The tomatoes might be late again this year, and those sweet bell peppers may not ripen at all.

But in these gray, damp days of this unseasonably cool summer, greens — from various kinds of leaf lettuce to obscure species such as chervil and purslane — are thriving.

And according to some Vashon farmers, that’s as it should be. 

Here in the Maritime Northwest, leafy greens are a mainstay, the one family of crops that Vashon growers can produce regularly — and beautifully.

Bountiful heads of lettuce, herbs such as basil, dill and fennel, staples such as spinach, kale and arugula and a range of lesser known species — amaranth, mizuna, tatsoi and minutina — are all flourishing. And as a result, a rich array of salad mixes — spicy ones, sweet ones, some with lots of lettuce and some with almost none — can be found at farm stands across the Island and at nearly every vegetable booth at the Saturday Farmers Market.

In those parts of the country facing record-breaking heat waves, lettuce doesn’t stand a chance. But ask Vashon farmer Celina Yarkin how she feels about our cool, wet July, and she says brightly, “I’m loving it. I get a break from watering.”

Indeed, according to some Vashon farmers, when it comes to agriculture, flower-dotted, gourmet salad mixes are the Island’s signature product — a vitamin-packed bundle of goodness that Vashon’s farmers grow with gusto.

“I believe Vashon has the perfect weather for growing the best salad greens anywhere around,” said Joe Yarkin, a veteran Vashon farmer who, with Celina, runs Sun Island Farm.

The Island’s maritime breezes, cool summer nights, long springs and slow falls, he said, all combine to create “some of the best lettuce” in a region known for good lettuce.

What’s more, he noted, there’s also a remarkable customer base on Vashon — a number of Islanders who lust after a good salad. “We have a lot of lettuce-loving people on this Island,” Joe Yarkin said.

Vashon has long had a reputation for good salad mixes — one that was established a couple of decades ago by Bob and Bonnie Gregson, founders of Island Meadow Farm and authors of “Rebirth of the Small Family Farm.” According to Rob Peterson, who runs Plum Forest Farm with his wife Joanne Jewell, the Gregsons, who have since retired and moved to Spokane, “set a high bar” for fresh-grown salad on Vashon.

“If you’re going to grow salad on Vashon, it better be good,” said Peterson, who started out as a grower in Snohomish. “When I came here, I was pretty intimidated about trying to meet the Bob and Bonnie Gregson standard.”

But Peterson’s no lightweight when it comes to making a mean salad mix. Indeed, his wife, who loves a good mix, says with a smile, “I often tell him I married him for his salad.”

Jewell’s discriminating palate has become something of a gold standard for the family. “My goal is to grow a salad Joanne loves,” Peterson said. 

There’s a playful rivalry over salad mixes among some of Vashon’s farmers, and Peterson and Jewell take considerable pride in theirs — a blend that includes 15 varieties of lettuce, four kinds of basil, mizuna, toatsoi, arugula, arugula blossoms, Johnny jump-ups and more. Mild-tasting purslane, a weedy herb that boasts the highest content of Omega-3 of any land-based plant, is often part of the mix.

How good is it? “I think I’ve met the Gregsons’ standard,” Peterson said.

Zilla Copper, owner of Calypso Gardens, is another grower who has garnered attention with her mix. Hers is one of the priciest at the market, she acknowledges, but it also has an extremely loyal following. Her secret: Thirty kinds of greens and very little lettuce. 

“I’m not a lettuce person,” she confided.

Rather than snipping off the entire plant, Copper harvests by painstakingly picking each leaf to make her salad mixes and does so while the plant is small. She also makes sure she doesn’t stuff too much into a bag or put the leaves in while they’re still damp — recipes for short-lived, quick-wilting mixes, she said.

“Mine lasts for a week,” she said as she stood beneath her colorful Calypso Gardens sign at the Farmers Market on Saturday.

Deborah Taylor, holding a bag of greens that she had just purchased from Copper, said Copper’s salad mix is her favorite. “There’s a little spice. But what’s best is how tender it is,” she said.

To the Yarkins, eating Vashon-grown salads makes enormous ecological sense. Most commercially grown organic salad mixes sold in grocery stores come from California, are cased in plastic and carry a heavy carbon footprint. Meanwhile, other Vashon-grown foods, such as melons, just can’t compete with the stuff from California, they note. 

“We love growing melons,” said Celina Yarkin. “But we’re getting melons in the store to die for, and they’re cheap. … But with lettuce, it’s this great thing that we can grow.”

Growers also note that Vashon’s temperate climate allows for nine months of salad growing; some even hope to start growing greens year-round.

But making the perfect salad mix is a labor-intensive proposition. The greens have to be carefully harvested, tripled washed, separated, bagged, then labled. Farmers grow their greens in quick succession, rarely taking a break from the process.

As Jasper Forrester, a farmer who owns GreenMan Farm with her husband Will, noted, “It’s not like growing potatoes, which you put in the ground and forget about for a while.”

Indeed, Forrester has mixed feelings about growing greens. Every week, she dives into it with her fierce energy, and every week, she questions the process.

Smiling as she stood at her booth at the farmers market, she noted that making salad mixes “is like maintaining a relationship.”

“It takes a lot of time and energy,” she said. “But when it’s good, it’s really good.”