Greens & herbs
Arugula
The peppery 40-day green; quick fall and February rounds.
- Outside
- Direct Sep to Oct, again Feb
- Where
- Any gap: raised bed or in ground
- Sun
- Full sun
- Water
- Little and often; keep the top inch damp
- Harvest
- Nov to Dec, then Mar
Care
- Water
- Little and often, just enough to keep the top inch damp: the shallow roots dry fast, and a dry, warm week pushes the leaves from peppery to punishing and then to bolt. Water the fall rows in the dry spells between fronts; winter rain covers December on.
- Sow
- Broadcast seed a quarter inch deep and thick, thinning with the pulls going into the salad. The main round goes in September into October and a second sowing in February; a short patch at a time keeps the leaves young, which is the whole point.
- Feed
- It grows so fast it barely needs feeding: a little compost in the bed at sowing does it, and skip the liquid feed on a crop cut inside six weeks.
- Ready
- Shear a patch an inch high once the leaves are salad size, about 40 days from sowing on the Travis County clock, and it flushes again for a second round. The fall sowing cuts through the winter salad season; the February round finishes before the heat.
- Trouble
- Heat is the only real enemy, and the calendar handles it: every sowing sits between September and February, and a patch left standing into June is fierce and bolted no matter how it was watered. Cold is no worry in ground that never freezes; the winter patch just cuts slower.
In a bag?
- Yes
- Up to a 1–3 gal bag.
- Water
- A shallow bag dries fast, so keep the top inch damp, which means daily in a warm fall or spring spell and every couple of days in winter.
- Feed
- Skip it; compost at sowing is the whole program for a crop this quick.
- Sow
- Broadcast thick across the bag, thin with scissors, and eat the pulls; the Texas guide's greens class suits it, and a bag salad comes up faster than the October ground cools.
Arugula keeps to the cool months here: a 40-day specialty green sown in September and October and again in February, gone before the heat turns it fierce.
Growing
In a cool-season garden arugula lives in the shoulders, a spring round ended by June and a fall round ended by winter; here the whole stretch from September into March is shoulder season, and the patch moves in accordingly. The Travis County list carries it among the cool-season specialty greens at 40 days, scheduled with the lettuces and spinach it shares the salad bowl with. Broadcast thick, shear young, and resow a patch when a round is spent; the winter patch cuts slower but never stops in ground that never freezes. Summer is the one door that stays shut: when peppery leaves are wanted in July, nothing in this family answers, and the malabar row has the job.
Varieties
No Texas source names arugula strains, so the packet stays generic; anything sold as arugula or rocket behaves alike on this calendar.
In the kitchen
Half of the winter salad garden, the peppery half: dressed with lemon and oil it is a salad with nothing missing, and the last sharp cuttings wilt onto whatever came off a hot pan. A dry week turns the bite up a notch; deeper watering turns it back down.