If you're looking for fruit for the home garden, it doesn't get much better than strawberries. They're perfect for planting in containers -- especially hanging ones. The first think that's good to know about the queen-of-the-small-space berry is that each variety falls into one of three categories:
June-bearing: The berries are harvested as one big crop in late spring or early summer. Everbearing: Offers a double harvest; once in early summer and again in the fall. Day neutral: Main (largest) harvest in the early summer, but continue to produce berries lightly all the way till fall.
The little Alpine strawberries, are actually in their own group (Fragaria vesca) and they produce a small crop of tiny (but sweet and fragrant!) berries all summer long. Alpines aren't typically grown as a crop, so they have a separate category. These guys are at their best grown as pretty ground cover in ornamental beds and, thus creating an edible landscape.
Strawberries like slightly acidic, well draining soil that's rich in organic matter. Most varieties appreciate full sun, but the alpines will tolerate light shade with no problem. Truth be told, my Quinaults have done just fine in light shade, too. Still, I'd be doing you a disservice by telling you anything but sun for good fruit production.
Planting them about 12" apart in a garden bed makes good sense, but in a container I plant them slightly closer together. Mulching the bed (say, with straw) is a good tip because it prevents the fruit from touching the ground while they're ripening. Don't plant strawberries flush with the soil line as it encourages crown rot. Their roots should be under the soil, but so that the crown (where the leaves come out) is sitting slightly above the soil line.
Here's another strawberry planting tip that'll go against every grain in your body; but if you have the guts, it can pay off big time. When your newly-planted strawberries begin to flower, pinch the blossoms off. It prevents pollination and the plant can use its energy for building a strong root system instead of spending said energy on making fruit during the first year. Seasoned strawberry growers swear that the proof will be in the years that follow.
If you plan on growing them in containers; go for a hanging basket, window box, kitchen colander, or tub. As far as container material, terra-cotta strawberry pots are cute, but they always dry out too quickly for me. Also, think about choosing a variety of strawberry types so that you're harvesting berries from late spring all the way to early fall.
Everbearing Strawberry Varieties: Quinault, Fort Laramie, Ozark Beauty, Flamenco, Arapahoe, Bolero, Calypso
*Alpine Strawberry Varieties:
Alpine White, Alpine Yellow, Rugen, Alexandria, Mignonette, Baron Solemacher
*Not typically grown as a traditional crop, but are certainly edible.
Whenever I start to think about a new structure I need for the garden, straw bales are what first come to mind. Having a bunch of straw bales is like having an entire box of Legos....there's not much you can't build.
I started thinking about a cold frame today, because I was a little over eager about starting perennial seeds. They're already emerging in my seed starting tray and the question did occur to me now, a little late, where was I going to stash all these plants when I have to plant them up in larger containers next month. Then I remembered my first cold frame. A rectangle of old straw bales with an old shower curtain secured on top by big rocks was a great cold frame.
Here's a sketch from an old Organic Gardening magazine with storm windows. I did try storm windows one year in a community garden plot, but they are breakable if there are kids playing with rocks or loose dogs in the neighborhood. I got a sheet of recycled tempered glass (old shower door) that worked great but was heavy for lifting. The next great garden project is a compost bin. I use spoiled hay bales from a nearby horse ranch because the bales are free and they also eventually become compost too.
Your imagination is your only limitation. Think of any structure you'd like and do a Google Image Search with the name of the structure and “straw bale” and you'll find someone who has done it already and posted a picture: straw bale hoophouse, straw bale fort, straw bale lounge chair, straw bale chicken coop, straw bale bed, straw bale wind break, etc. etc. Have Fun!
My first packets of seeds have come in the mail and I'm so eager to start gardening, but the 10 inches of old snow that's still all over my garden is a real obstacle. My lights are reserved for tomatoes and peppers....but I want to Garden NOW. When I'm in this predicament, there's only one thing to do: head out to the recycling bins and dumpster dive for plastic milk jugs and salad containers and all other manner of clear plastic to start some seeds in.
Winter Sowing is my favorite way to start wildflower seeds but it works for all seeds. Winter Sowing is all about starting your seeds outside and letting nature's natural rhythms stir the seeds to life at the right time. It's also all about getting LOTS of plants practically free without having extravagant indoor light setups or greenhouses.
There's lots of info online about Winter Sowing...a term coined by the Queen of Winter Sowing, Trudi Davidoff, back in the early days of the internet on the Garden Web forums. Trudi has it all consolidated on her web page www.wintersown.org with answers to every question you can possibly have. We all love Trudi because she took something rather mysterious...making new plants...and made it easy and almost foolproof.
To make it even easier for you, here's your “Short Form” Winter Sowing Instructable:
1. Recycle a plastic container. I'm fond of the gallon water jugs but any container with a clear lid that you can put holes in the bottom works.
2. Label your container at least twice. Sharpies aren't really permanent so I use an art deco paint pen from Michael's to write directly on the container or on a strip of duct tape.
3. Put in 2-4 inches of potting soil. Wet the soil. Sprinkle the seeds on top. Lightly water the seeds into the soil or press them with your fingers.
4. Secure the top of the container with duct tape. Place the container outside where the wind won't blow it over.
5. Check periodically (twice a month) for watering. This is really important. If the soil dries out completely, this seeds will likely die because germination had already started. If you can see condensation on the inside of the container you're probably OK. A foot of snow on top is probably also a safe sign.
6. Beginning in April or May here in Zone 5, anytime after the seedlings come out you can plant them directly into the garden.
Timing is the beauty of this method...On cold winter days, you yearn for spring and have more time for starting seeds. In my experience, the plants started this way are much sturdier than ones started indoors under warm conditions.
Winter Sowing is an ideal technique for wildflowers. You can start now and keep making containers when you have time until as late as March or April.
Hang around any nursery or seasoned gardener for more than a few minutes and you're bound to hear someone singing the praises of annuals...or perennials. Let's look at what makes a plant an annual, biennial, or perennial and why it's helpful to know the difference.
Annuals -- These are plants that complete their lifecycle within one year. Annual plant seeds germinate, grow, flower, set seed, and die -- all in a single season. Plants such as marigolds, and impatiens are in a big hurry to produce as many flowers as possible because producing seed ensures the survival of that plant species (or variety). We gardeners applaud this habit because it fills our gardens with the blossoms that we so crave pretty darn fast. It's east to take advantage of annuals by pinching off the spent blooms. Their intense "need to seed" has annuals reacting by simply producing more flowers. It's true that they won't survive the winter in your garden, but many of them will reseed themselves, so their children grow in their place for the coming season.
Annuals such as viola, alyssum, and lobelia are often referred to as "bedding" plants because of their quick-to-fill-in personality traits. They can be tucked in here and there while the perennials are waiting to bloom, or conversely; just finished their seasonal show. Plant annuals in front of a trellis or arbor while waiting for permanent climbing plants to eventually cover the structure. They come in handy for filling in between non-flowering shrubs or in vegetable beds, as well.
In general, annuals are almost an afterthought in large gardens, but they can perform brilliantly as the main plants in a small space garden -- especially grouped in containers. In fact, once they start flowering, they're almost always in bloom -- which makes them the number-one plant choice when you're looking for fast color. Most gardeners can enjoy annual flowers from early spring through the late fall because they come in both cool-weather and warm-weather varieties.
Biennials -- Biennial plants produce stems and leaves during their first year, but don't reach maturity until their second year. It's during this second year that they flower, produce seed, and eventually die. Although you have to forego a season before biennials blossom, many gardeners wouldn't do without them. Foxglove, hollyhock, and canterbury bells are so lovely in bloom, that their tardiness is easily forgiven.
If you grow biennials from seed among perennial plants, you can simply enjoy the foliage as a backdrop while the perennials put on their show. But if you purchase biennials such as Foxglove from a garden center already started during their second year, they'll act as an annual for you during the season that you bought them. Of course, perhaps the best way to enjoy them is to have some in the garden as new starts and others that are in their second year of life. When you stagger the garden this way, you'll always have blooming biennials and youngsters to take their place the following year.
Perennials -- Perennial plants the workhorses of the garden. These are the plants that flower and set seeds for two or more seasons. Some perennials can be quite short-lived, such as coreopsis which lives anywhere from three to five years. Most others live a lot longer than that and you can count on them to come back for encore after encore. Perennials, like bearded iris, will even live fifteen years and longer. And then there's the peony, that'll see fifty to a hundred years in its lifetime.
Aside from the bigger plants such as trees and shrubs, the perennials help make up the bones of the garden by returning year after year without much help from the gardener. For that matter, even trees and shrubs are perennials. However, in gardening terms, perennials are classified as the soft-stemmed herbaceous perennials like balloon flower, phlox, and lantana.
Many of them will spend many years in your garden, but some such as daylilies, tend to look a little "worse-for-wear" if their roots aren't divided after a few years. This may sound like work, but it's such a blessing because division creates just more plants for the gardener (or the gardener's friends).
Annuals, biennials, and perennials all have a place in the yard or garden. But they're at their best when you know what makes them special.
I'm a fan of the fractured fairy tale TV show Once Upon a Time. In this week's show we see Rumpelstiltskin at his spinning wheel turning straw into gold. That same kind of magic happens all the time in the garden. In the spring garden, the alchemists are the peas and beans that take mere air and spin it into food. Truly a magical feat. What peas and beans do in fact is take Nitrogen from the air and “fix” it into the soil. After you've grown peas and beans in soil, there is more Nitrogen in the soil than before you started....and you get to eat all those peas and beans too.
The real alchemists in the situation are the invisible-to-us bacteria Rhizobia that live in the root of the pea and create nodules where nitrogen from the air is converted to nitrogen in the soil. In the process the pea plant thrives and makes lots and lots of peas.
The question is, how does this bacteria get into the soil ready to colonize the pea roots? In most cases, it's already there. Good garden soil has native rhizobia who wait for “their” partners to germinate and grow. However, gardeners have yet another cheat code in commercially produced Rhizobia. Gardeners can buy “pea inoculant,” a concoction of the particular bacteria that live in pea and bean roots mixed with a little moist peat to help them survive till they get into the ground. The commercial Rhizobia spur peas and beans into high levels of production.
Most garden centers and home improvement stores sell the legume or pea inoculant as part of their seed display or off in a cool corner somewhere. Heat and storage kill the bacteria so it has to be kept cool to be viable. The question for you is “Do you actually need the inoculant?” It costs about $5 for a small bag.
I am of mixed opinion and each year keep intending to do my own research experiment of a 'with- inoculant' and 'without-inoculant' section of the garden to see how many peas I get.
Here's my opinion of when to use inoculant.
DO USE Pea and Bean Inoculant when:
Your garden bed is new and has never had peas grown there before. New soil is less likely to have native Rhizobia. Soil that grew great peas last year isn't going to need more Rhizobia this year. The microbes are all there laying in wait for new plants.
You have limited space and only have room for a few plants that need to produce a lot of food for you. I have enough space for peas so it's OK if each single pea plant produces good enough instead of incredibly well.
You are planting very early in the season while the soil is very cold. Native rhizobia (and all soil microbes) don't begin to stir until the soil warms up a bit.
Your soil is naturally deficient in Nitrogen. The native soil I grow in has virtually no naturally occurring Nitrogen. Rather than dump lots of chemical fertilizer, I plant legumes to take the abundant Nitrogen in our air and put it into the soil for the crops that follow.
There is one time when you're wasting your money if you use inoculant....that is if you fertilize heavily with Nitrogen. The pea plants and Rhizobia are a lot like humans....why do a lot of extra work if you don't have too. If your soil has lots of nitrogen, the plants aren't going to do much work of taking nitrogen from the air....they'll just use what's already hanging around in the soil.
I had the dubious pleasure of dining with some young teens at the local Red Robin this week. They didn't know each other before going into this meal, but quickly found common ground reminiscing about the video games of their “youth.” Conversation started with “what was your favorite video game when you were a kid?” (To everyone's relief I've learned not to interject with a description of playing Pong on the old black and white TV.) Finally everyone bonded with animated shared memories of being the first kids on their block to discover cheat codes. Back then when you were the only one who knew about cheat codes, you could enjoy a bit of fame in your neighborhood for mastering the games before everyone else.
Fortunately for the teens, I've also learned not to embarrass them with irrelevant cliches about cheaters never win. Instead I pondered my own system of cheat codes. There are quite a few “cheats” that I use that make seed starting easy for me in situations where others struggle.
So here are my top seed starting “cheats.” Sometimes I save time and sometimes it's the only way to play the game!
Seed Starting Scenarios when you need a Secret Cheat Code:
When seeds are slow to germinate, the cheat is to soak the seed overnight or pre-germinate it in a paper towel in a baggie. Plant out after you see the first roots forming.
When encountering seeds that are fine as dust and near impossible to sow, a good cheater knows to mix in some sand. You still can't see or feel the seed, but you can spread it evenly by sowing the sand mix.
When you need seeds to germinate faster inside, a heating mat stimulates rapid germination in most seeds. An outdoors equivalent cheat if you're desperate is to run low voltage heating cables in the bed.
When your seeds keep disappearing in the garden, the easy cheat is to put down Row Cover after sowing to keep the seedlings from drying out or being eaten by birds.
Every gardener has his or her own cheats....unfortunately unlike the gamers, we're not patient enough to keep our codes secret and sell them for big bucks. We can't wait to tell a struggling gardener – or anyone who will listen -- our definitive secrets to how to garden.
So, you've decided to skip the water hog that requires heavy fertilizing and ritual mowing; the typical lawn. Yet your heart still yearns for the "look" of a green carpet of, well...something. Enter the lawn substitutes or ground cover. These plants easily fill traditional turf's shoes and then some. The varieties listed below are among the many attractive ground covers that make excellent lawn substitutes.
Fair warning: None of these plants will hold up in a high-traffic area. The kids' soccer practice will have to be held elsewhere. But for light traffic, these living carpets offer less work, more interest, and fresh scent.
• Creeping Thyme and Red Creeping Thyme: Don't confuse these with the common culinary thyme, which doesn't have the right prostrate habit as these thymes. Creeping thyme is very drought tolerant. In fact, it reacts poorly to over-watering, and excellent drainage is important. It has a wonderful scent. The red creeping thyme has dark-green leaves that turn to bronze as the temperatures dip. Flowers are a red-pink that fade to a lighter pink through the summer. Thymes should be replaced about every four or five years as they become woody and unkempt.
• Woolly Thyme: Again, don't offer too much water once woolly thyme is established. I like the texture this thyme brings to the garden with its dusty-gray, furry foliage and pink blossoms. An added perk is that this soft herb feels fabulous on bare feet! Woolly thyme seems to make its home anyplace where the environment is dry.
• Chocolate Chip Ajuga or Dwarf Bugleweed: It's exactly what it sounds like: chocolate chip[nd]colored foliage. Both in the spring and fall, it blooms in blue. Ajuga is one of the great ground covers that will grow well under trees, too.
• Creeping Mazus: Both the lavender-blue and white flowering forms of mazus like their soil a little on the moist side. Its spring flowers resemble tiny snapdragons. While mazus' stems form mats , it isn't aggressive enough to push out others and take over.
• Sunny-side-up Fleabane: Fleabane is low growing and thick mat forming, with fernish foliage and a bazillion little white daisies with yellow centers. What's not to love?
• Roman Chamomile: This is an aromatic plant that has fernish foliage and daisy flowers. Chamomile has long been used as a lawn substitute because it deals with light foot traffic well.
• John Creech Sedum: This plants bright-green stems grow close together and form an excellent mat as it spreads. John Creech has teeny, purple-pink flowers and the foliage turns burgundy come fall.
• Scotch Moss: This ground cover makes a lovely golden, moss-like carpet. In the spring, it blooms with little white, star-shaped flowers.
• Bronze Dutch Clover: This clover's leaves are a garden stand-out with its red-bronze leaves edged in green, although the leaves will have more green in light shade and more bronze in the sun. In the summer, it blooms with pom-pom-type flowers.
Tips for Choosing the Right Ground Cover
If you're looking to fill in a sunny area, check out blue fescue, lamb's ear, speedwell, bergenia, varigated sedge, variegated velvet grass, cranesbill, campanula, and candytuft. For shady yards, dwarf periwinkle, sweet woodruff, mondo grass, Solomon's seal, mock strawberry, and ajuga are all great varieties.
For best results, be sure that the area is weed-free before planting them, as ground covers don't enjoy competition. However, once they're established, you'll find that they tend to crowd weeds out!
Groundhog Day seems like such an odd day to continue to be celebrated. How many of us outside of Pennsylvania have ever made acquaintance with an actual groundhog? Here in Boulder a big to do is made over a stuffed toy groundhog since true groundhogs don't actually living here. But gardeners have an excellent reason to celebrate Groundhog Day. It's the midpoint between Winter Solstice and Vernal Equinox which means.....Spring is Coming!
The first week of February is the time I traditionally start perennial seeds indoors under lights. My setup is pretty simple...a shop light dangling from a rod in my closet with a seed tray underneath. Perennials are often slower to germinate than annuals, but they are also more able to withstand cold temperatures. So if I start the seeds now (or in the next few weeks), I'll have plants ready to go outside in a protected spot by April...when I'll need the space to start annuls.
Edibles
In the vegetable garden, herbs are the best perennials to start now. In honor of 2012 having been named “The Year of the Herb,” I'm growing as many herbs as I can. Starting in my little plant closet this week are perennial herbs thyme, oregano, sage and lavender.
Wildflowers
As much as edibles are my focus for the year, one must never forget food for the soul—the beautiful wildflowers. If you think starting perennial flowers might be difficult, take inspiration from an article in Fine Gardening magazine by the Denver Botanic Garden's own specialist Panayoti Kelaidis who recommends 10 Perennials Easily Grown from Seed
In case you're wondering, the ten perennials are allium, penstemon, hardy ice plant, primrose, silene, dianthus, draba, lupine, columbine and wild buckwheat. And we carry most of them.
So pay no mind to that snow and winter outside your door. We're past the midpoint. From a seed's perspective it doesn't matter if the groundhog saw his shadow. because Spring is finally closer to us than Winter is. Start those Perennials NOW!
Remember: It’s great to have the actual catalog online, it makes searching, to see if we carry something, so much easier!
Our local obsessive-compulsive food gardening group met today to share ideas on planning our garden spaces and crops and how to get the most and best food for our efforts. We're an unusual group in that while all equally obsessed about growing, the spaces we have to garden in range from a couple of raised beds in a protected backyard to several acres exposed to the howling winds of the foothills. Understanding what crops need to thrive applies to both the small gardener and the market farmer. Some general rules of thumb evolved that are good advice for gardeners of any size.
Rip it Out was a surprising consensus among the successful food producers. Colorado's gardening season is short. Our last spring frost isn't until mid-May and nights cool down significantly by September. Therefore to get the maximum benefit from our vegetable gardens we have to keep them full of healthy plants. If a plant isn't doing well, we don't have the luxury of the perennial ornamental gardener to nurse a favorite plant. Annual plants, which most vegetables are, don't get better if they get sickly. Cauliflowers that are spindly and not growing new leaves need to be ripped out of their premium space so new plants or a different crop can be put in. If the carrots aren't showing signs of germinating after two weeks, it's time to put in new seeds. A tomato plant that was on bargain clearance because it had gotten completely dried out is never going to recover enough to put out a good crop. It seems heartless to those who love each and every plant, but there's only so much time to grow food in a short season and you need to clear the way for healthy plants if you want healthy food.
Stress Causes Reproduction
We were discussing common problems of lettuces and greens bolting (going to seed) earlier than they should and speculating that maybe it's temperature or water or this or that, when our resident botanist proclaimed that “to a plant it's all stress”...whether it's too much or too little water or too much or too little heat. A plant in stress survives by producing seed as soon as it can before environmental stress kills it. If your Swiss Chard thinks it might die from drought conditions, it's not concerned with making leaves for you....it's gonna throw up seed heads to make seeds for next year's plants. So reduce stress in your plants for good production. Keep watering even. Protect plants when possible from vicious winds and monsoon rains. Relaxed happy plants make good food.
Keep Records and Keep Planting
Two common characteristics of the growers we envied was that they kept records of what they were doing and they were always doing something in the garden. Record keeping was pretty simple...something jotted on a calendar or written in a notebook. But noting what varieties did well or what weather oddities existed helped growers learn from their mistakes. Otherwise the season becomes a blur and you just don't know why things went wrong or went right. Record keeping was also helpful to make sure you have a steady supply of food. Marking a calendar reminds you that you need to replant lettuce and carrots and beets every two weeks instead of just once if you want a steady supply of food. And if it's not on a calendar somewhere, you're not going to remember at the height of summer to plant your fall crops.
Those were just some of the habits of good food growers. More to come soon.
I know Spring is coming when I start craving spinach.
Spring causes odd behavior in humans. I found myself in the grocery walking right past the ice cream aisle, my traditional destination in times of craving...to the organic vegetable produce. I stood there quite a few minutes oogling the beautiful presentation of freshly misted shades of green of spinach and chard and lettuces. But it was spinach I had to have. (Note to self....one bunch of spinach costs as much as one packet of seeds...please remember to plant more spinach this year so the greens under the cold frame will be enough to last past January.)
Spinach is enormously popular in Spring. At local farmers' markets, the growers say they can't possibly bring enough spinach to market—no matter how much they bring every April, it all sells out. There's something more to craving spinach than it just being Spring. A Google search for “craving spinach” brings thousands of hits about people craving spinach during pregnancy, or at odd times of the year. Some nutritionists speculate the craving is about iron or magnesium...the body trying to tell you something. Psychologists ponder whether spinach, especially creamed spinach, is a comfort food. Baby Boomers know spinach builds strength and energy because they watched Popeye cartoons as kids.
One things for sure: Spinach is easy to grow....it's a cool season crop so it is one of the first seeds you can start in the garden. Cool weather, spring moisture (or regular irrigation) and well-draining good garden soil, are all you need to grow a lot of spinach. And you need to grow a lot. A huge head of spinach cooks down into a smallish serving bowl full. So be sure to plant more than you think you need. Come Spring....you'll want it ALL.
for planting in containers -- especially hanging ones. The first think that's good to know about the queen-of-the-small-space berry is that each variety falls into one of three categories: 
Strawberries like slightly acidic, well draining soil that's rich in organic matter. Most varieties appreciate full sun, but the alpines will tolerate light shade with no problem. Truth be told, my Quinaults have done just fine in light shade, too. Still, I'd be doing you a disservice by telling you anything but sun for good fruit production.
hat first come to mind. Having a bunch of straw bales is like having an entire box of Legos....there's not much you can't build. 
The next great garden project is a compost bin. I use spoiled hay bales from a nearby horse ranch because the bales are free and they also eventually become compost too.
snow that's still all over my garden is a real obstacle. My lights are reserved for 
.jpg)
someone singing the praises of annuals...or perennials. Let's look at what makes a plant an annual, biennial, or perennial and why it's helpful to know the difference.jpg.jpg)
Annuals such as viola, alyssum, and lobelia are often referred to as "bedding" plants because of their quick-to-fill-in personality traits. They can be tucked in here and there while the perennials are waiting to bloom, or conversely; just finished their seasonal show. Plant annuals in front of a trellis or arbor while waiting for permanent climbing plants to eventually cover the structure. They come in handy for filling in between non-flowering shrubs or in jpg.jpg)
.jpg)
know each other before going into this meal, but quickly found common ground reminiscing about the video games of their “youth.” Conversation started with “what was your favorite video game when you were a kid?” (To everyone's relief I've learned not to interject with a description of playing Pong on the old black and white TV.) Finally everyone bonded with animated shared memories of being the first kids on their block to discover cheat codes. Back then when you were the only one who knew about cheat codes, you could enjoy a bit of fame in your neighborhood for mastering the games before everyone else.
.jpg)
al lawn. Yet your heart still yearns for the "look" of a green carpet of, well...something. Enter the lawn substitutes or ground cover. These plants easily fill traditional turf's shoes and then some. The varieties listed below are among the many attractive ground covers that make excellent lawn substitutes..jpg)
.jpg)
bazillion little white daisies with yellow centers. What's not to love?.jpg)
Pennsylvania have ever made acquaintance with an actual groundhog? Here in Boulder a big to do is made over a stuffed toy groundhog since true groundhogs don't actually living here. But gardeners have an excellent reason to celebrate Groundhog Day. It's the midpoint between Winter Solstice and Vernal Equinox which means.....Spring is Coming!
spaces and crops and how to get the most and best food for our efforts. We're an unusual group in that while all equally obsessed about growing, the spaces we have to garden in range from a couple of raised beds in a protected backyard to several acres exposed to the howling winds of the foothills. Understanding what crops need to thrive applies to both the small gardener and the market farmer. Some general rules of thumb evolved that are good advice for gardeners of any size.
hey were doing and they were always doing something in the garden. Record keeping was pretty simple...something jotted on a calendar or written in a notebook. But noting what varieties did well or what weather oddities existed helped growers learn from their mistakes. Otherwise the season becomes a blur and you just don't know why things went wrong or went right. Record keeping was also helpful to make sure you have a steady supply of food. Marking a calendar reminds you that you need to replant lettuce and carrots and beets every two weeks instead of just once if you want a steady supply of food. And if it's not on a calendar somewhere, you're not going to remember at the height of summer to plant your fall crops. 
bring enough spinach to market—no matter how much they bring every April, it all sells out. There's something more to craving spinach than it just being Spring. A Google search for “craving spinach” brings thousands of hits about people craving spinach during pregnancy, or at odd times of the year. Some nutritionists speculate the craving is about iron or magnesium...the body trying to tell you something. Psychologists ponder whether spinach, especially creamed spinach, is a comfort food. Baby Boomers know spinach builds strength and energy because they watched Popeye cartoons as kids.
ds you can start in the garden. Cool weather, spring moisture (or regular irrigation) and well-draining good garden soil, are all you need to grow a lot of spinach. And you need to grow a lot. A huge head of spinach cooks down into a smallish serving bowl full. So be sure to plant more than you think you need. Come Spring....you'll want it ALL.
