The Spinach Experiment

For a really long time we had a bunch of seed packets lying around the house; my mum had bought them and done not much else with them. So when I decided that I wanted to plant a few things, the first thing I did was to go through those packets.

There were some edible goodies in there such as spinach, broccoli, carrots, spring onions as well as flowers such as nasturtiums and pansies. I decided to start with the spinach because according to The Internet, it's an easy and quick winter vegie to grow. I ripped open the packet, had a look inside and thought yup, this will do.

Here’s what happened next:

1) I went to the backyard and cleared out an area to grow spinach. I chose a spot next to our flourishing curry leaf tree. I figured if the curry leaf tree was growing so vigorously, surely so will the spinach. I spent a bit of time clearing out the weeds - a tough job but very satisfying when completed.

2) Now that I had a nice clean bed, I started digging little pockets within the soil. I followed the instructions on the back of the packet on how to space the seeds and how deep they need to be. Once I had that set up, the confusion started. The packet had 100+ spinach seeds in it but I had only created around 20 pockets within the soil. How did this work? Was I supposed to put in one seed per pocket or was it a handful? I knew that not all seeds germinated but I wasn’t quite sure what this percentage was. I didn't think it would be all that high and I needed to expect some loss to garden critters so I threw in all the seed from the packet. All 100+ of them. Yes, I really did.

3) Once that was done and I covered the seeds up with a a bit of soil, gave it a good soak and let nature do it’s business!

Now, six weeks later this is what my spinach patch looks like:

Sad, huh? I’m extremely glum at the lack of progress. I’ve spent a lot of time inspecting the patch and I’m still not sure if it’s just all weeds or a mix of weeds and spinach. I have no idea what spinach seedlings look like.

Then there are these two here right smack in the centre of my patch:

At first I got quite excited and thought these could be my only succesful spinach plants but now I’m not sure what they are – I’ve crossed out spinach but are they another kind of weed? Or an actual plant that I want to hold onto?

Now, onto what I did wrong in my endeavour to grow spinach:

1) Spot: The spot I cleared out gets very little direct sunlight. In fact, only half of the patch gets sun (see how much more green it is near the fence?) whilst the other half lives in shadow. Lucky for me, spinach can grow in partial sun areas but note to self: always check how much direct sunlight a spot gets before planting.

2) Soil: I didn't prep the soil with some organic goodness like compost or manure so that there’s plenty of nitrogen in the soil. I also didn't add lots of mulch when I finished sowing to retain moisture and keep those weeds at bay. If I’d added mulch, it really would’ve helped with the “what is spinach and what is weeds” conundrum I’m in now!

3) Seeds: Do NOT grow sow 100+ seeds in one hit! Also, stagger out the sowing on a weekly basis so during harvesting there is a continual supply of spinach.

4) Finally – it could be that I was trying to grow dud seeds.It's pretty weird that nothing germinated from the 100+ seeds I threw in there. Or is it normal? Either way, boo.

So my spinach didn’t work out, which is extremely disappointing. I’m thinking of adding fertiliser but am not sure if that’s a good idea. If the only things growing in my patch are weeds, I certainly don’t want to fertilise those! I might wait a bit longer and try to confirm that there's some spinach action happening before I fertilise... however, I might need to fertilise in order to get some spinach action. What a catch-22!