Where was I? Did I get side-tracked? Oh, yeah, our spinach. Even though we've only had two good harvests off our bed of spinach so far, the plants are starting to show signs of wanting to bolt. Too *#!% hot! So to talk our spinach crop into producing for us over a longer period of time, today I knew I had to take serious measures.
First off, I mulched the whole bed (in picture below I'm only half done with the job) with fresh grass clippings in an effort to hold more moisture in the soil.
This mulching also keeps the spinach leaves almost totally clean when it rains as no mud splashes up on the underside of the leaves. (My mama didn't raise no dummy.) Then we put what we call a "riser" on the spinach bed with a shade cloth cover fastened to the top of that. The shade cloth gives cooler temperature loving crops relief from the heat and sun of the day. Air still circulates through the cloth and rain falls right through onto the plants.
This shows the shade cloth covered top that can be propped up and out of the way when I want to harvest.
This shot is looking down through the shade cloth cover at the mulched bed of spinach.
I hope you'll be much more comfortable and happy, you little green plants, and will give us a lot more delicious, crunchy, healthful spinach. And don't even think about bolting now, okay?
To celebrate a day of hard work in the hot, hot sun, we had root beer floats out on the sun-shaded deck.
Boy, did they hit the spot! (Burp. 'Scuse me. Root beer always makes me burpy.)
3 comments:
Mmmm, rootbeer floats! I must, I must, I MUST . . . get that homemade rootbeer started!
Hi Mama Pea,
Hope your spinach cooperates now.
I've got a bunch of grass clippings in the yard that I need to get raked up and put in the garden too. That looks like it really does the trick for mulching. Do you till it into the soil come fall then?
Mornin', Ruthie - The grass clippings put lots of nutrients into the soil, too. Come fall, you'd be surprised how much of the grass clippings mulch has already decomposed and "disappeared." We apply compost (on top of what's left of the clippings) on the cleared and cleaned beds/gardens after harvest and till it all in.
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