Early spring salad gardens of red and green leaf lettuces, arugula, chives, escarole, radishes and more are one of the glories of the outdoor season. They are the first vegetables that can be sown and grownand brought to the table. Their bright green and red colors and theirpeppy crunch are a day-brightening joy after a long cold winter.

Gardeners with spring fever are in luck because salad greens prefer to grow in the cooler days of April and May. As soon as the scorching hot days of summer arrive, these sweet tender vegetables turn tough and bitter, they sprout flowers and go to seed.

Right now, when the days of spring are still cool, is the perfect time to plant an early spring salad garden. The cold wet ground of winter is thawed and drained and you can get digging.

An area 5 feet by 10 feet is all you need to grow a garden full of crunchy radishes, succulent red and green lettuce, exotic mesclun, leafy green spinach, tangy arugula, pleasingly bitter endive and Italian dandelion greens, tender mache, romaine and Boston lettuce. Chives and parsley are two salad herbs that send up shoots at the first sign of spring.

Plenty of sun, at least six hours a day, is the one thing you must have for a successful salad garden. A little afternoon shade won't hurt, as long as it is preceded by 6 hours of golden sunshine.

Dig the soil to a depth of 6 to 8 inches. Spread a 2 to 4-inch thick layer of compost and 2 to 3 pounds of natural organic fertilizer over the surface. Dig it all in, rake it smooth and you are ready to plant.

Packets of seeds will cost from $1.25 to $3 each with the mesclun blends costing as much as $5. Herbs seedlings won't cost more than ten dollars total. This whole garden won't cost more than $30 for an entire season of dewy fresh, sweet and delicious salad greens.

Plant the seeds one inch apart in shallow trenches no more than 1/4 to ½ inch deep in rows 12 to 18 inches apart. You can also broadcast the seeds in an area if you don't want to confine them to rows. Cover the seeds with fine soil and lightly tamp then down. Water the ground daily until the seeds germinate and then reduce the watering to every other day or less if it rains.

Here's a variety of salad greens and fixings favorites that will be ready to harvest in as few as 21 days from the moment your place them in contact with the soil. Plant these seeds today and you will have something to eat by the first week of May. These are listed in their order of harvest.

Chives - An easy-to-grow perennial herb. One chive plant will double in size in one year and produce tasty and pretty lavender flowers. Harvest the stems down to the base of the clump and new growth will emerge. .

Parsley - Parsley is a biennial, which means it produces leaves for harvest for two years and then flowers and dies. Don't bother starting it from seed. Buy seedlings instead. Flat leaf Italian parsley and curley leaf parsley are both wonderful for salad and salad dressing.

Radishes - Small round red radishes are great but look for the multi-colored Easter egg radishes and the long slim red and white French radishes. Sow them 1 inch apart and ½ inch deep. Ready to eat in 21 to 30 days.

Mesclun - Almost every seed catalogue has at least one blend of lettuce, herb and salad greens called mesclun. Arugula, red and green leaf lettuce, endive, kale and mustard are just some of the greens you will find in mesclun mixes. This is a cut-and-come-again garden. When the leaves are 3 to 4 inches tall, cut them off just above ground level. New leaves will emerge and take their place. Look for a French or Provencal-inspired blend that has the anise-flavored herb chervil in it to add to your herb vinaigrette. Ready to eat in 21 to 28 days.

Loose Leaf Lettuce - Unlike the tight head of iceberg lettuce, loose leaf lettuce forms frilly bunches of leaves. Black Seeded Simpson is a fool-proof heirloom with pale green leaves, but Red Sails and Red Oakleaf are two other good choices. Ready to eat in 26 to 30 days.

Arugula - Piquant arugula, a.k.a. roquette, is easy to grow at home. Garden arugula (Eruca sativa) is the kind we are most familiar with, but you might try its cousin Sylvetta (Diplotaxis) a.k.a. Wild Arugula. This one has narrower leaves with a more pungent taste. Ready to eat in 40 to 50 days.

Spinach - Spinach is one of the most nutritious of all these salad greens being a good source of Vitamin E. Catalogues seems to be featuring two hybrids, Indian Summer with the crinkled leaves and Space with smoother leaves. Both are good choices. Ready to eat in 40 days.

Frisee Endive/Escarole - This gets a little tricky because these three salad greens are all members of the Cichorium family. But they are not Belgian endive and they are not radicchio. Endive, escarole and frisee all form heads of frilly green leaves. The leaves of escarole are a little thinner and more tender than endive. The leaves of frisee are even a little more frilly. All can be used for salad. The most popular salad green in Italy. Endive is ready to eat in 35 days and escarole and frisee in 45 to 50 days.

Italian Dandelion Greens - Plenty of Italian people harvest early spring dandelions right from the lawn. This variety (Cichorium intybus) is not a true dandelion but it is a garden variety that produces the same jagged leaves with the bitter flavor. Ready to eat in 48 days.

Mache - Also know as corn salad, mache is a common part of salad greens in Switzerland, Germany and France. It forms a little rosette of small tender leaves that only grow about 1 to 2 inches long. An unusual and choice little salad vegetable. Ready to eat in 50 days.

Boston - Boston, Butterhead, Bibb and Buttercrunch are all variations on the same loosely packed head of lettuce with ruffled outer leaves surrounding a white heart. This is by far the most common lettuce eaten in France. Mervielle des Quatre Saisons is a French heirloom variety with red tinged leaves. Ready to eat in 46 to 52 days.

Romaine - The romaine or cos lettuce you buy in the store is the same as you can grow in your garden. Tall crunchy leaves form an elongated head around pale green hearts. The red tinged leaves of Rouge d'Hiver romaine is particularly pretty in the garden and on the table. Ready to eat in 55 days.

If you are like I am, you will enjoy trying different salad greens each year to find new ones with just a little different shading or texture. In addition, because they vary so much, a garden of salad greens can be just as pretty to look at as flowers and blooming shrubs.