How often do you notice that nature helps to overcome some difficult, or rather, adverse periods, for example, associated with spring vitamin deficiency! To combat it, she created an amazing vegetable (although many think it is grass) - a salad.
This fast-growing annual plant is a real storehouse of nutrients. The salad plant is indispensable for decorating and harmoniously complementing the taste of any dish of fish, cheese, meat, vegetables. It is very important that this culture can be grown throughout the year, and not only in spring and summer, even on the kitchen windowsill. Summer residents who harvested the first crop can immediately proceed to re-sowing.
Today, there are more than two hundred species of this amazing culture, and breeders continue to work on the creation of new varieties, hybrids, as well as new varieties. They are very interesting to grow, but you need to know some features.
Varieties and types
Green leaf lettuce is the oldest vegetable crop that belongs to the genus Lactuca. Currently in the world there are more than two hundred species that differ in shape, taste, color, ripening, although several years ago only a few of them were used in vegetable growing, not more than two dozen. In our country, the species Lactuca satival has gained particular popularity and popularity. It is found in Asia Minor, Southern and Central Europe.
Sowing salad can be divided into five categories:
- stall;
- sheet;
- romaine, or roman;
- stem;
- heading out.
Green leaf lettuce has only a leaf rosette, the head does not appear. Leaves are used for food. This species includes varieties with strongly dissected and incised and leaves. It differs from other species by multiple ripening periods.
This species does not tolerate long-term storage and long transportation. The most common varieties are: Bona, Golden Ball, Kitare, Constance, Levistro, Concord and others.
Leaf salads: lettuce
This view can be divided into two groups.
Heading
Leaves of lettuce form a firm head, resembling cabbage. Salad is used as food after a short heat treatment, and in raw form, for the preparation of vegetable salads. Boiled leaves are great for making cabbage rolls.
Sheet
This variety does not head out; it has loose sockets. Today, varieties such as Lollo Biondo and Lollo Rosso (coral) are popular.
Arugula
More recently, it has become extremely popular (in our country). He began to be mentioned in all popular culinary programs, included in almost all salads.
Arugula - salad, the benefits of which have long been proven in the course of scientific research. This variety grows in separate leaves, and its appearance resembles dandelion leaves or radish greens. The taste of this salad is very bright, spicy and spicy. Young leaves are used for food, since later, over time, bitterness appears in them.
In the Caucasus, arugula (salad) is much more widely used. The benefits of young shoots and seeds have long been noticed by culinary specialists. Shoots are consumed fresh, and seeds are used in the preparation of mustard. Arugula leaves go well in salads with tomatoes and parmesan. Often, arugula is used in the preparation of pesto seasoning known and beloved by many.
Beneficial features
Arugula favorably affects the work of the digestive tract due to the biologically active substances that make up the plant. Mustard grass has diuretic and lactogonous effects. It successfully fights against viruses and pathogenic bacteria, increases the hemoglobin in the blood, strengthens the immune system, lowers blood sugar.
Chicory
Do not be surprised, this is really the same chicory that many people know as a substitute for coffee. But for this purpose, the root of the plant is used, and the leaves stewed in oil give a spicy taste to any dish.
Head varieties of chicory - Radicchio red, as well as Escariol, Radiccio, Italian chicory - are grown for culinary purposes. This species is especially popular in Western Europe.
Radicchio
The plant (salad) Radicchio has a beautiful reddish-purple color. The stems are painted in ivory. It has a pleasant pepper, slightly bitter taste. It goes well with sharp leafy vegetables. It gives an interesting taste with garlic, thyme, onion. It is stewed in a small amount of oil or in red wine, after chopping the leaves with a thin straw.
Radicchio has a beneficial effect on the digestive system and gives elasticity to blood vessels.
Stall Salad
This variety is represented by varieties with a solid, slightly incised plate, with a wavy edge. The stalk is covered with large non-coarse leaves. In height, it can reach eighty centimeters. Varieties of this type are good because they are suitable for phased harvesting. First, the outer leaves are cut, the inner (young) leaves for further growth.
Canyon
Mid-season variety, the growing season of which is about forty-five days. The socket is large, (diameter about thirty-five centimeters). Green lettuce leaves are anthocyanin, wavy, heavily indented. The mass of the outlet is up to seven hundred grams. The variety is resistant to most salad diseases. It tastes very much like head-to-head species, but at the same time it retains its presentation and freshness much longer.
Stem Salad (Asparagus)
The stem salad plant has a fleshy stem, just below the rosette, the leaves are quite stiff, with a clearly visible central vein. In cooking, both the leaves of the plant and the stem are used. The first domestic variety of stem salad is the drover. It has leaves of gray-green color, elliptical shape, medium thickness, erect. The length of the stem is approximately forty centimeters, the leaf is thirty centimeters, the mass of one outlet is more than seven hundred and fifty grams. The variety gives high yields in any weather.
Head salad
This variety is represented by varieties with crispy, oily leaves of a rough texture. Heads of cabbage are round or flat-round, of different sizes. The leaves are wide, round, bubbly. Popular varieties: Dude, Senator, Tsud Laravera, Major, Voorburgu, Lento. Getty.
Senator
Early ripening variety, growing season - about seventy-five days. It forms large, rounded, slightly flattened, dark green heads of high density. It has excellent taste, gives high yields, unpretentious to growing conditions.
Romaine
Crispy Romaine (or Roman salad) combines some of the cabbage varieties. This view has a vertically located outlet. The leaves are back oval, elongated, somewhat harsh. A large, loose, oval-shaped head is tied in the center of the outlet. There are forms and half-rolled. In Russia, the most popular are Dandy, Scarb, Roger, Mishutka, Limpopo.
The loose and elongated head of romaine is artificially formed. It is perfectly kept. It is usually grown for autumn harvest. Sowing is carried out in mid-July, in boxes for seedlings. About four weeks after the shoots appear, the seedlings are transplanted into beds.
Growing lettuce in the open ground is possible if the beds are empty by the time of sowing. The distance between the bushes is at least fifteen centimeters.
Beneficial features
By the content of vitamins, lettuce plant occupies one of the leading places among vegetable crops. Its leaves contain:
- B vitamins (thiamine, riboflavin and pyridoxine;
- tocopherol;
- carotene;
- folic acid.
In addition, the composition of the salad includes minerals:
- potassium;
- calcium;
- magnesium;
- phosphorus.
Growing lettuce in the open ground
Leaf varieties are sown on beds from the beginning of May, with intervals of about twenty days, until August. In May, they are often used as a compacting culture: several seeds are sown between bushes of tomatoes and other heat-loving vegetables. Lettuce grows before the main crop grows. Leaf salads are removed fifty days after sowing, when seven leaves appear on the plant. It should be noted that they are tasty and healthy even before reaching commodity ripeness.
It is necessary to remove the planting salad in the morning after the dew has dried, when the maximum amount of nutrients accumulates in the leaves. Salad, which is intended for storage, can not be cleaned after watering - the moisture that has got into the center of the outlet should dry before the plant is cut. Otherwise, wet leaves will deteriorate very quickly.
Head varieties are sown at the same time as leaf varieties. But they need more space. This variety cannot be a compacting crop. The headed varieties must be thinned out twice during the cultivation: when two true leaves appear, it is necessary to leave the distance between seedlings five centimeters, after six weeks the distance between the outlets is increased to twenty-five centimeters. Harvesting heads is carried out eighty days after emergence of seedlings. Such salads are stored better and longer than leafy salads.