Our summer salads are tomato, cucumber and pepper based. Cucumber with dill weed in sour cream, then cucumber with tomato and onion and sweet peppers when they're ready. Then my favorite--fresh salsa made with cucs early then tomatillos later and always tomatos, onions, sweet and hot peppers, lime juice and cilantro, dash of salt.

My first and second lettuce batches have aphids and are hard to wash. I am still eating that and that is what I am having for lunch with green onion, radish, bacon and cheese with oil and vinegar and garlic. My salads are not low cal. I don't put anything on it for bugs because it is so hard to wash every little crease and crevice. I have some Red Sails and some other lettuce different ages that are not ready yet. In summer tomatoes, onions and cucumbers with some purchased iceberg is pretty good. I love cucumbers not everyone does but I plant more than one bunch in case of bugs.

Mine are a lot like Dorothy's with the exception of the cilantro (yuck). LOL

Until I lived in Greece, I always thought salad had to include lettuce, but their summer salads were normally cucumber slices, thick slices of tomato, kalamata olives, sometimes onion, then feta cheese crumbled over the top, generously sprinkled with black pepper and dressed with delicious olive oil. It is still my favorite salad today.

Last week I had an abundance of asparagus so we had a pasta salad with fresh asparagus, onion, celery, marinated mushrooms, and a some sun dried tomato salad dressing. I made it a day early so it had time to marinate.

So.....I guess salad is whatever we happen to have fresh from the garden at any given time that can be eaten raw. LOL In Spring I love Sugar Snap peas and lettuce, then next I usually have Chinese Cabbage, and I like to add celery and Granny Smith apple to that one. I use a dressing that has lemon or vinegar and chop the apple into the dressing to coat it well before I add the cabbage and celery.

Al will stand in the garden and eat leaf lettuce, but he would rather have sprouts in his salad instead of lettuce. He likes everything from the garden except winter squash. He loves summer squash, but winter squash had better be in a pumpkin style pie, or it will not be well received. LOL

Ladies, thanks so much. I wish I had planted more than one planting of lettuce. My lettuce has done so well this year. I pulled the last two Orient Express cabbage yesterday ( we use it mostly in salad). I also could try broccoli and cabbage leaves, I guess. I am a salad nut.

My cucumbers are a long way from fruiting, (only planted Armenian) but I am getting a few sweet peppers, and the onions are great, but I doubt they will size up much.

Thanks again, Larry

Larry, you garden is much better than mine. I didn't get mine planted as early as I should have, and still have not planted things that I am normally eating by now. This may be a very lean year for produce because I have a 'boatload' of things going on in my life right now. The things that I do have planted are growing very well, right along with the weeds. Maybe one day I will be at home when it is dry enough to weed. We aren't getting heavy rain, just light rain and sometimes not much more than mist. It seems like we have had thunder and lightening forever, and that is enough to keep me inside even if we didn't have rain falling.

What everyone else said, but also violet leaves, salad burnet leaves, swiss chard, sprouts, and the occasional malabar spinach leaf, mulitplyer onion sprout, or garlic chive or elephant garlic leaf. Someone on D*'s G*n said they had heard the light yellow green colored sweet potato leaves were tasty, so that -may- be an option to try raw for salad. Sweet potato leaves seem normally to be served cooked.

merrybookwyrm, that is interesting, I have a lot of that stuff now, and seed going to waste.

thanks, Larry

I forgot that in between lettuce, spinach and radish salads and the tomato based salads, we always have cole slaw for a couple weeks to a month. Our spring salads have had either raw or blanched asparagus and our later salads often have blanched broccoli.

Larry,

We eat a lot of the same things that Dorothy mentioned, but I have to buy grocery store lettuce for Tim because he cannot live without lettuce. I prefer to focus on salads where tomatoes are the main ingredient....sometimes with mozzarella like a caprese salad, or chopped up with cukes and onions. Young green beans are almost as good raw as sugar snap peas. Swiss chard leaves are good harvested young, and I've grown malabar spinach but didn't much care for it.

Cababge lasts a lot longer into summer for us than lettuce does so we do have a lot of slaw.

If you have a light setup in doors, you can grow lettuce in containers inside the air conditioned house in the summer. Or, you can grow sprouts or microgreens indoors.

Lots of people use the tender tips from sweet potato foliage.

Some people like lambs quarters in spring and early summer, but I don't much care for them.

I substitute lots of fruit salad for a salad made of greens---cantaloupes, muskmelons, watermelons mixed with sliced peaches, plums, grapes or blackberries, etc. We usually have lots of melons every summer and fruits and berries most summers.

Dawn

Dawn, all of this is making me hungry. I have a Dr. appointment today in Ft. Smith, and Madge has already ask if we could go to the Olive Garden after my test. We really like the soup and salad there, I had rather have that than the best steak in town. It is strange how your habits and taste change as you age. I have always like salads, but nothing like I do now.

Larry

Have you seen the Olive Garden salad dressing for sale now? I got some at Sam's but I think Wal-Mart might have it too. I actually like just oil, vinegar and garlic, salt and pepper better. When I am at OG I have a refill on salad, get too full, and take a big to go box of pasta - not being cheap just like the salad.

Larry,

I have loved the Olive Garden's salad ever since I first ate it....likely in the 1980s. When I worked for General Dynamics, we'd often either go to the OG for lunch, or order takeout, and often our lunch was just their salad and breadsticks.

I have toyed with the idea of growing lettuce inside on the light shelf under lights all summer long but never have tried it.

Dawn