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. Here are the varieties I come back to year after year.
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 the most forgiving and 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 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 hold their quality better than most red varieties 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 reliable in our climate. Buttercrunch is the butterhead to grow, with soft, sweet leaves and a loose head. It handles cool nights beautifully and is more heat-tolerant than most butterheads, 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
The biggest 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.
Jericho is a romaine developed for hot climates and holds up remarkably well in summer heat. Muir is a green leaf type known for being one of the slowest to bolt, staying 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 extremely 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.
If you want help choosing greens and building a planting schedule that keeps salad coming from spring through fall, that is what I do. Take a look at the vegetable garden consulting page and reach out.