Pick 'em or Hold 'em

So far, the spinach is holding. By that I mean I'm still able to harvest from the bed that was planted last fall, though it's trying to bolt and probably won't hold out much longer. The spring-planted stuff is doing beautifully, producing nice big leaves and supplementing what we're getting from the bigger bed. I hope for at least a few more harvests before things get too hot and everything bolts.

I confess, in past years I've been a little too timid about actually harvesting the spinach and lettuce that came up. It's like I was trying to leave it in the garden until it got bigger or something, trying not to "use it up." The result was that I often let it go to waste while I was saving it for a later which came too late or never came at all. The only way to help it hold off bolting is to harvest it regularly enough that it tries to replenish the leaves you've picked. And even then, if the weather is warm enough, it will still bolt. So if you want spinach, you have to pick it while it's there to be picked. Today I brought in enough for another small container of frozen spinach--roughly one gathering basket full of spinach is about enough to fill one small freezer container after blanching. Now that I'm getting used to doing it, the process is going faster for me every time. Now I just need to find/make room in the garage for a small energy star chest freezer. We have an upright, but with all this preserving of our own food, we'll need more freezer space, I'm certain.

I've also been pulling the larger lambs quarters when they've volunteered in a bed that was designated for something else. The rest, I leave where they are and snitch leaves now and then for salads. I might actually freeze some lambs quarters as well, this year. They're a lot like spinach, and grow wild around here. I leave a few to self-seed, and then the next spring I mostly leave them wherever they come up in the garden. Free food, right off the land; that can't be a bad thing.