That’s a bowl of baby spinach, about 6 cups worth. You can see there’s a lot more in the bed and I will be trying to use up as much of it as possible. Yes, partly because I love spinach and am thrilled that I can now get it fresh from the garden. Sadly, also because it’s starting to bolt already, despite the plants being tiny.

Google says this might have something to do with the days being too long (summer here is also midnight sun season), despite temperatures being perfect. Also, I suspect that I seeded a little too heavily (I was using up old seed packets) so they were starting to feel crowded and stressed. Add to that the fact that it’s been an unseasonably dry and warmish spring. Whatever the case was, some of my spinach plants had barely grown their first true leaves before starting to send out flower shoots, which was probably the earliest I’ve ever seen that happen.

Usually, with our mild humid summers, spinach is something that I can succession sow throughout the entire season and then forget about until it’s time to figure out how to fit it all in the freezer. With the changing climate, though, I might have to start finding shadier patches of the garden for my salad crops.

Enough about what went wrong — there’s another part to this story that I’m happier about: I winter sowed the spinach bed this year instead of waiting for spring to come! While the first week of April is technically spring, the ground here is frozen and snowy still; our last frost date is usually not until mid to late May at best. This blog and video from Sara Bäckmo in Sweden inspired me to try sowing on top of that snow anyway and it turned out great.

I covered one of my autumn-prepared raised beds with a layer of compost, sprinkled the seeds on, covered them lightly with more compost, then chucked a layer of snow over the top and let it be. They germinated a couple of weeks later and I had leaves that were ready for picking by the second half of May! I must emphasize that a large portion of people in my area are just starting their gardens at that point, so this is pretty exciting stuff. If anything, I’m tempted to start a bit earlier next year and see how far the timing can be pushed.

This is what I made with the first batch of spinach. It’s Delish’s Tuscan Chicken Pasta and I suspect my kid picked it mainly because of the bacon. However, everybody got a bit of fresh homegrown spinach into them that evening, so I’ll take that as a win.