My Spinach Is Bolting!

We like spinach. We really like spinach. I'll put a bowl of baby spinach leaves on the table, a plate of cheese slices, another plate of sliced cooked meat of some kind and a good veggie dip. We make little spinach "sandwiches" by stacking two or three spinach leaves together, placing a slice of cheese and a slice of meat on that, then topping with another two or three spinach leaves. Dip this little sandwich in the dip and . . .mmm, mmm, good! A bowl of fresh picked radishes with salt and that was our dinner last night.

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.)