All the salad fixings: at her Napa Valley home, Molly Chappellet grows varieties of lettuce. She shares her techniques.(lettuce)

Country Living, May, 2005 by Saeks, Diane Dorrans

Molly Chappellet, a bold landscape gardener, vintner, and coauthor of Gardens of the Wine Country (Chronicle Books), heads into the Napa Valley afternoon sun to inspect her two salad gardens.

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Frothy bronze fennel shoots shimmy in the breeze, gray-green artichoke leaves arch along their patch of earth, and the tightly furled pale green leaves of Bibb and Buttercrunch lettuces already look tasty enough to eat on the spot.

"As soon as the soil is right, I sow lettuce seeds directly into the garden," Molly says. "When the soil feels warm like this, it's time to plant more seeds."

This year, Molly is preparing two very different salad gardens on land above the vineyards of the Chappellet Winery, which she...