Maintaining spinach and rocket crops

 These have been producing very well the last few weeks and I'd like to keep
them going for as long as I'm able. Should I just keep watering with some
liquid fertiliser periodically? I'm collecting leaves for salads and stuff
every second day atm. How long should I wait before I sew more seeds for a
new crop? Can I keep doing this until the weather changes? I am in
Melbourne.
Thanks

Liz

 
ime, rocket grows very fast & readily & flowers quickly too, so just sow
more every so often, or pick it more vigorously to put off flowering. you
don't _have_ to re-sow often if you don't want to - you can eat it even when
it's fully flowering, but a lot of people find it too peppery by then. :-)

spinach otoh is slower all around ime. i had some that lasted for absolutely
_ages_, i just picked off the outer leaves as required & they never flowered
(they died of heat instead when hot weather came ;-)). if it's not too hot
for spinach where you are atm, sow again or just try to keep them going,
it's up to you. generally speaking though, spinach gets cranky in summer. i
gave some a go, but it just didn't want to live. i might try again - we're
having a cold snap now <g>. all around though i find spinach really
temperamental - i'm just hanging out for my ruby chard to get a tiny bit
bigger, & eat the baby leaves of that instead. (i've also ordered n.z.
spinach (warrigal) seeds from digger's, but that's another story).
kylie

 
I planted my spinach and rocket in the NW corner of the garden, with loads
of mulch around and they have been sown very densly. I have been trying to
give them regular doses of liquid fertilizer. They have been going great
guns.
I got given a plant of Warrigal greens for Chrissy! Is it nice to eat?

Liz

 

i don't know yet!! i hope so :-) eat some & let me know! i was perusing the
digger's catalogue & noted that it's a frost-hardy perennial (hurrah), so
for $2.50 or whatever it is, i thought i can't go wrong :-) it probably
doesn't taste exactly like spinach, but we'll see! (hopefully it's yummy, &
if not, life goes on).

baby nasturtium leaves are yummy, we've been putting those in the salad just
lately.
kylie

 0tterbot wrote:

Apparently there is an acid in silverbeet (swiss chard) that is
bad for people with gout, and possibly for asthmatics. My
missus had an asthma attack after eating raw silverbeet,
but she doesn't have a problem when it is cooked. Just
something to think about if you use it for salads.