Spinach; How to Grow the World's Healthiest Foods

Spinach is regaining its popularity as a garden vegetable because more people are using it in salads. I still love it best cooked just long enough to wilt it, with some olive oil in which I’ve crusted a clove of garlic. It also freezes will. It is not hard to grow, and it is also a quick crop forty to fifty days to harvest and even less if you eat the thinning when you thin your rows.

The problem most gardeners have with spinach is that they try to treat it like lettuce, but even more so. It bolts in hot weather just as lettuce will but does so more quickly. Spinach is really a spring or fall crop, though you can edge a bit into the summer months if you grow a “long-standing” type. Though heart and dryness are factors, it is the lengthening days that cause spinach to bolt, or to send up a tall, useless seed stalk and stop producing. The lengthening days approaching midsummer signal the spinach to go to seed. In warm climates it is grown in late fall, winter and early spring. Even in the north, some gardeners sow seeds in late fall that come up in the spring not fool proof, but worth a try.  

Spinach is regaining its popularity as a garden vegetable because more people are using it in salads

There’re two kinds of spinach. The most familiar is the dark green, crinkly leaved sort; the other is a lighter colored, flat-leaved version. New Zealand spinach and “Malabar Spinach” are not really spinach, though both taste something like it when cooked and are sometimes grown as spinach substitutes in warm climates or warm weather.

Select a Site

Plant spinach is full sun or part shade the later if the crop will be growing in warm weather. You might start a fall spinach crop between rows of a tall crop such as corn or beans, which will have been harvested once cool weather comes. Spinach for salads needs only a few square feet of space for the whole crop. For growing spinach to cook, however, I recommend a good 40 square feet at least, because it loses so much volume in cooking or freezing.

Select a Soil 

Spinach prefers a light soil, but with plenty of organic matter. Otherwise the soil will not retain the moisture the plant needs. As a leafy crop it thrives on very fertile soil, and it is almost impossible to overfeed it. Nitrogen is especially important. If you’re using commercial fertilizer for it, 10-10-10 is a good choice. You do not need to fertilize the soil to a great depth, though, because the plants are shallow-rooted   They’re a little fussy about pH, preferring the 6.0-7.0 range, so add lime if your soil is acid, but don’t go overboard because it doesn’t like very alkaline soil either.

Planting

Spinach is sown directly into the garden or cold frame. Purchase new seed each year because it does not stay viable for very long.  For spring planting you can start as soon as there’s some ground in your garden that has thawed.  This might be as early as eight weeks before the last frost. Some gardeners even get the furrow ready in the fall, so all they need to do the following spring is drop the seeds in and not worry about working the soil while it is still muddy. 

Spinach leaf miner larvae burrow inside the leaves and produce tan patches.

Plant single rows 12 to 15 inches apart, or plant several rows close together about 6 inches with a space of 1 ½ feet on either side, or plant in a block so that plants will all be I foot apart each way after thinning. Seeds should be ½ inch deep and if possible 1 inch apart. They’ll germinate in five to nine days, or a bit more if it is very cold. When where are two true leaves on the plants, they should be thinned to four inches apart, then thinned again so that the plants are eight to twelve inches apart. Use the discarded young plants in salads.  Unless you want a great deal of spinach all at once for cooking or freezing, it is best to save half a packet or so, then sow one or more extra crops at intervals of about ten days. But stop sowing around mid-May the idea is not to have spinach maturing during the long warms days of July and August. May sowings should be of a long standing type, as an extra safeguard against bolting. 

Start fall sowings in the late August, even later in warm climates. These should be sown a little thicker and deeper than spring crops, because germination is less reliable in warm weather. It helps to keep the soil moist with frequent watering and r a light layer of salt hay.

Growing

Mulching will help to keep the soil moist, but I would avoid very acid mulch such as sawdust, bark or peat moss because these can lower the pH below the plants tolerance. Salt hay or straw is better. If you’re over wintering a crop by keeping young plants dormant, it is best to mulch them heavily after the ground freezes to keep it frozen evenly. Alternate freezing and thawing can damage the plants. Cultivating or weeding is important if you do not mulch, but do it carefully, so as not to harm the spinach plants are four to six inches tall, a top dressing with a high nitrogen fertilizer such as fish emulsion or bone meal will spur growth. With spring crops remember to keep the growth going to bring the plants to maturity before they can bolt. 

Pests and Diseases

Home gardeners generally do not have many problems of this sort. Spinach leaf miner larvae burrow inside the leaves and produce tan patches. The easiest control is to pick off affected leaves and destroy them. Keeping the garden free of debris and weeds will help. By growing very early or late crops, you might avoid this bug’s season. You can also cover young plants with a very fine mesh or cheesecloth so that the fly that lays the eggs that produce these larvae cannot land on the plants. 

Spinach blight or “Yellows” is a mosaic virus spread by aphids. The leaves turn yellow, and the plants are stunted. You can control the virus by controlling the aphids, or you can grow resistant varieties. Also practice good garden hygiene. If there are yellow spots on the leaves and a moldy substance underneath the problem is the disease called the blue mold? It appears occasionally in very wet weather. Best defenses are weed control good drainage, and vigorous, well-fed plants. If they still get blue mold, throw them out and try again in better weather. Fusarium wilt can affect spinach, but there’re resistant strains you can grow. 

Harvest

You can reap your spinach two different ways by cutting the outside leaves and letting the centers keep producing or by cutting the whole plant just at soil level, like a head of lettuce. I think the best approach is to cut some outside leaves as you need them but not to leave the plant growing too long. Always cut the while plant f you see buds starting to form at the center; otherwise it will bolt and become useless. Sometimes the roots will send up some new leaves after the plant is cut but not enough to warrant leaving them there if you need the space. 

Varieties

Long standing Bloomsdale, a savoy, or ruffled type, is probably the most popular bolt resistant spinach. But also try “Popeye’s Choice and America”. For falls crops grow the cold-resistant “Winter Bloomsdale”. Melody and Hybird Number 7 are more disease resistant than most. “Giant Nobel” is good smooth leaved spinach. 

Plant spinach is full sun or part shade the later if the crop will be growing in warm weather

Celery is Cheap to Buy and Fussy to Grow

Few gardeners try to grow celery because it is cheap to buy and fussy to grow. But it does taste good and fresh if you grow your own, and frankly, traditional methods of growing celery are fussier than they need to be. Blanching the celery to produce a white stalk is no longer considered to be a necessity. All that mounding of soil, shoring up of plants and tying of collars and what have you got? A plant with fewer vitamins, the green celery we buy in the store is proof of the fact that today’s green varieties do not need blanching to taste good.

You can grow celery in any climate if you time it right. It does take a long time to grow up to six months from seed to harvest and dislikes hot summers. So start it in the fall in hot areas, and in early spring in cold ones. The short frost free season in very cold states is compensated for by relatively summers. Celery like those

If growing celery still seems hohum to you, consider celeriac, also called “celery root” or “celery knobs.” This gourmet celery makes a delicious, turniplike root that is hard to find in stores and is easier to grow than ordinary celery. It is tasty in soups and stews and makes a great cooked puree. My favorite way to use it is raw, marinated in a vinaigrette or remoulade dressing.
 

Select a Site
If you have mucky soil, or a high water table you have an ideal place for celery, and you owe it to yourself to grow it. Celery by choice grows in marshes. But if you don’t have wet soil you can still grow it. It will also tolerate partial shade. You do not need a lot of space for a celery crop. An 8 foot row will grow at least a dozen bunches of celery, or the same number of celery knobs.
 

Select a Soil
Celery is a heavy, even gluttonous feeder, it needs very rich soil. It is an equally voracious drinker. Spread a four inch layer of well-rotted manure or compost over the soil and dig it in well to a depth of six to eight inches, to give the soil fertility and help it retain moisture. I would add some bone meal and wood ashes as well. Or use another kind of organic matter, such as peat moss, and dig in a handful of 10-10-10 for each plant. The ideal pH is 6.0 but 5.5 and 7.5 is usually tolerable.
 

Planting
Given a choice, it is easier to buy seedlings than grow celery from seed. The seeds are tiny, take about two weeks to germinate, and are fussy about light, warmth and moisture. But local nurseries seldom have a good range of varieties, and they may not have celeriac at all. So you may want to raise a seed crop anyway. For a late summer crop, sow the seeds indoors four weeks before the last average frost date; for a fall crop, sow in May or June. Sow in flats of light sandy soil about 1/8 inch deep. Cover with damp sphagnum moss and keep out of direct sun in a spot that is 70 to 75 degrees by day and about 60 degrees by night. Transplant seedlings to peat pots when they’re 1 ½ to 2 inch tall, and spring transplants go in around the time of the last average frost. The plants should be three to five inches tall, and spaced six to eight inches apart. Set the crown a bit below soil level, or in a deep trench if you’re blanching, filing the trench as they grow. Even if you have enriched the soil, give each seedling a cupful of liquid fertilizer on planting, mixed according to the directions on the container give them another in two weeks or so.
 

Growing
Water, well particularly in drought Mulch, and protect the young plant sif night temperatures are below 55 degrees consistently, so that the plants will not form a tough flower stalk but a nice head of tender leaf stems instead. Keep the bed weeded. The finely branched, hungry roots will not tolerate competition. Celeriac is grown the same way.
 

Pests and Diseases
Good seeds, good soil and steady watering will ward off most disease. Early blight and late blight of celery are fungus diseases best fought with a tidy, debris free garden, and if necessary a fungicide. Celery worms can be picked off, but do consider that they will turn into the black swallowtail butterfly if not destroyed. I’d spare these lovely creatures, even if it came to a choice between them and my celery.
 

Harvest
Pick outside stalks as you need them or harvest a whole plant, cutting it off at the base when it looks like a mature bunch of celery. Sometimes you can prolong your harvest past the first frosts in fall by mulching heavily with straw. Celeriac roots can be dug when they’re two to four inches in diameter. Unlike regular celery they store well in a cool cellar.
 

Varieties
Good green varieties are “Giant Pascal” “Summer Pascal”, “Florida 683”, and “Utah 52-70”, “Golden Self Blanching, is yellow celery that people seem to like. The most common celeriacs are “Alabaster” and “Giant Prague” “Giant Smooth Prague” is a bit earlier.

Planting, Growing, and Harvesting Okra Plants

Okra grown for its edible seed pods, a handsome plant to have in the vegetable garden. It has showy pale yellow flowers with red centers not unlike a hollyhock. Okra haters are not impressed by this. They claim that the pods are prickly on the outside and slimy on the inside, and that if they want showy flowers they can grow petunias. Okra lovers, most of whom live below the Mason Dixon line, point out that modern “spineless” varieties aren’t prickly at all and that the viscous inside is the magic ingredient that thickens a good gumbo a hearty stew. “Gumbo” is also another name for the plant itself. 

Okra is popular in the south because it is a warm weather crop that won’t bolt yellow, die, or otherwise misbehave in midsummer. It just gets taller, lusher and more productive. It is a little hard to get started up north but redeems itself by being, unlike eggplant, a fast maturing crop once warm weather settles in. So even if you don’t plant until late June, you can still pick okra two months later if you urge it along a little. You only need a few plants for the home garden, though any extras can be frozen sliced or whole. Dwarf varieties are available for small spaces. It is disease free and rarely decimated by bugs. 

Choose a site 

Select a sunny site where the ground will warm up quickly or even raised beds in the north. The more okra you want to eat or freeze, the more space you need. The first time you grow it, start with 6 plants in an area of about 40 square feet. You might put an early lettuce crop in with it. But otherwise assign the whole plot to okra for the season. If you grow it each year, rotate the crop. 

Soil

Okra prefers a light, well drained loam with plenty of organic matter. Avoid heavy soils that warm up slowly especially up north. A pH of 6.0 to 7.0 is best and moderately high fertility. It is suggested a healthy shovelful of compost or aged manure worked into each planting hole. 

Planting 

Buy new seed each year and speed up the normally slow germination process by soaking or freezing the seeds over night or nicking the seed coat with a file. Wherever you live, make sure that the weather is consistently above 60 degree and not too wet when you sow. the seeds will just sit and rot in cold, wet soil. In the north start them a month or two earlier indoors in peat pots. Sown outdoors, seeds should be planted an inch deep in hills or rows and thinned to at least 18 inches apart. Bear in mind that the plants get tall 5 to 6 feet in warm climates. Dwarf varieties that grow to 3 to 4 feet are more convenient for the home garden. In the north space them far enough apart so that the sun can shine on all the pods to ripen them. Make sure plant either 18 inches apart with 3 feet between rows or on a grid with plant’s two and half feet apart each way a little closer for dwarf kinds.   

Growing

It is important not to let growth lapse. Gardeners use numerous warm up devices to bring the young plants along if it’s chilly raised beds, hot caps, grow tunnels, portable cold frames and sheets of black plastic slit to allow the plants to grow up. Keep plants well watered if it is dry. Mulch is a good idea. And top dress every few weeks with a balanced liquid fertilizer. 

Pets and Diseases

So use the collars around transplanted seedlings to protect against cutworms. Occasional pests such as corn earworms cabbage, loopers and stinkbugs can be picked off. Aphids and flea beetles can be knocked off with a hose. Diseases such as fusarium wilt and verticillium wilt are best dealt with by crop rotation.  

Harvest

Okra pods are ready for picking several days after the flowers drop but before they’re fully mature. If you wait until the pods reach full size, they’ll be tough. The stems should still be soft and easy to cut, the pods 2 to 3 inches long. Some varieties can be picked at about 4 to 5 inches. When the plant is in full production it requires to be picked every other day. If some pods have gone too far, pick them anyway and feed them to whatever will eat them, even if it’s the compost pile or the garbage can. Otherwise the plants will stop producing. Use gloves when you pick if your skin is sensitive to the prickles on the pods. Okra plants, if picked regularly, will continue to produce until frost. In the south growers sometimes cut the plants back almost to ground level in midsummer, top dress them, and let them resprout for a whole second crop.

Varieties

Good varieties are “Clemson Spineless” the old standby, and “Clemson 80” an earlier, more productive version. “Emerald” is a tall, spineless, very productive variety. “Annie Oakley” is a tall early producer. “Dwarf Green Long Pod” is a good short variety. “Blondy, an All-America selection, is short and bushy with light green pods. “Red Okra” has red pods; white velvet has white.  

Cauliflower is the Sweetest, Mildest Tasting Vegetable

Cauliflower really is a flower the big, lumpy white ‘head’ that we eat is a cluster of flower buds nested inside a cabbage like plant. It is believed that cauliflower is the sweetest, mildest tasting member of the cabbage family, but home gardeners grow it far less often than the other brassicas. Perhaps it won’t tolerate either very hot or very cold weather, so there is only a short season before and after the summer heat in which you can grow it. Or most varieties need to be “blanched” their heads covered with leaves while they’re maturing. Unblanched heads turn green and don’t taste as good as white one.

Yet cauliflower certainly has its place in the garden. It is a good source of calcium and other vitamins, it freezes well, it is expensive to by in the store, and it is not difficult to grow if you know and respect its need for a steady supply of water. There’re even purple headed varieties that look like broccoli when cooked but taste nonetheless like cauliflower and do not need blanching.

Select a Site

You should select a sunny well drained spot where other cabbage family vegetables have not grown recently. Space requirements are the same as for cabbage.

Select a Soil

Provide the same soil conditions that you’d for other brassicas. The soil should be fairly rich, particularly in nitrogen and potassium. The pH should be 6.0 to 7.0. And plenty of organic matter should be incorporated into the soil, so that it will retain moisture. It is best to dig compost or well-rotted manure into the soil the fall before planting.

Planting

Cauliflower can take a little frost at the very beginning and the very end of its life, but not much. It really needs at least two months of cool but not frosty weather to come to maturity. This means you can plant it in fall or late winter in warm climates. In cold ones it is usually a fall crop of which there can be many successions, each a week or two apart. Plant fall crops from late May to early July, depending on how cold your climate is. The idea is to allow two to three months between the time you set it out and the first frosts. Purple head cauliflower takes longer about 85 days to harvest.

Well, for spring crops start seeds indoors 4 to 6 weeks before setting the plants out. Keep the seeds at about 70 degree if you can, with a steady supply of moisture. The roots do not like to be disturbed in transplanting, so use peat pots. When they’re about six inches tall they can be planted outside, as long as it is no earlier than three or four weeks before the last expected frost. You can set the plants outside to harden off several weeks earlier. Set the plant about 18 to 24 inches apart. Build a saucer of earth around each plant to help it to hold water and use cutworm collars fall crops of cauliflower can be down directly in the garden, but to save space use a cold frame or the “nursery bed” section of your garden to get late plants started, and then transplant to their growing place. Otherwise sow them in hills and thin them to one seedling per hill.

Growing

The most important thing about raising cauliflower is to keep the growth going. It cannot sit out a hot dry spell. If it is dry, give the soil a good soaking to the depth of about six inches. Mulch will also help keep the soil moist. If the heads still are not growing bigger, top dress the plants with liquid fertilizer. The white flower head that emerges is called a “curd” or a “button” when it is egg sized, blanches it by bending over the big leaves that surround it so that they cover the curd; then tuck them in on the opposite side, breaking the ribs of leaves to keep them from springing back. If the head still doesn’t stay covered, tie some leaves together at the top with a string or rubber band. The idea is to keep light and moisture out but let some air in, and also leaves some space in which the head can grow. The heads should not be covered when the plant is wet, or they may not. Water the ground around the plants and keep the soil water constant.

Pests and Disease

For pests and disease treat cauliflower the way you would broccoli, cabbage or Brussels sprouts. Root maggots are sometimes a problem in the fall crop.

Harvest

Check the heads from time to time to see if they’re large enough about six inches across but still tight, with the buds unopened Some varieties have larger heads up to 12 inches so consult the information on the seed package or in the catalog. When they’re ready, cut them right away, just below the head, and either use them or freeze them. If you pull up the plant, roots and all, it will keep in a cool cellar for at least a month.

Varieties

The snowball varieties such as snowball and snow king are large headed late crops. But “Super Snowball” ‘Snowball Improved’ early white snow crown hybrid and snow king hybrid mature faster. Self blanche has leaves that curl over the head by themselves purple head is a popular purple variety.