You’ve got your fall school garden planted on time, you’re watering every day, and you’re excited to get those salad greens early on in the season. But one day you notice that all of a sudden some of your plants shoot up a flower stock. While pretty, these flowering plants are not good news for gardeners.

While it can happen with a variety of crops, we’ve noticed it’s most common with salad greens like lettuce and arugula. Once the lettuce or arugula plant has flowered, the leaves become bitter, tough and are no longer tasty to eat.

When a plant has flowered, it is going to seed, or it’s bolting. This can happen when crops become too hot or are exposed to too much sun. Lack of watering can also contribute to bolting plants.

Bolting can also happen with beets, cabbage, broccoli and other cole crops that we plant in the fall. While it is difficult to prevent bolting, you can try planting your salad greens later on in the season, in August or even September, when temperatures are cooler and the days are shorter. Regular watering and mulching with straw, available through KCCG, can also help keep the plants a bit cooler during warmer times of the year.  

Once a plant has bolted, the best option would be to pull it out from your garden. If it’s early enough in the season, you can try reseeding the lettuce or arugula so that you are still able to have some salad greens growing in the garden. You can compost the bolted plants, or try using them in an art project.