Spinach

Half picked

I've been doing well on the preserving front. But the big push is almost over. The spinach is bolting.

Done

Most of the plants have been stripped and will be pulled before I need the bed in a week. A few aren't quite at the bolting stage so I left some leaves on them so they can grow. I'm left with about five or six plants in this bed and some in my cucumber and zucchini bed. I pulled more of those out though to give the cucurbits more space and make sure they get full sun all day. I expect very small harvests of spinach next week. Probably just enough to eat fresh. The big push to freeze spinach is over.

Cladosporium leaf spot

In the last bed I came across patches of something I hadn't seen before in the garden. I had to look it up. It was Cladosporium leaf spot. Luckily there wasn't much of it to spoil all the leaves. Most were free. Just a patch here and there. I hope it doesn't stick around to next year. Our extension service says not much is really known about the disease and how it is transmitted. They implicate seeds though. I'll be getting fresh seed next year for sure. And as always I'll rotate my crops.

I'll miss you spinach. Though part of me is ready say goodbye to my morning blanching sessions. Tomorrow or Monday I'll get out and pull the mizuna. Then the only blanching greens left will be kale and chard. Kale goes until early to mid summer before it is pulled, but the chard will stick around all year long. Though as the other greens fade and the cabbages are all picked, chard will become an important fresh green as it takes the summer heat well. I checked to make sure that leaf spot disease didn't effect chard as they are in the same family as spinach. It doesn't seem to. Thank goodness.

Zucchini

I'll be looking forward to the summer crops. The zucchini, cucumbers, and corn that are taking the place of the spinach. I have a long way to wait though. Grow zucchini grow!

Rain, Rain, Rain

Whoohoo! Rain! Today is our third day of rain. For the most part it was a nice gentle rain. We have over 2.5 inches which is great but it is about to stop. I'm sure the plants are really happy for the water. The temperatures on the other hand dropped 40F (22C) in two days. On Saturday we had a high of 91F (33C). Yesterday it was 51F (11C). The sweet potatoes aren't too happy, but I think they will recover when the weather gets better.

The last couple of days has brought in something else. A small but hungry groundhog. At first he was just eating the weeds in the grass. I was good with that. But he has taken a liking to some of the new plants in the perennial bed. Namely the rudbeckia and gaillardia. So I've covered them with some bird netting. It isn't the prettiest for a spot near my front door, but I need them to get established before the wildlife munches on them. These plants were transplanted out as little seedlings just over a month ago. And just so you know, my vegetable garden is well fortified. It has a good three foot fence and in most spots it has hardware cloth that goes down a foot. Groundhogs around here are nothing new.

With all the rain, getting out to the garden and getting things done has been a challenge. I harvested and preserved greens both Sunday and Monday. I picked during breaks in the rain. One of the beds I picked was supposed to get corn and squash planted yesterday. I hadn't even gotten the bed totally cleared. I picked the spinach, but hadn't pulled and composted the plants yet.

So in one nice break I got out to clear that bed out. It is the uppermost bed. Though as you can see it still has greens in it. Those are self seeded Deer Tongue lettuce. I'll probably have to pick them before planting (rescheduled for tomorrow), but I may be able to leave some in to grow full size. The corn and squash don't need all the space immediately. But as you can see from the beds on the left I plant my corn in a grid and if the lettuce plants are in the wrong spot they will need to go.

While I was cleaning up I got under the Asian greens row cover (lower most bed) and cleaned up the waste from the bok choy and tatsoi I picked the other day. It just got left there because the rain had started again. That bed will be sown in corn and squash too. But I'll wait another week for that one.

Images That Make Me Happy

My Brussels sprouts are growing well this year. Will I get them for the first time ever?

Butternut squash

Spinach bed before picking in the morning

Parsley in the early morning sunlight

Ditto for peas

Sage and chives in full bloom

Chard that was picked just five days ago

The rose is starting to bloom over the mint pots. It helps hide the gas meters and the shut off switch for the solar power. Thyme is in bloom by the path, with sage and rosemary to the right.

The little path in my new perennial bed. Gooseberries on the right. Blueberries and basil on the left. And the daisies are almost ready to bloom. Once again I've put a Garnet sweet potato in my pot by the front steps. It is pretty enough to be an ornamental sweet potato, but I get tubers from it in the fall.

Six lettuces from Fedco's summer mix. Except for one they look like just what I grew in the spring. I swear the upper left is Red Sails and two of them are Deer Tongue. And maybe the middle bottom is Paris Island.

Strawberries ripening

And a view of most of the garden, with radishes being rinsed off in the path.

Everything is just so green. I love springtime. Our unusually hot weather has made things jump in growth. When I picked the Bloomsdale Long Standing spinach this morning, there was three pounds from the one bed. And I was looking at the chard and kale bed thinking they needed picking again too. Even the spinach I picked from two days ago is almost at that stage again. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed, so I dumped some spinach on my townhouse mates. I kept enough to fill up my mini loaf pan to freeze what I had, but no more than that. My townhouse mates really appreciate the extra greens and it lets me off the hook when I feel like there is just too much.

The greens won't last forever though. OK the chard will last, but the spinach is starting to bolt. I'm not surprised with all the heat we have had. Even with perfect spinach weather it is the time for it. Not all of it is bolting yet, but some of the spinach that I picked this morning had blooms coming up. I picked all the leaves off of those. I left a decent amount on the others so as not to stress them too much. I've been keeping them well watered (every four days during the heat spell) so they are happy.

Our weather is going to break big time on Sunday. Wet cooler weather is moving in. We really need it. I just hope the forecasted rain materializes.

Thinking Ahead . . . Or Not

The weather has turned really hot. Today is 90F already. Bleck! I'm such a heat wimp. I talked earlier about my morning routine and I figured I ought to keep the house as cool as possible, which means don't heat the house up every morning blanching vegetables to freeze. I ought to do a big picking and only heat the house up one morning. I could pick all three spinach beds. I'd have one day of nastiness and then the next two mornings could be enjoyed with my windows opened wide and cool breezes blowing through.

5+ pounds of spinach

It started off well. But I could tell after picking the first bed that I wouldn't have space in my basket and tub for all three beds. They had grown a lot over the last week. I fit about five pounds of spinach from two beds. Which really is more than I want to process at once anyway. That last bed will have to wait until Friday.

Second bed after picking

As I was on my last bed I decided to pull a few plants (the middle was bare anyway as those didn't grow for some reason). This will be my cucumber and zucchini bed for the summer and the seeds needed planting. I pulled just enough I think to fit them in. Once they really get going the spinach will be long gone anyway.

Since I was pulling spinach, I took a photo of the roots. The ones that didn't really grow didn't have much of a tap root, but the big plants did. This one is about 6" long. I know some people like to do spinach transplants but I just can't imagine them doing that well with a stunted tap root. Though I supposed my parsley does fine most years grown that way.

Anyway back to the task at hand. I took that huge pile of spinach inside to blanch. It was kind of amusing as I scurried about trying to get everything done for the next batch before the first batch was finished blanching in the pot. I had to get ice to cool down the hot spinach. I had to toss the wash water on the garden - run, run, run. Get back fill the tub up, wash some more. I didn't want to have any time that the pot was boiling and not being used to cook spinach. But I got it done. I left the hot pot of water outdoors to cool off.

I might have been thinking ahead about not heating up the house, but I wasn't thinking about freezing it. I only have one container that I use to freeze my greens. I like to have a nice half cup which is about 3 ounces of uncooked greens in each. My little mini loaf pan fits that if I round the tops up. But five pounds of spinach comes to about 26 servings. My pan holds 12. Whoops. I had to store some of the blanched spinach in the fridge waiting its turn in the freezer. Usually my greens go right from the garden to get blanched and then frozen immediately. It is the freshest I could possibly have to eat in the winter. I'll have to remember that in the future. Just over two pounds works fine. Any more and I don't have the pan for them.

And in no way related, but I just had to share. My first two strawberries! Whoohoo! Sadly the real first strawberry was eaten by a squirrel. I have since shored up my defenses and hopefully the rest are mine.

Revamping the Spinach Bed

Since I harvested the last of the overwintered spinach on Thursday, I decided Friday was a good day to redo the bed before all the weeds and bolting spinach were pulled.

This bed is made from some bricks from a walk that was taken apart. They aren't laid down with any kind of foundation, but just put on the surface. Over time the soil from inside the bed sinks.

And the bricks start slowly falling into the bed which leaves gaps on the sides. So every couple of years I take them out and put rocks under them and put them back. It is a bit of a chore, but not all that hard. And I like the brick lined beds which are hot in the summer and grows my sweet potatoes and melons better than my wooden raised beds in the rest of the garden.

Plus I like the pretty circle pattern. Which I can't do in wood. As you can see I got rid of the bolting spinach and the weeds. I raked the soil smooth. Then I sifted enough compost to cover the bed. I like to add about an inch every year. Some years they only get a half of an inch which is what I consider the minimum to keep the beds healthy. Because I almost always have a real crop in the beds, I can't use things like cover crops. My garden isn't that big. So I make a lot of compost and leaf mold every year. Anything to get organic matter into the soil.

Overwintered Spinach

Weedy spinach bed

Yesterday morning was time for my second and final picking of the overwintered spinach. The spinach comes to a close every year when the plants start to bolt and the leaf miners start laying their eggs.

Leaf miner eggs

I saw this on the back of the spinach leaves which is a sure sign to eat those leaves or lose them. I don't protect my overwintered spinach in the spring since bolting is just about the same times as the miners hit. Last week when I was picking the spinach I had to be careful as a swarm of paper wasps were working in the bed. I don't know what they were after. I like to think it is cutworms since they are taking down my carrots, but it could be the flies that were starting to lay eggs on the back of the spinach. Whatever they were after I wouldn't want to cover the plants with netting to keep them out. I do my spring planted spinach. If I didn't it would be too damaged from the leaf miners as those plants are too small yet to pick.

After picking I immediately brought it in and blanched it. Some I kept in the fridge for dinner, but the rest was frozen. I always boil the overwintered spinach as the oxalic acid content is higher than the spring spinach. Boiling removes a good amount of it. I've also found that I like to cook up large quantities of greens like kale, mizuna, and spinach right away. It is so much easier to store cooked and small. If I had to put them all in the fridge without being cooked down, they would take up way too much space. Last year I would wait until I wanted to eat some. This year I'm being more proactive about it. I like it too as it makes cooking up dinner much faster. I only do this for greens though as I like them plain - either steamed or boiled. Things like bok choy or tatsoi I tend to cook into things, so they are are still cooked when needed.

If you notice in that first photo, I hadn't weeded this spinach bed. All the spring ones are done. I've been having trouble convincing myself to pull the johnny-jump-ups. I even have volunteer chamomile in the bed. The jump ups have been a bit out of control in the yard over the last couple of years. I pulled them every where else in the yard, but I left them here. I just like them too much. But soon I'll pull the whole bed. It is destined to be my sweet potato bed come June 1st. At least if the weather permits.

This and That

View on the other side of the fence from my garden. I love phlox.

I know I've done things in the garden as I really really need to weed, but somehow I ended up doing other things instead. I get distracted when I go out into the garden. I know I planted my chitted squash seed on Sunday since I wrote that down. I know I watered the front beds. And then watered the strawberries yesterday as some of them were wilting.

And I fixed my bird netting over the strawberry plants. I had simple hoops that were too small as the flowers were poking out of the top. And if the flowers poke out, the strawberries will be out of the netting so the squirrels will eat them. I should call it squirrel netting not bird netting as the birds aren't all that bad. In addition I pretty much let the strawberries run last year. Where they liked to be was right next to the edge of the wall. So If I put a hoop in the soil those strawberries right at the edge would be halfway through the netting. So I made some bigger hoops and bent them so they would hang over the edge to keep all those wonderful blossoms inside the net. At least mostly. Next year I've got to keep them from rooting right next to the wall. If nothing else they wilt too quickly there as the soil dries out fast at the edge. The ones farther back do better.

I've been fixing up the places for my herbs. I took the old Mojito mint pot and got all the old roots out. I added compost and mixed it in. Now when the plant come I can just pop it into the pot. I also took down one of my two rhubarb plants (the left one). I figure I really only need one. I'll use the spot for some rosemary. Though I still have to dig out those roots. It will be better to have something smaller so I don't have to worry about it blocking the air conditioner as much.

Bed 2W

I don't know if I was avoiding weeding or not. I usually don't mind weeding. But I had to go out after dinner to finally get some of it done. I weeded all of Bed 1 and the western side of Bed 2. You can barely see the spinach in the above bed. And some of those weeds are starting to bud. The last thing I need are more weed seeds in my garden. I've got to get to the rest of the beds. I think my priority are the carrot bed and the other two spinach beds. Then I can do the other beds that are less problematic.

There is the same bed all weeded out. I had a lot of damping off in this and the other spinach beds. So there are huge gaps. In Bed 1E I found four cut worms that were taking down my turnips. I hope there aren't more. I'll go out this morning as soon as I finish watering the beds and see if any more have been taken down and if so dispatch the culprits. Luckily the cabbages and kales in this bed are probably too big for the cutworms to hurt.

Growth

This week has been below normal in temperatures, but it hasn't stopped the garden from popping up in growth. This is especially true of the spinach in the Circle Garden. A week ago I might have found a leaf or two to pick. Today once it warms up from its low of 34F (1C), I'll get to go out and make my first picking. I'm dancing with joy over that.

The lettuce on the other hand is just sitting there this week. It has made some progress but not enough to want to harvest anything from it. You can tell it has been cold as the Red Sails lettuce is all red. When it gets warmer it will be a lot greener.

Right next to the lettuce are my radishes. They have all popped up. I've thinned them out to about 4". That is enough space for them to grow quickly this spring. I could have left them closer, but I didn't. Impatience for my crops is winning out.

Off in the main part of the garden (going from bed 8 to bed 1), the peas have started to come up. Really I saw the first little green bits a week ago. I see more now, but they haven't really unfurled. They are being slow.

In the same bed but under cover my turnips are coming up. Around them are my Chinese cabbages that are doing well. I like to put the turnips down the middle as the cabbages take up so much space, but when they are young they don't. I'll have to get in and thin those turnips soon. I probably won't give them as much space as I did my radishes. These will mature in spurts over time.

I have spinach coming up in a lot of beds, but the best is the one by the brick path. The beds closer to it are always warmer and it isn't just the bricks. They get more sun here. I can even see little tiny true leaves starting to form. There is good germination in one of the other beds too, but one is being slow about it. The ground was still frozen 4" down in parts of that bed when they were planted. So it is taking a while to warm up. The warmer parts are sprouted but the parts closest to the fence are not. But spinach I've found doesn't rot out easily. So they will be up when the ground is warm enough.

The allium bed is doing very well. The garlic all came up. And the onions that I planted a little over a week ago are starting to break dormancy.

I think the hard winter really hurt the kale. I'm still going to get a decent harvest from the dwarf curly kale as it is so hardy.

The Winterbor kale didn't fare as well. A couple died outright. The tops of all of the plants died. But I cut the dead parts off and the rest of the stems are starting to sprout leaves. I'm not sure what the harvest will be, but I'll at least get some kale raab. But that is weeks away.

And last but not least, my best hope for early harvests - my baby Asian greens. They always do so well in the spring. Except for the few larger plants they were put in a week an a half ago. And even with our cooler temps this week, they have kept growing well.

I have other things in the garden growing too. The carrots started sprouting a couple of days ago. So they have taken two weeks to germinate. Some years it is three. The umbelliferae bed is growing slowly and the fennel has started to sprout. The broccoli and other brassicas are doing very very well under their row covers. The chard is surviving. It survives quite well at these temperatures, but it doesn't like them. It wants warmer weather. Which it will get come Wednesday. It looks like that is the turning point to better weather. At least for a short time.

Broccoli

Today was a dank day. I went out to put in the broccoli plants. And got chased in by the rain. It started a few drops here and there as I was aerating the soil. I put more than broccoli in my broccoli patch. I plant two rows of broccoli that are two feet apart. I've found that three rows are just too close for them to produce well. But that is a lot of extra space especially when they are small. So I put a row of turnips along the outside. One row on each side. Luckily I did this first. The rain held off just long enough. I wouldn't want to get my seed packet wet.

View from my window

As I put in the first broccoli plants the rain started. I stayed out getting wet until they were all in. But I wasn't going to get wet for the row cover. Nor was I going to get my camera wet, so I took a photo of it from indoors. Not a great photo as you can only see some of the 10 plants that went in.

Tall white row covers blocking my view

When the rain let up I put the cover on quickly. Sadly the row covers will block my fence for quite some time and the broccoli row cover stays up all year. The fence will be planted in zinnias which are quite pretty, but only the bees will see them most of the time. Which is too bad as I really enjoy their colorful display.

The garden is really shaping up. The first seeds are up and growing. Above are either the radishes or the turnips. I forgot which ones I put in which rows. Not that it matters. I'll find out when their roots start to pop up. The first of the spinach is up too. The patch by the path. The other patches have colder soil as they get less sun, so they will take a bit longer. No sign of the carrots yet, but then they always take a while. The only transplants ready to be planted are those bunching onions I talked about earlier. I'll do them tomorrow when the weather clears up. It should be a really pretty day tomorrow. But the bulk of the spring garden is in. Which means it is time to turn to other kinds of spring work. Like cleaning up the rest of the yard. I ordered mulch which will be delivered in a week. That will need to be spread. The compost needs to be turned. I think next week I'll be building upper body strength.

A Beautiful Weekend

Except for the 20 mph wind, today was such a gorgeous day. Tomorrow will be even nicer as the temperatures will rise by 10F and the wind will die down. So of course I was outside getting things done.

My fruit trees showed up on Friday right on time. I figured they would all be bareroot but they weren't. Only the Pink Lady apple was. So I unwrapped it and put it in a bucket of water to soak over night. The Ichy persimmon and the 2-in-1 plum (Redheart and Shiro) were both in pots which I watered. The plum was a decent size, but the persimmon was tiny. It was only a foot tall. I hope that doesn't mean it is a really slow grower.

This morning I was out to dig out the last stump and plant the trees. Then I fixed the trellis for the apple tree. I've got the wires spaced 18" apart with four going across. I cut the top of the whip to the bottom wire. Hopefully I can get enough branches going in the right spaces. Last time I did this one of my trees had to be cut again to encourage the right branches to grow. I've never been very good at getting apple trees to grow branches where I want them.

The persimmon and plum won't be espaliered. I'm going to grow them semi naturally. They are against a fence and by the driveway so I'm going to try to shape them more linearly. But I think that will be easier than trying to trellis them as stone fruit just don't do that well espaliered. Natural growth is so much easier with them (they don't send out spurs like apples and pears, but put out buds on newer growth). I seem to do better shaping these kinds of trees than apples, so I should be OK. Either that or I'm deluding myself. We will see if I have to rip these out in five years.

Dark spots used to have alyssum

Next up was cleaning up the alyssum from the paths. I probably shouldn't let it stay over the winter. It really gets in the cracks. I've got little alyssums coming up everywhere the plants were draping in the cracks of the path. I don't put this in the compost. There are way too many seeds. I put it in the yard waste and I let the town compost it. They get much hotter than mine. Mine doesn't kill seeds.

Then it was on to the spinach seeding. I had two beds of spinach left to do. First I fertilized and aerated the soil. Or tried to. The last two feet of each bed was still frozen about 5" down. Some years I'd do the bed in two batches doing the unfrozen end first then coming back. But I decided not to this year. Our forecast is for mostly sunny weather in the 60Fs for a whole week. The ice won't last long. Certainly not long enough to rot a spinach seed as they are very hardy in these conditions. As you can see above I measured out long rows to seed in and used my measuring stick to make a small trench.

I dropped in the seed and covered them up and watered them in. One of the beds got Space which has always been my goto spinach. The other got pot luck from the store. It was Bloomsdale Long Standing. We will see if it really is longer standing than Space. Not that it will have a long time to stay in the bed. I have corn and squash that needs the bed come June.

I put on their row cover. This keeps the leaf miners from damaging the leaves. I don't need to do this yet as they don't come out until May some time. Usually mid May but it varies. But I didn't even think of leaving it off when I was doing it. I just automatically put it on. I probably should wait at least a couple weeks as then weeding would be easier.

I have some more seedlings that need planting, but today was way too windy to put them in. Tomorrow ought to be milder so hopefully I'll get a chance to get out and do that. I'll be waiting a bit longer on the celery, parsley, and celeriac that needs to go in. I want the soil to warm up just a bit before I do. I'll be able to do it later this week for sure though.