How to grow arugula

Arugula is a fast-growing salad green in the mustard family, harvested for its peppery, slightly nutty leaves rather than for bulk. It matures quickly enough to fit into gaps other crops leave behind, tucked into a spring bed before warm-season vegetables go in or sown again in early fall as those beds empty out. Because it is ready to cut in about a month, gardeners tend to treat it as a repeat, cut-and-come-again crop rather than a single planting, working several short rows or a container into the rotation instead of dedicating a whole bed to it at once.

The hardest part of growing arugula well is timing the harvest before heat pushes it to bolt. Cornell Cooperative Extension notes the plant bolts quickly in warm conditions, and North Carolina State University Extension adds that bolting changes the flavor and stops leaf growth altogether. A second-year gardener who sows a single spring row and lets it sit past its four-week window, expecting the leaves to keep filling in the way a head of lettuce does, comes back to a plant that has thrown a flower stalk, turned bitter, and stopped producing anything worth harvesting.