When harvesting lettuce and other young greens, should they be picked leaf by leaf or cut off as a group to regrow? How large should they be before picking? Thanks~ Jean

We always pick the leaf lettuces as we want them, taking from the largest leaves. Just leave enough for the plant to survive and it won't take long for the small leaves that you leave to grow big enough to replace the ones you took.

As for the size, it's up to you. The bigger the better but we've been known to pick the tiniest little lettuces when we were desperate for a salad.

In Jacksonville the chickweed is growing right now, so do consider adding leaves from those to your salads. We love it and it's an easy to harvest green.

Can you post a photo of the chickweed you have growing now, Dave? Is it a Cerastium? I think what I've learned as 'chickweed' is probably totally incorrect. I couldn't see or call up any ATP photos under 'chickweed' but could under 'Cerastium'. Not sure why. I've always been able to find things using a common name before, but this gave the list of Cerastiums but no associated photos.

The two comments posted to this chick weed in our database are informative. Field Mouse-Ear Chickweed (Cerastium arvense)

There is also an impressive list of plants going by the common name of chick weed. http://garden.org/plants/searc...

@needrain

Look at these:
http://garden.org/plants/searc...

Cross posted with you Lynn.

Hi Ann. : )

It looks like many of these are edible.

Here is the chickweed we have in Texas:

Chickweed (Stellaria media)

Dave there are some wonderful photos in the database for Stellaria media, but is this photo correct?

Thanks everyone!
I'm glad Dave answered Jean's question. I feel like I hi-jacked the post and I didn't mean to do that.

Ann, that link gave me the same ones I'd pulled up, but this time with the photos. Don't know what I did on the previous search to keep the photos from showing.

Is Stellaria media the only one edible? I can see it's the one that Dave is eating, but when I used the link that Lynn provided on Field chickweed (Cerastium arvense), it brought up the article written by Sharon which I'd just finished reading and I thought was referring to Dave's plant, Stellaria media. It's not clear they are all edible plants, at least not to me . I went looking and didn't find any growing. Maybe I'll recognize one if it blooms. I'm guessing it grows at the same time as fillaree and clover and they both are growing now. I'd always heard chickweed was a lawn nuisance like dandelions, but if it's a cool season plant it shouldn't be much of one. At least not in Texas. Which is why I was pointed to another plant entirely. And the trouble with common names.