Month: May 2020

Spinach

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This gardening season I hope to post more often and focus on individual crops. We have had a big breakthrough this past year with one of our favorite crops: spinach. It seems we are finally getting a handle on what it takes to supply (almost) our year-round craving for spinach.

August 23, 2019: planted two rows of leaf spinach in hoophouse, Red Kitten and Space. We ate these all winter, sparingly, and the plants are just starting to give out. I pulled up all the Red Kitten yesterday and will probably pull up the Space shortly. Next August: double (or triple?) the amount of leaf spinach.

September 12, 2019: planted 5 rows of winter spinach in hoophouse. September 19, planted two more rows after hot peppers were harvested. Varieties: mostly Olympia, some Winter Bloomsdale. These grew slightly, then stopped. They really took off in March though, providing an abundance of huge delicious leaves. Next time: plant 7 or more rows again, maybe earlier depending on space available.

Winter Bloomsdale and mostly Olympia spinach in hoophouse

Eventually these will bolt, I’m surprised they haven’t yet. (The lone Winter Bloomsdale in the back bed, upper left in photo, has bolted.) Today I scratched 5 rows between them and planted basil seeds for summer. The plantings can intermingle for awhile.

Note: I tried the same planting outdoors in a row in the main garden. Planted October 18, 2019, and applied a heavy layer of hay mulch. I got nothing. Not sure what happened, maybe planted too late or maybe not enough protection outside. In any case, the hoophouse planting was sufficient. I won’t bother trying to overwinter spinach outdoors as long as I have a hoophouse or greenhouse.

March 12, 2020: planted all the remaining Space seeds in the hoophouse. We had to remove some dead plants from the winter so there was space for the Space! This gave us some nice fresh looking leaf spinach during the spring months and still looks good. One row in the back of the back bed was stunted and didn’t produce. Maybe it got too cold?

Spring planting of Space in hoophouse

March 26, 2020: planted a short row of Red Kitten outdoors next to the peas. This early planting has done well and is ready to start eating. Next time: plant more in late March.

Red Kitten (top) alongside peas (bottom)

April 14, 2020: planted a square of Red Kitten under the corner trellis. The idea is that it will be shaded here during the heat of summer by the climbing vines of cucumbers and green beans. Maybe I’ll plant more soon because flea beetle have attacked the rabe and arugula I planted under here.

Red Kitten under corner trellis

So I have satisfied our desire for spinach all winter and spring! We have eaten pounds of it this week! So pleased.

Now I just need to keep it going through summer and fall. I still have plenty of seeds for Red Kitten, Winter Bloomsdale, and Olympia. Need to buy more Space, which has been really a good performer.

And we are no longer buying those plastic tubs of spinach leaves from the grocery store!

Final days of indoor seedlings

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Remaining seedlings

Yesterday I dismantled the indoor seedling operation and cleaned the area. Reclaimed a lot of space in the living room!

Disposition of remaining seedlings:

  • Four Marketmore cucumber seedlings to plant, joining four already planted last week
  • Four soil blocks of celeriac
  • Twelve soil blocks of Afina cutting celery (indistinguishable from celeriac)
  • 24 tomato plants of unidentified variety. No room for these, so we are giving them away.
  • Five tomatillos that will go into the hoophouse
  • Four ground cherries to be planted in various places
  • Twelve pepper seedlings destined for the hoophouse
  • Four summer squash: two costata romanesco zucchini, one black zucchini, one patty pan (a very late germinator). I only want to plant three.
  • 18 winter squash destined for the community garden or maybe a few in the main garden

I’ve got a lot of planting ahead of me this week with these and direct seeding.

Young red squirrel

Mulching

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I’ve been mulching new plants. Tucking them into their beds of hay or straw for the season. Garlic first, then today onions and then broccoli. It is satisfying and makes the row look great. Strenuous, but just think of the weeding and watering it will save and the nice healthy plants that will grow.

I took some photos of the broccoli. There are a few struggling red cabbage or maybe cauliflower mixed in there, but mostly broccoli mix. The plants are under cover to prevent flea beetle attacks, and later cabbage butterfly. I left the covers off for the afternoon to admire the row and allow it to soak up this sunshine.

Before hay mulch. They’ve had some chopped leaf mulch on them from the beginning. There’s a rogue spinach in there from last fall, bolting now.
Broccoli portrait
After hay mulch. To the right, potatoes. To the left , barely visible, fava beans.

Tomatoes planted

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It’s always a milestone when we decide to put tomatoes in the ground. This year there was a lot of pressure because we started the seeds so early. The seedlings are huge and starting to be unhappy in their pots. But the weather is not yet totally reliable and we are obviously before the landmark Memorial Day.

Anyway, Sam planted one row today. 19 plants, 20 if you count each of the twins. There will be two more rows to come.

Tomato row

In other news, I’m starting to remulch the garlic.

Garlic bed

And a rabbit visits in the morning.

Rabbit visiting

Hoophouse last hurrah

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We will soon transition the hoophouse to its summer purpose — hothouse crops like peppers, basil, eggplants. Maybe a tomato, tomatillo, ground cherry.

It’s time to acknowledge that the hoophouse has been great this past winter for overwintering greens.

  • Planted in late August, it produced robust happy plants in the fall until real cold weather.
  • Then we ate greens (although sparingly) all winter, with one cleanup to remove dead plants.
  • Come spring, some varieties really took off. We had abundance much earlier than we would get from outdoor planting.

It’s work, but not a lot of work. We rarely watered the raised beds. We covered them with frost-protection cloth at night and removed it in the morning. We installed dowels in channels sewn at the edge of the cloth strips to make it easier to lift and drape the covers. We’ll have to decide how to enrich the soil in the beds before this coming August (when the hothouse crops will still be in there!).

Best overwintering varieties: claytonia, escarole, kale, winter lettuce, spinach, salanova lettuce, chard

Hesitating for various reasons: tatsoi, carrots, scallions, minutina

More short-lived, consider succession planting: mache, arugula

Give it a try: cilantro

Last Red Butter Salanova lettuce, surrounded by new leaf spinach “Space.” Planted 30 Aug 2019. Really nice to have a few contrasting color leaves in winter salads.
Napoli carrots. Planted 30 Aug 2019. Ate some as babies, will soon harvest the rest. Not sure of the advantage of “fresh” carrots in the winter if we can store carrots from the big garden. I’ve heard you can eat carrot tops, but I can’t bring myself to try.
Tatsoi, spring planting. August planting didn’t make it through the winter. This is starting to bolt. Not real happy with tatsoi, although it’s better under cover. It isn’t eaten to death by flea beetles when grown in here. It does grow fast and has good flavor.
A huge mound of claytonia. Planted 23 Aug 2019 and still going strong. Apparently self-seeds because it’s everywhere. Fun to pluck the little disc and snack on it. Everyone asked “What is this?” It should be more well known. Great performer if you can deal with the long stems (which are edible but hard to manage with a fork!) and the invasiveness. Tasty and fun to eat the little white flowers too!
Scallions. Seed saved from garden. Planted 23 Aug 2019. Grew well although we don’t eat these often. Probably nice to have a row of it — need to thin it better!
Kale mix, including the delicious kale buds. Planted 23 Aug 2019. Ate sparingly through the winter, growing big and providing buds now.
Chard. Planted 23 Aug 2019. Ate sparingly through the winter and growing to full size now.
Leaf Spinach. Space and Red Kitten varieties. Planted 23 Aug 2019. Preference for the Space variety as it’s not bolting yet. But both performed well through the winter.
Winter Lettuce. Planted 23 Aug 2019. Fantastic through the winter. Growing into bigger heads now.
More new spinach. And some unknown red plant?
The last beautiful escarole. Franchi Sementi seeds. Planted 23 Aug 2019 and will probably eat this one tomorrow. Fantastic through the winter and expanded rapidly into these big beautiful heads with longer days. Plant more next season!
New Astro arugula. August-planted arugula was great in the fall but didn’t make it through the winter. Some succession plantings maybe? We like it a lot.
Minutina. Planted 12 Sept 2019. Not a huge fan. The leaves are very narrow and a bit coarse. This was the only thing eaten by some garden visitor – vole or rabbit? Hard to believe they ate this instead of the other lush greens.
Mache, with some claytonia photo-bombing. Planted 19 Sept 2019. Did okay through the winter, but not as extraordinary as claytonia. Good to have both. It’s bolting now, so I’m pulling it out. I planted too much of it.
A lone cilantro – where’d you come from? Maybe try a row in the fall and another planting early next year.
Bed of savoyed spinach. Winter Bloomsbury and Olympia. Planted 12 and 19 September 2019. Doing well, but not sure they’ll take the heat on sunny days much longer.

Not pictured: Mizuna, which grew okay in the fall but died out in mid-winter and had to be removed. I don’t think I’d grow it again as it took space away from better performers.

Peas and favas are up

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I always get so excited to see the seeds sprout and start to grow. It’s a thrill that never gets old.

Pea row
Fava bean sprout
Another fava
And another!

We are also being entertained by two pesky baby red squirrels who live in the front garden where the tansy is thuggishly taking over.

Baby red squirrel sitting in solar light fixture
Baby red squirrel 2 sitting on bricks