Hot weather makes favorite summer greens bolt for the sky

The arrow of a crossbow is called a bolt, and because few things are faster than an arrow flying out of a crossbow it wasn’t long before the verb “bolt” meant to spring suddenly or run away quickly.

While you have summer heat in your crosshairs it seems many of our favorite salad greens are about to jump or bolt into seed. Bolting not only causes plants to concentrate on growing seed stalks but it tends to make any remaining leaves quite bitter.

So while lettuce, arugula, spinach, and many other tender greens will be past their prime, you can grow some very tasty, tender heat-tolerant greens during summer.

The cabbage family greens of collards and kales (Brassica oleracea) will taste sweeter after a light frost, but the new growth and smaller leaves are still tender and sweet even in the hottest months.

Besides adding a peppery touch to salads, these vitamin- rich brassicas can be cooked with onion and garlic in olive oil on the stove, stir-fried, braised on the grill, and mixed into smoothies or plain juice. They can also be dried and lightly salted for crisp vegetable chips.

Swiss chard and beets (Beta vulgaris) are another group of heat-tolerant greens packed with nutrition. Rainbow chard will sprout stalks and leaves with red, green, yellow-pink and white mixed together. Bull’s Blood beets will give you dark-green leaves with a decidedly red tinge for tasty boiled beet greens.

The colorful and decorative Amaranth (Amaranthus spp.) can be tucked into the flower garden or along any border, it is that pretty.

Often reaching six feet tall or more, amaranth comes in a wide range of colorful leaves.

With their deeper flavor and crunchiness amaranth leaves lend themselves to stir fries and pan frying with olive oil and garlic. Smaller leaves do well in salads.

While some friends lament that “beets taste like dirt,” beet greens are a sweet and tender addition to salads. The larger Swiss chard leaves and stems are delicious raw or lightly steamed.

Both of these plants are cut and come again, so you can harvest just the outer leaves, and the plant will contnue to grow new leaves in the center of the plant.

Whoever thought that you can eat the leaves of sweet potatoes? The heat-loving sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) are a true summer plant that put out huge amounts of edible leaves.

Sweet potato leaves are tender enough to eat raw so they can go directly into a salad. Cook with chunks of fresh ginger and garlic, and you have an Asian side dish.

All of your hot weather greens will benefit from regular watering and feeding with a soluble organic fertilizer such as fish emulsion. Shading the hottest part of the day will also keep your summer greens crispy.

You can plant seeds now for a second crop of greens wherever you have bare spots in the garden. Keep any seedbed well watered.

Keep your summer greens watered, fertilized and shaded, and your summer salads and side dishes of cooked greens will keep coming, like a bolt from the blue.