Spinach

Spinach is a cool-weather sprinter sown twice, in April for May and June salads and again in August for fall. Summer is deliberately skipped, since long June days flip it to seed no matter the variety.

Growing

Direct sow in April as soon as soil can be worked; spinach germinates in cold that stops everything else. Sow again from mid August into September for the fall crop, which picks through October and often November. A 3 to 5 gallon bag or a bed edge, plants an inch or two apart, harvested cut-and-come-again from the outside. Water and a little afternoon shade stretch the spring picking, but once a plant lifts a seed stalk, clear it and move on. The fall round tucks in wherever a summer crop just came out.

Varieties

Space and Corvair are smooth-leaved and slow to bolt; Bloomsdale Long Standing is the crinkled classic; Auroch shines in the cold tail of fall.

Pests

Spinach leafminer turns leaf patches into pale blisters in May; pick off and trash mined leaves to break the cycle, and netting stops the fly outright. Slugs work the fall crop after rain, so a ring of iron phosphate bait or a bare, mulch-free strip keeps the leaves whole.

In the kitchen

Spring leaves are salad. The fall leaves come thicker and sweeter and wilt into eggs, pasta, and saag, cooking down twelve to one, which the garden already planned for.