Sunday, March 9, 2014

Daylight savings and planting spinach

There's still snow in the vegetable garden, but I was stubbornly determined to plant my first crop of 2014 today, the first day of daylight savings.  I got home from work, changed into work clothes, and headed into the garden.
It was a sad sight-- full of debris and snow:




 But there were a few clear beds, including the one I had in mind for building my cold frame.
I quickly laid several rows of cinder blocks inside the bed, then lifted the recycled window section of an old door across the top to check the fit. It was fine for spinach-- not a tight seal, but enough to raise the temperature inside a few degrees. That's all I want or need for spinach.




I took the cover off and propped it up beside the bed while I prepped the soil. I mixed up a couple of handfuls of 10-10-10 fertilizer with about an equal amount of  lime (spinach likes a slightly more alkaline soil), then scraped some of last years potting soil off the soil-sicles I popped out of two adjacent planters:




I mixed all of this material into the soil in the bottom of the cold frame. The soil was frozen a couple of inches down, but I was able to make four furrows, then plant  my spinach and tamp down the soil. There was no need to water, since the soil was already moist, and more water will be released as it thaws under  the glass.
Finally I spread a light layer of straw over the top, then re-covered:



That's it- my first crop planted! Now I will monitor it every day, keeping the soil moist, and not too hot.  I hope to have spinach sprouting by April 1.