When Greens Bolt

If you are like me and live in the northern climes of the US, some of your greens are getting ready to bolt or already have.  Let's discuss bolting, shall we?  This is what you will see when things are moving in that direction

The individual plants will start to look taller with what will appear to be one or many flower heads developing at the top.  The plant is now placing its emphasis on reproduction and producing seed for self propagation.  For most mild lettuces, this means that you have missed the boat, the leaves will already be much too bitter to enjoy.  For Arugula, which is spicy, this is your last chance to pull up and harvest, like I did here

I pick off all of the big leaves and leave the feathery looking ones at the top near the seed head for the compost bin.

Additionally, I leave a few plants scattered throughout the bed and let them go completely to seed.  I try to leave them in places that won't interfere with the other plants and along my drip line so that I will not need to add extra watering work.  This way, I end up with more seeds for these varieties of whatever green I grew, Sylvetta Wild and Sputnik Arugula in this case.

I used to think about seeing my greens bolt as a sad ending to a good thing.  Now I think about it like this (greens + seed = bonus!).