Make seeds! Make seeds! This is the mission of every plant, and while we want our flowers to bloom as quickly as possible, we want our veggies to stand in the garden forever. But especially in spring, plants get excited by lengthening days and warmer temperatures and are prone to bolting, or racing toward maturity. It’s a hormonal change that can be prevented to some extent, but cannot be squelched.
Maybe it’s not game over. Vegetable flowers are usually edible, and some common bolters including rocket and radishes produce tasty green seed pods. Or, you can grow a nice crop of seeds from a trio of bolting lettuce plants, ditto for rocket and coriander.
But not every bolting vegetable is worth the time and trouble of waiting for seeds, particularly those grown from hybrid parents. Here’s a summary of how to make the most of veggies that often bolt in spring.
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The leaves of bolting lettuce plants become bitter, perhaps to deter herbivores
What to Do About Bolting Lettuce
The tendency to bolt varies greatly with lettuce variety. A Colorado study of 50 lettuce varieties found that Batavian types such as Nevada and butterheads like Buttercrunch showed the best bolt resistance, while red romaines struggled with heat waves. Bolting lettuce plants suddenly grow tall and the new leaves have a dull sheen and taste bitter. The compounds that cause bitter flavor increase fivefold in bolting lettuce plants, perhaps to deter herbivores.
Most bolting lettuce plants should be composted, but perhaps you want to grow a crop of lettuce seeds for saving? This is a fast, doable project, because the time from flower to mature lettuce seeds is only three weeks and most lettuce varieties are open pollinated. Allowed to grow until midsummer, three lettuce plants will produce scads of fresh, vigorous lettuce seeds.
You can pull out the rather weedy looking plants when the flower heads look feathery and seeds can be shaken loose. Then let the plants dry in an airy place protected from rain. To harvest the seeds, snip the dry tops into an open paper bag, and dry indoors for another week before sifting and storing.
![Bolted collards]()
Winter-chilled collards put on a great show of flowers in late spring
Bolting Kale and Other Cabbage Family Crops
Bolting cabbage family crops including broccoli, collards, kale and overwintered Brussels sprouts have much to offer. The unopened flower buds make a great stir-fry vegetable, which you can grow on purpose by planting broccoli rabe and sprouting broccoli. With regular bolting broccoli plants, snapping off the tops will encourage the emergence of flower buds lower on the plants.
Overwintered kale or collard plants make fantastic flowers, so I always let them stay in the garden until after they bloom in late spring. Pollinators love them, the little yellow blossoms sprinkled into a salad are nutritious and delicious, and the young, green seedpods make tasty garden snacks. I suggest composting the plants after the flowers peak, because many popular varieties are hybrids, which make unstable parents.
![Radish seedpods]()
Bolting radishes can go on to produce edible seed pods
Bolting Radishes and Spinach
Some bolting vegetables are not worth keeping. Most bolting radishes are best composted, unless you are growing unusual Rat's Tail radishes for their pink flowers and plump seedpods.
Spinach is wind pollinated and has complicated flowering patterns, so a large plant population is needed for seed production. Patience also is required, because the plants bloom for three weeks or more, and then need six more weeks to make a mature crop of seeds. To further complicate matters, many of the most disease resistant spinach varieties are hybrids. Composting bolting spinach plants is usually the best option.
![Cilantro roots]()
Coriander leaves, flowers, roots and seeds are edible
Bolting Coriander and Rocket
Hugely successful when handled as a reseeding crop, coriander is also fast to bolt when days are getting longer in spring. So be it! Make successive sowings every few weeks, and harvest some bolting cilantro for its zesty roots. Do allow a trio of early bolters to produce flowers and seeds, and gather some of the immature green coriander seeds for adding to salads. When half of the seeds are brown, you can pull the plants and let the seeds finish drying indoors. A few weeks later, after harvesting the seeds, place the leftover branches where you want coriander to grow in the autumn. The seeds you missed will germinate and grow when the soil cools in late summer.
Like coriander, bolting rocket plants produce edible flowers and green seed pods, which quickly mature to brown. While the majority of my bolting rocket plants end up in the compost, I grow a few for flowers and seeds. I stake or cage the plants to keep the seed-bearing branches from breaking off in storms, and harvest seeds as the branches turn brown, starting at the bottom of the plants. When I’ve harvested enough seeds to replant and share, I pull up the plants and place them on a bed where I want rocket to grow in the autumn. Multitudes of seedlings appear after late summer rains.
