Edibles: Test your knowledge of green vegetables

Eating greens is good for you; they're loaded with vitamins and minerals. Moreover, they taste good. See what you know about them with this true/false quiz.

Answers follow the exercise.

1. Greens that are dark green or red have higher vitamin content than their paler cousins.

2. Most greens grow easily around Puget Sound.

3. Bolting is the rapid consumption of nutrients, especially nitrogen, by some greens.

4. Kale and chard are greens that are slow to bolt.

5. Bolt-resistant varieties of greens will grow all summer.

6. Always harvest lettuce whole; picking it by the leaf will cause the plants to wilt.

7. Arugula, bok choy, Chinese cabbage and spinach work well as fall crops.

Answers

1. True. Generally, dark green and highly colored vegetables contain higher amounts of Vitamins A and C than paler vegetables. Light green iceberg lettuce, for example, is nutritionally inferior to the more intensely colored leaf lettuces.

2. True. Most greens, whether they're European or Asian types, are cool-season crops that find Seattle-area weather to their liking. Arugula, bok choy, chard, Chinese cabbage, collards, corn salad, kale, mustard and spinach are examples.

3. False. Bolting is the premature formation of a seed stalk. In susceptible greens, it's brought on by increasing temperatures, increasing day length or both. When plants bolt, their new leaves become small and bitter. Gardeners avoid bolting by planting susceptible varieties early enough that they mature before long days and warm weather arrive, and by using bolt-resistant varieties.

4. True. Though kale and chard eventually go to seed, they typically persist through our summers. Along with beet greens and New Zealand and Malabar spinach (not true spinaches), they offer greens in the hot months. As a bonus, both kale and chard are hardy in cold weather. Kale always makes it through a Puget Sound winter; chard does most years.

5. False. Bolt resistance simply means the variety will make it further into warm weather and longer days than varieties without that trait. Getting a several-week reprieve from the inevitable, though, is a benefit.

6. False. Though you'd certainly harvest head lettuce by the head, leaf lettuces are well suited to harvest by the leaf. So are arugula, chard, kale, mustard and spinach. Careful harvest of these crops by the leaf will not damage plants and will permit the remaining leaves to grow larger.

7. True. Some gardeners have more success seeding these crops in late summer for fall harvest. Though the seed may have to germinate in warm conditions, the plants grow toward cooler weather and shorter days. When these crops are properly timed for fall harvest, bolting isn't a problem.