I went out to the hoophouse at 9:45 this morning and pulled the row cover off to let light, air, and heat into the plants. Outside temp was 5F, inside was 32F. Soil around the edges frozen. Didn’t get back out to harvest until noon – outside was up to 14F, and inside was a balmy 59F. At 2 I took my hat and fleece shirt off. The thermometer lead was in the cool shade of the west wall so I don’t know how warm it really got. Did a very slow harvest/thin/weed on some of the spinach. I took more spinach to the birds than I brought in to wash, but that was expected.
I gave first choice of the culls to the geese, because they are strict vegetarians and make the best use of greens, but they are not keen on spinach. I thought they were desperate enough, and they will probably eat it all by morning, but they carefully picked out every non-spinach weed and savored them. It is hard enough putting things in the good vs cull bins, without adding a third bin for goose food. I probably will break down and try it, but I spend enough time going “oops” and picking culls out of the good bin. I usually don’t bother to try to retrieve the good from the cull bin, unless I am really short of crop.
The exciting news: I saw some baby spinach that has volunteered from last fall’s seeding (it just didn’t sprout in the fall for some reason). I have been debating when to start seeding spinach and greens transplants inside to give them a headstart. I think this is an indication that it is time to start. “Conventional wisdom” is that even our hardiest plants don’t start regrowing until mid-February. Well, the pac choi has grown, the mizuna has grown a little, some of the asian greens have really taken off and I will have to work to keep ahead of them. The only things holding back are the chard, arugula, and lettuce. I have some very nice lettuce that I’ve been saving and waiting for a little growth, which I will probably harvest tomorrow. Since it has not regrown after cutting, that will be it for lettuce until new plants come one. So, since I harvested spinach and 3/4 of the salad mix today, I hope to start a little experiment: I will seed some greens and spinach directly into the hoophouse soil. Some of these will be thinned and transplanted later too. And I will start some in the house under lights. Hopefully I will determine 1) which is ready to harvest soonest, 2) which stays longest, and 3) if the transplants do well enough to justify the extra time. In a future year, if the hoophouse is packed full, I might want to transplant just to be able to continue to harvest what is ready another few weeks while the seedlings grow in the house. Spring is really challenging for greens like spinach because they are engineered to go to seed with increasing daylength – frequently 14 hours day light, which is late April, is the trigger.
It is encouraging to know I can start planting. I checked the chard and greens that had been under snow and row cover in the field Monday and they were looking excellent. But the snow, which was great insulation, melted, so now all they have is row cover. I will be very pleasantly surprised if they make it through this. i was probably the only one rooting for more snow yesterday.
Anyway, we will have spinach and salad greens available this week. There have been too many days that had a harvestable window but I didn’t harvest since the next day was forecast to be really nice, and then it turned out cold and cloudy. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny (but then today wasn’t supposed to be), but I decided to play it safe and get them harvested.
