Grow Your Own Magazine

It's been almost a month since enjoying daily supplies of fresh spinach from my vegetable garden but I've noticed the crops have started to bolt although I keep cutting off the shoots which I also love eating hoping I will continue to get spinach or will I? Is it time now to sow another batch of spinach? Is a month long enough for a perpetual spinach?

__________________
Food for Free

Is it spinach, or is it leafbeet/chard?

I've not had any problems with this year's sowings...its all cropping prolifically (Bright Lights rainbow chard)

__________________
~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

Seed packet says it's 'Leaf Beet' type of Perpetual Spinach and it tastes just like spinach.

__________________
Food for Free

The leaf beet spinach is not usually too guilty of bolting Veg4681, but sometimes it does. I would plant some more.

__________________

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

Perpetual Spinach is a bi-annual so it should keep you in spinach until next spring when it will go to seed. I have grown it for years and sow each year and if I can be bothered, give it some protection over the winter and then there is spinach to eat before the next sowing is ready.

PS it also freezes well

__________________
Gardening requires a lot of water - most of it in the form of perspiration. Lou Erickson, critic and poet

That's my experience too (as roitelet).

It really should keep going longer than that. I have had it give up, but not bolt until the following spring.

Consider if it has had enough water, and if you have picked too much at one time.