Apparently, Michigan doesn't need a spring. We went right from 40 degree days (maybe slight exaggeration...probably was lower 50s but raining so it felt colder!) to 90 degrees the past couple days. My spinach is not a fan. A lot of it is already bolting!
Here's what's going on in other parts of the Trailer Park Homestead! There's so much here, I thought about dividing it into two posts! Then I realized I wanted to show off all this cool stuff sooner rather than later, so tomorrow will be something else.
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| This is the view from my back door, looking slightly toward the garage. The brick "wall" is the border of my lot. |
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| This is the back square foot gardening box. After much neglect while I was trying to get in the remaining beds, I finally caught up on the weeding and tying up the peas yesterday. |
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| I'm having to add a considerable amount of compost to the potato condo daily. I probably should look into finding more, since I'm about out! |
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| My "St. Patrick's Day" bed was also much neglected, but caught up for the moment. Now that the spinach is bolting, I probably will pull it and stick some sunflower seeds in their place. |
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| The front garden bed, containing (from the back left corner) pumpkin, tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach, broccoli, carrots, and green peppers. Behind it, snap peas are borrowing the strings for climbing, and behind that, there are ground cherry seeds planted in the orange buckets to replace the ones that died due to too much rain. |
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| Berry bushes are looking good. One of the blueberry bushes even looks like it's thinking about giving me some berries soon! |
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| All three sisters are up now. I'm a bit worried that the beans are shooting up so fast, since the corn isn't nearly high enough for them to wrap around yet. |
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| A close up of the kinds of things growing in the bricked border area--blue jade corn, sunflowers, and a variety of vining things (squashes, pumpkins, cucumbers, or melons) will be forming a complex living wall once it grows up. |
Try to make a few hoops over the spinach and drape a white cloth just on the top of the arch to provide some shade to your spinach during the high sun. It should help slow the bolting.
ReplyDeleteGood luck!
Dee Dee, that sounds like a good idea in theory, but, in practice, I'm not sure how I'd do that, since I don't have separate spinach areas. You can see where the spinach is growing in the back of the St. Patty's bed and the left side of the front raised bed, so I'm open to ideas within that framework.
ReplyDeleteSeems like when we tried the 3 sisters we had the same problem. I read somewhere after the fact that you should wait to plant the beans until the corn has started coming up. Havent really put it to the test though since our soil is so bad that corn grows very poorly here.
ReplyDeleteI read that too (before I planted even), but decided to ignore it. I think the way the plants are spaced, it should be okay, but only time will tell for sure.
ReplyDeleteIf necessary, stick a stick into the ground near where your corn will be. It'll give the beans something to play with until your corn catches up. :)
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