My Spinach Lives (Despite the Cold)!

It's not growing, but I do have spinach continuing to live in my garden. Apparently you can grow spinach in the winter, under a cold frame, in climates like mine. But I don't have a cold frame.

I planted spinach in the fall, mulched it with leaves to protect it, and when it got cold enough it went dormant. And has not died.

Which is awesome. I get excited about little things. I'm hoping in the spring when things thaw, I'll have a great start on my spinach and an early harvest. It's all theoretical at this point as I've never done it before.

Hello Bolting Spinach

My spinach has bolted. As an amateur gardener, I was not expecting this to happen so quickly. Blame my ignorance. I planted my spinach probably four weeks ago now, before two snowstorms hit. And it hadn't got that big yet. (I guess I could have planted it earlier?) We didn't actually have that many hot days - just a few.

I discovered in my daily check of my garden yesterday that it had bolted, or gone to seed. So because I had company and we were having a nice grilled meal, I decided to harvest the spinach right away for a salad. Otherwise, as I've read, the spinach becomes bitter. I still have two spinach plants remaining, but I'm keeping a close eye on them.

Bolting spinach

Harvesting the bolting spinach

My Garden Survived the April Snow in Colorado

I planted last weekend, and then several inches of snow fell, starting the next day. We had several days of snow this April. A good thing for the drought, a bad thing for, well, people who really want spring to start. I guess the former is better.

I covered my lettuce and spinach (and rhubarb because it was close to those) with a light row cover the morning I knew it was going to snow. I laid it loosely over the plants and staked it down. I'm not sure if they really needed it, given the hardiness of a lot of lettuce and spinach types. I left the kale open and the onions.

My garden is in the bottom left of this picture, the day it was snowing. This isn't the full amount of snow we received.

I checked on it the next day or may have been the second day after the snowfall, when the snow had started to melt.

Getting Cool Weather Plants in the Ground: Lettuce, Kale and More!

I planted some cool-weather veggies last weekend - pre-Snowpocalypse here in Colorado. (For the third week straight it snowed, in April.  I'm ready for spring!)

I was so eager to get out there, and I wanted my lettuce to get a good start this year. I know that you can plant lettuce even earlier than I did, as it is a frost-hardy plant, but being a beginner, I'm pretty cautious.

I even expressed doubts about planting when I did; my husband responded by telling me to trust myself. I've read so much online and in books about gardening this year that I have too much information in my head, and it's making me think too hard about what's right and what's wrong. I didn't think at all last year, and things turned out OK. I think a new gardener needs to balance what they find in books with what they find with experience.