Lettuce and salad greens are some of the easiest crops to grow in Missoula, and one of the few where you get to be a little picky about varieties just for the fun of it. Most greens grow fast and tolerate our cool weather, so the question is less about whether a variety will survive and more about flavor, color, texture, and how well it holds up when summer heat arrives. The varieties below were picked for the traits that matter most here: quick days to maturity, tolerance of cool spring weather, and slow bolting in warm weather.
If you want the full rundown on planting timing and care, see our guide on how to grow lettuce and salad greens in Montana. This post is about which ones to actually put in the ground.
Leaf Lettuce
Leaf lettuce is a forgiving, productive type for our gardens. You pick outer leaves and the plant keeps growing, so a single planting feeds you for weeks.
Black Seeded Simpson is a fast, dependable green leaf lettuce that has been grown for generations. It comes up quickly and tolerates cool spring weather well. Salad Bowl produces a loose rosette of tender leaves and is listed as slow to bolt, which buys you extra time in early summer. For color, Red Sails and New Red Fire add deep red tips to the salad bowl, and catalogs describe both as slow to bolt, which helps them hold quality when it warms up.
Romaine and Butterhead
If you want more structure and crunch, romaine and butterhead types do well here as long as you give them an early start so they mature before the heat.
Parris Island is the classic romaine, upright and crisp, and a widely grown standard. Buttercrunch is a popular butterhead, with soft, sweet leaves and a loose head. It handles cool nights well and has some heat resistance, which matters once July arrives. Both are worth giving your earliest spring planting so they head up in cool weather.
Heat-Tolerant and Slow-Bolt Picks
A big challenge with lettuce in Missoula is summer heat, which turns it bitter and sends it to seed. A few varieties are bred to resist bolting and stay sweet longer, and these are the ones to lean on for late spring and summer plantings. MSU Extension suggests sowing lettuce every 2 weeks and shifting to warm-weather varieties for the summer months.
Jericho is a romaine bred in Israel for hot, dry conditions, and Johnny’s lists it as tolerant of both heat and tipburn. Muir is a summer crisp (Batavian) type that Johnny’s calls its most heat-tolerant lettuce and the slowest to bolt in its summer trials, so it stays crisp and mild well into warm weather. Planting these through the warmer stretch of the season keeps salad on the table when standard varieties would have bolted.
Beyond Lettuce: Spinach, Greens, and Mixes
Salad greens are more than lettuce. Spinach is very cold-hardy and a great early and fall crop. Bloomsdale is the classic savoyed type with great flavor, while smooth-leaf varieties like Space are quick and easy to wash. Spinach bolts fast in heat, so plant it in cool weather and harvest hard.
Arugula adds a peppery bite and grows fast, ready to cut in a few weeks. It bolts quickly too, but it is so fast you can simply plant more. Mesclun and mixed salad blends are a smart choice for small gardens, giving you a range of textures and flavors from a single sowing that you cut young.
For greens that carry you through the whole season, kale and Swiss chard are hard to beat. Lacinato kale, also called dinosaur kale, has dark blue-green leaves and rich flavor, while Red Russian is tender and quick. For chard, Bright Lights gives you stems in red, yellow, and orange that look as good as they taste. Both kale and chard handle heat and cold far better than lettuce, so they keep producing long after the lettuce has bolted.
Where to find the seed: Botanical Interests is the seed company we use ourselves, and it carries several of the varieties above, including Black Seeded Simpson, Buttercrunch, and Bloomsdale spinach. These are affiliate links, so if you buy through them, Garden City Plant Care may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
For sowing dates and fall timing, see the Missoula Planting Calendar.
Sources
- Montana State University Extension, Can I Grow That Here? Vegetable Seed and Transplant Schedules