Tag: spinach

May Vegetable Garden

I’ve been so busy in the garden, I haven’t had much time to write about it.  Hopefully I can catch up in the next few days.  Everything is in that wonderful, lush spring phase.  Well, almost everything, but more on that another day.

garden vegetables

My raised vegetable beds are looking great.  I got my first harvest yesterday and we enjoyed a fresh vegetable side dish and a few small treats.   Most of the early seeds I planted in the side raised bed didn’t come up, but the spinach and a few stragglers survived the harsh spring.

garden spinach

garden spinach

In that bed, while the few early things are finishing up, I’ve planted tomatoes, onion starts, sugar snap peas, lots of squash, zucchini and cucumbers.  All the “messy” garden characters are nicely hidden on the side of the house with plenty of space to grow. All seem to be getting started nicely.

Raised bed garden

The new beds are also flourishing with vegetables, herbs and even some flowers.

Raised bed garden

The “left” garden has swiss chard, kale, spinach, lettuce, bush beans, cabbage, green peppers, sunflowers and nasturtiums in it.  I expect it’ll get a little more shade as the summer goes on, so maybe the cool weather plants will have a bit of an extended life.

Raised bed garden

The “right” garden is chock full of more lettuce, radishes, cabbage, green peppers, bush beans, basil, sunflowers and zinnias.  In front are marigolds, potted herbs and snapdragons to give the beds some color.   I like my herbs in pots to keep them tidy and in place.  On the side of the house I have more herbs, including mint.  Mint should always be in some type of corralled container to prevent it from taking over.

Raised bed garden

 

Leafy greens

So far, no complaints on the appearance of the gardens.  I’m really trying hard to not let it get unruly.  Hopefully the flowers add a burst of color.  To further help that, in the background of the gardens I’ve added cosmos and daylilys.  This project may turn out to be even nicer than we expected.

garden strawberry

Even the strawberry pot is looking great. Nothing like fresh from the vine fruit to remind you of what fruit is supposed to taste like.

Fall Spinach

IMG_0459

I wasn’t really thinking fall crops with all the 90° days we’ve had lately, but I was at the farmers market and one of my favorite farmers was talking about having just planted their fall spinach. I chatted with him a while about it, which I appreciate since whatever I grow takes away from his sales, and realized that I’d better get my seeds in the ground soon. What I found the most interesting is that even if I don’t get a great harvest now, it will overwinter and I’ll have some very early spring spinach.

I found a great article in Mother Earth News on growing fall spinach.  Some of the highlights are that spinach doesn’t germinate well above 75°, and not at all above 85°, it’s not so much the heat that makes it bolt in the spring as much as the length of daytime, and some varieties are better for overwintering than others.  Unfortunately for me, I thought about this all too late, so I just planted what I had and I’ll see what happens.  It does seem like we’re in for a cool stretch, so  maybe I’ll get them to germinate and be healthy plants before the first frost.

Next, I’ll be looking up some of these other varieties that they found to be tastier grown in the fall, the smooth-leaf varieties “Olympia” and “Viroflay”were hits, and the standard savoy varieties, “Bloomsdale Long Standing”  and “Tyee” were not as good.  There also seemed to be differences in ability to not bolt in warm fall weather, with  “Olympia” and “Spinner” fairing the best.  I think I’ll be ordering some Olympia seeds next spring!

Next year, required reading will be this Mother Earth News article on planting fall vegetables in general.  Late September is not the time to be first thinking about this.