Fall planted seed.

[jal_ut]

I planted 3 rows of mixed seeds last fall. The intent was to see if the seed would come very early in the Spring. I planted radish, lettuce, carrot, and onion. I got three lettuce and two radish up. Conclusion? Fall planting of seed is not worth the bother in this climate.

[valley]

Thanks jal_ut for the insite. Have a great day.

Richard

[rainbowgardener]

Before you give up, try spinach. Spinach for me is the best overwintering plant, amazingly hardy. And when it starts growing again in late winter then you have a couple months of extra spinach production. The fall planted spinach and the spring planted spinach bolt at about the same time, when the weather warms up, but that means you had so much longer of eating spinach from the fall planted stuff. I've done it with broccoli too, but the broccoli makes it if we have a milder winter, not when we have really hard winter.

[digitS']

I keep a Purple Orache plant in the garden for just about the same purpose.

My intention is to clean and clear the garden in the fall. Having that "mother plant" in an out of the way location means I'll have lots of fast-growing volunteers in the spring.

Orache is related to spinach, tastes about the same and is every bit as tender. I believe that there is a wild species in your part of the world, James.

I can pretty much ignore the small plants as I go about my cultivation tasks in the spring. Orache is an annual but needs a full season to set seeds. It isn't deeply rooted and the seedlings can be transplanted easily. I did notice that a few plants did try to get out into my neighbor's sparse lawn grass but didn't survive a mowing.

Maybe I should pull the mother plant before the seed begins to scatter but I haven't felt the need to do that. It's great to have a surplus of seedlings, have them to fill space early in the potato bed and such places, and be able to decide where best to leave one for next year's seed for a pot herb crop and for "spinach salads."

Steve

[applestar]

I have seeds for purple/red orach. I've tried growing a little bit mixed with salad greens,but had trouble figuring out how/when to harvest them. The leaf stems seemed a bit hard to eat? Were those too old?

Maybe I can sidebar the discussion and ask for tips at this point.

[digitS']

I bet they were a little old, AppleStar.

Think about another spinach relative, lambs quarters, if you are familiar with eating those. Orache is a more tender veggie, by far. Use the growing tips if the plants are more than about 6" high.

They are on their way to being over 72" high and covered with seed by this time of year! You have to give up on them at some point, much earlier. I usually have in combination with lettuce only a couple times before the orache is past its prime.

Steve

[jal_ut]

"Before you give up, try spinach."

OK, today I got some spinach seed. Tomorrow I plant it. We will see. I just thought I should have planted spinach seed about mid August, it would be ready now? Will it germinate when its warm? We have had a rather long and mild season here this year. Not as much frost as we usually get in September.

[rainbowgardener]

Depends on what you are trying to do. For your short growing season, if you wanted a FALL harvest of spinach, probably August. But for me spinach planted late sprouts and just grows a little and then goes dormant. Just sits there through most of the winter, then in late winter starts growing again and is giving a good harvest by the time spring spinach is usually planted. Then it keeps going. The fall planted spinach and the spring planted spinach bolt about the same time when it gets warm, meaning I got spinach for a lot longer from the fall planted stuff, and it gets bigger, too.

That's in my zone 6 winters. I don't put plastic over it or anything just mulch well when it goes dormant. Perhaps you might have to do more protection for over-wintering, but spinach is just amazingly tough. Goes through snow and ice.

[digitS']

I scattered some orach seed around from the mother plant this week. I've gotten away with not being too concerned about where they fall in the past. Often, they come up densely in a couple areas where I can't allow them to grow.

The permaculture gardeners would have a better relationship with all the orach volunteers. Probably only about half the area where they are in the spring will be okay with me. Even there, they may need a lot of thinning.

Easy peasy in just about all regards ... However, I can imagine folks with soft hearts allowing orach to "take over" their gardens but, shoot, they start small, are annuals and are not really able to compete with lawn grass and such elsewhere. I think the seed pretty much requires tilled ground or at least bare ground to germinate.

All of this is probably true with their relative spinach. If this sowing works for you, James, you might want to save seed from 1 or 2 spinach plants.

Steve

[applestar]

I sowed red orach seeds this week, too. Also spinach and lettuce and bunch of other stuff.
I have been lax in keeping notes so I'll just have to keep a look out for when they come up and try to figure it all out.

I let this and one other Swiss chard go to seed and -being overwhelmed by the sheer number of seeds they produced- have been very casually scattering their seeds everywhere.... I even took a handful and FLUNG THEM into the Spiral Garden from outside the fence