Arugula Went To Seed

I made a simple salad the other night and noticed that a lot of my arugula has matured to the point where it's about to make seeds. The leaves turned bitter! It doesn't take long for greens to start making seeds once the temperature turns warmer - for these plants, the warmer weather tells the plants that it's time to turn the energy from leaf-making into the energy for making seeds. Arugula usually gets really thick stems and they are HAIRY - then you can see the plant start to make the seed pod. As soon as that happens, I highly do not recommend eating the leaves. They truly don't taste very good anymore!

With this known - now you can time your greens a little better for your summer and fall salads and greens. I like to plant this again in late July/early August in a very shady part of the garden. Next year I will aim to plant greens at least two weeks sooner than what I planted this year - I would like to have another week or two of fresh lettuces and greens so I'm not spending money on those large containers at the store. 

Today I pulled all the arugula plants and in the place of the arugula I planted bush green beans. Last year our family ate almost every single green bean on about 30 plants. I planted about 50 seeds, tucking them closer to my spinach and radish. I will have to pull the spinach in the next week or two as well and compost those plants - and I will plant tall peas in that space. I'm a little late planting peas but I think I can get a few harvests from it before fall.