Today is a good day

[watervole]

 Cleared out some more of my email backlog - I'm making good progress on it at the moment.

Went down the allotment for a couple of hours.  Spread more manure (it's the best time of year to do this job, just before things start into growth).  Started weeding and thinning the New Zealand Spinach - it's a plant that is totally unrelated to spinach, but serves pretty much the same function in meals.

It's great merit is that it grows through the winter, survives frost, and is available to eat at a time when almost no other green leaf crops are ready.  It's also pretty much untroubled by pests and diseases.  At the moment, I'm taking leaves off the larger plants and thinning and composting round the smaller ones.

It's other great merit is that it often self- seeds.  Not enough to be a nuisance, but enough to give you some bonus plants - which are inevitably healthier and bigger than the ones you actually planted!

Followed the allotment by going for a quick swim and then cleared more email.

Have discovered that membership of EFDSS comes with free public liability insurance for people performing or teaching folk arts.  Much cheaper than what I was paying for public liability insurance for my maypole last year, so I've just joined.  I'd been thinking of joining in any case.  I'm tempted by the library of folk history materials, which I may go and visit some day.

Comments

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I've never seen New Zealand Spinach. Where did you het the seeds and do you think it would grow up here in the north?

[sammason.livejournal.com]

This. I grow leaf beet (perpetual spinach) but this sounds like quite a different plant and one worth trying.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

May be two different names for the same thing. I also call it perpetual spinach.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Thanks for clarifying. In which case, when mine goes to seed within the next few weeks, what you've written about self-seeding leads me to think that I should leave one or two plants to complete their life cycle. If it works I'll have another way to save effort ie to make my gardening more crip-friendly.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

And I call it spinach beet! – either way it's very good stuff to grow and to eat. If you had to have just one plant growing on your allotment when you take it over, it's an ideal one to choose.

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Yes it is. I recently lost several months' gardening because my disability worsened so that I couldn't walk to my plot. Now I've had grabrails fitted to make the plot accessible again but my 2011-2012 perpetual spinach plants didn't end up being cut at all. Now I think that I'll let them self-seed and then they won't have gone to waste.

[vjezkova.livejournal.com]

I am interested in that perpetual spinach of yours and I will look for it here!
So you can already work outside - unfortunately we have had some 5 cm of fresh snow today and the soil is still covered with old snow here and there. I was dancing around my snowdrops and crocusses which were blooming. Otherwise I have to wait until the soil dries out a little.