chop greens, removing stems and chopping finely (they need more time to cook so if you want to use them you just have to start them earlier). Thinly slice turnips and cut scapes into 1 inch pieces.
In a wok or similar skillet, heat oil until hot and toss in turnips, scapes, and any stem pieces. Cook for 5 minutes. Add beet greens and tamari, cover and cook another 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add cayenne, sesame seeds, swiss chard, and turnip greens and cook until greens are wilted.
