A perfectly germinated tiny section of a tiny row. Eleven days after our last look at the spinach, it’s definitely made some progress. It already looks good enough to eat!
spinach
Spinach in the field
Yay, spinach! Seeing direct seeded crops germinate is one of the most satisfying things in the field. Here, it’s spinach, Reflect variety, seeded a few days ago, coming up nicely. In general, seeds do germinate, that’s a good starting point. But there are lots of variables, and the unpredictable weather extremes that have become the new normal don’t help. Is the seed new this year, or has it been around for a year or more? What conditions does the particular veg like: ground always wet until germination, soil temperature not too low or too high, seed not too deep or too shallow, and so on. It sounds more complicated than it is, only because, as a tiny farmer, you have little control over any of it. You lay seed down at a reasonable depth, water it in, watch, hope for the best, and prepare to reseed if things don’t go your way!
Looking tiny by comparison, you can also see redroot pigweed seedlings popping up. They’re easy to handle if weeded early. Otherwise, a no-joke garden invader!
Early mini-harvest
A small harvest of spinach and bok choi for dinner! It’s always a pleasant little shock to taste the first of the season’s garden-fresh veggies. After the winter months when the only fresh produce is grown in faraway lands, it’s a treat. In recent years, I used to buy a limited amount of veggies in winter. Onions if I ran out of my own. Green onions. Sometimes cauliflower and broccoli. Salad mix. Nowadays, I freeze spinach, kale and cauliflower. That, along with stored beets, carrots, and winter squash, covers most of the winter. So, for food satisfaction, the first new harvests every year are a big deal! :)
October harvest
Great weather into the first week of October, with no hard frost so far. The veggie harvest list: beets, carrots, peppers, garlic, onion, green onion, zucchini, spinach, kale, lettuce, cabbage, butternut squash, radicchio, broccoli, eggplant. Nice!
Mid-September harvest
The weather’s been fine, no big frost worries, and the harvest is nice. For the sake of a list, in no particular order, we have: spinach, onion, garlic, carrots, bok choi, broccoli, lettuce, cabbage, kale, hot and sweet peppers, cauliflower, cherry tomatoes, green beans, beets, and…eggplant! I think I got ’em all. The set-up on a strip of canvas is for a newsletter photo–the lighting is an overcast sun, the studio is the field!
Early summer harvest
Bigger harvest, still mostly green. Beets, snap peas, spinach, garlic scapes, zucchini, kale, green onions, arugula, bok choi.
Summer spinach
Spinach in August is never a sure thing. Germination in the summer’s heat is a roll of the dice. Keep seeding, over and over, every few days, and the odds of catching the right conditions go up. When a seeding does take, the going gets easy! Here, a sprig of volunteer purslane has pushed through to share the sun.