I have really struggled to grow salad greens the last two years. Between the slugs and the sparrows, my seeds in to salads out ratio was terrible.

This season, after a hard freeze this past winter and two years of learning the slugs' hiding places, slug damage has been almost negligible.

Then, after 18 months of hemming and hawing, I finally bought four pop-up bird nets, which fit snugly into my bed.

Protected from the birds and blessed with cooperative weather, I am having the best salad year of my life, harvesting a salad spinner full most days. It has been such a luxury to have almost too many fresh greens to eat per day. Almost.

But my salad greens are growing under kales and chards and zucchini and cauliflower and pepper plants that are just about to outgrow the netting. When I arrive in the morning, the kales are crushed up against the top, like a gangly teenager crouched inside a child’s fort. When I open the netting, the leaves at the top are bent and askance, and I have to rearrange each leaf into its natural radial pattern.

I have been reluctant to take off the netting, as the birds will make a feast of my salad bar. Yesterday, four sparrows and a robin tucked into my plot in the time it took me to fill my watering can.

But this morning, two baby zucchinis have set, one of the first signs of early summer. I see how the tallest pepper will soon need to bend to fit inside its net. I take a slightly larger harvest than usual of the Bronze Arrow lettuce and leave one of the four nets open.

In the next week or two, I will remove the nets one by one.

Things I Learned the Hard Way

◇ I actually did not purchase the bird netting until after I planted out my garden in the spring. In retrospect, I could have been more strategic about where I planted my salad greens, so that crops that finish in June, like spinach, were planted under the pop-up nets that would be removed first. Instead, the Bronze Arrow lettuces – known for standing the summer heat exceptionally well – are the first ones to be exposed to the birds.

◇ I planted my salad greens way too densely this year. In previous years, I lost so many plants to avian shrinkage, this heavy broadcast sowing was the only way to harvest anything. This season, it has been easiest to harvest from my multisown lettuces that I transplanted out, so I think I will do much more of this next season (maybe 8 plants per row instead of 6).