If you’re a gardener, you know that nothing says spring or autumn like the delight of seeing your pea – and other – sprouts push up through the soil. But one surprise frosty night can undo all your hard work. 😱
This happened at my garden recently. The weather went from spring, to a couple days of hot summer-like weather, then went back to spring and then whoops – hard frost! Whoa – the peas have just sprouted. 🌱
Luckily, there’s a simple, sustainable trick you can use to shield your tender pea sprouts from frost —no plastic tarps or complicated gear required.
The Magic of a Dark Cloth & a Bit of Straw
When a cold snap threatens, or the one-off cold night, your pea sprouts need just a bit of cozy protection. Here’s how to create a quick, eco-friendly frost shield for a row of peas. 🫛
✂️Drape a dark-colored cloth (like black, deep brown or navy-blue cotton) gently over the row of pea sprouts. If you have an old towel, or T-shirt that you can cut up, that is perfect. You want to rip or cut it into strips that are about 8” wide and as long as you can make them.
You can cut up strips of landscape fabric. This is the only thing I use landscape fabric for, as it acts as a weed anchor vs a weed block and there I don’t recommend it be used for annual vegetable gardens.
Make sure the cloth is large enough to cover them without crushing.
✔️Secure the cloth in place with a light, about 1-inch layer of straw. This keeps the cloth from blowing away and adds insulation.
Remember we are talking about straw, not hay. As my Dad taught me, 🐴 “Hay is for horses, straw is for gardens”. 🌿
If you don’ t have quite enough straw, so that parts of the cloth show through the straw, that’s okay! The dark color absorbs sunlight fasterwhen the sun comes out, helping to warm the area underneath and keep the peas protected in their little blanket.
Timing this Pea Sprout Frost Protection Strategy
Apply this setup before the frost hits and remove it as soon as temps rise the next day to prevent overheating. This allows your little pea plants to soak up the sun.🌞
Why This Way of Keeping Peas Warm from a Freak Frost Works
This method creates a mini microclimate for the rows of your little peas so they can be nourished through the cold night.
The straw traps air for insulation and holds down the cloth, and the dark fabric absorbs and holds warmth, keeping the soil just warm enough to protect those baby peas from freezing temps.
Organic, Gentle, Effective Pea Sprout Protection
This approach is chemical-free, low-cost, and perfectly in line with your values as an organic grower. It allows your peas to flourish and prevents the damage that comes from frost. 🫛😊
Want more clever tips and tricks for growing thriving organic veggies year-round? 🌿 Subscribe now to keep up with my pro tips, seasonal advice, and exclusive offers designed just for organic gardeners like you!
Your peas (and your garden) will thank you.
May Your peas thrive so you manifest an abundant harvest! – Debby
Some of you may have been at the talk I gave last Saturday on growing great lettuces, where we explored how to grow lettuce successfully all year round.
I shared photos from my garden—lots of them—because lettuce has become one of those crops I keep uncovering new varieties to try.
Growing Lettuce Year-Round in a Vegetable Garden
I grow around 50 different lettuce varieties each year. Some are best suited for spring, others can handle more summer heat, and still others truly shine in the fall and overwinter.
When you are buying your lettuce seed, note if they say they are heat or bolt tolerant. which gives you the clue they are better for warm weather.
All lettuce are generally cold hardy, so noting the ones that can take more heat will clarify which ones to plant for warm and cold seasons.
Choosing seasonal varieties is one way to grow lettuces all year in your veggie garden.
This photo gives you an idea of my love of growing lots of varieties of lettuce.
During the talk, I mentioned how much I wanted to show real-time photos of the lettuces currently growing under hoop houses in my garden in February. Those would have been photos of lettuces I seeded at the end of summer and into the fall.
But here’s the thing. – We’ve been in a serious cold snap.🥶 A couple of weeks of it. And honestly?
I wasn’t willing to risk opening those hoop houses to take a photo of my lettuce to show off in the presentation. I didn’t want to disturb whatever fragile balance might still be sustaining life inside.
Until today. – I couldn’t resist. 😁
Opening the Hoop House After Days of Freezing Temperatures
I carefully lifted one flap of one hoophouse — just enough to slide my phone inside — snapped a quick photo, and closed it back up without even looking to see if the lettuces were alive in there.
And you know what?
A Winter Garden Moment I Didn’t Expect
When I zoomed in on the photo I took – The lettuces are alive. ⬇️
The Lettuce Lived—Even Below Zero
They survived temperatures down to minus 5 degreesand colder wind chills. I think that’s the coldest we’ve had to date, and there they were—still alive, still hanging on and simply waiting for it to be a bit warmer so they can start growing bigger again – amazing – happy dance!💃😀
I was genuinely surprised. I knew lettuce could tolerate down to 24° F but this? In Zone 7, under a hoop house, below zero? That shifted something for me.
What This Taught Me About Lettuce and Winter Gardening
This reminded me of the resilience of plants, which is a good reminder for us.
Lettuce has a way of teaching you to allow a slow down occasionally, observe, and respond—qualities that transform not just your garden, but your relationship with it and ourselves. – Plus you can get loads of yummy food.
It also clarified just how hardy and forgiving lettuces are.
Starting Lettuce Seeds for a Spring and Summer Vegetable Garden
Because I wasn’t sure the lettuces (and other crops in the hoop houses) would make it, I had already started a whole new round of lettuce indoors.
Those seedlings are now in trays, have been transplanted once, and will be transplanted again before heading into the garden—or being shared with friends or sold to clients.
Along with that surprise hoop house photo, I’m also sharing images of the seedlings on my home-built seed starting rack, glowing under those pink full-spectrum grow lights.
They look a little wild—almost psycho🤪 —but they work beautifully.
And that’s part of the beauty of lettuce. It invites abundance. There’s almost always enough to share.
I wanted to pop in here to offer a wholehearted plug for lettuce—especially if you’re starting seeds for your spring and summer vegetable garden.
Lettuce is far more resilient than many of us expect, and it rewards even modest effort with beauty, nourishment, and confidence.
Three Insights for Growing Great Lettuce
These come straight from the talk I gave last Saturday:
Growing in hoop house microclimates simplifies harvesting lettuces in cold and hot temperatures.
Choosing seasonal varieties unlocks your ability to harvest lettuce all year.
By beingstrategic, instead of guessing how to do it, you grow great lettuce.
Lettuce has a way of showing us what’s possible when we tend with curiosity instead of assumptions.
May your garden be abundant and bring you joy, beauty, and food so it becomes you sanctuary—a place where you flourish alongside what you grow.
Looking for a Garden Speaker?
Do you need a speaker for for your group or organization?
I can talk on lettuce or other garden topics, get in touch and lets start the conversation.More info.
Available In-person or on zoom.
An Invitation to Grow With Curiosity This Season
🌱 Want more professional garden tips, seasonal guidance, and grounded encouragement? Sign up for my newsletter to stay connected and supported as you plan, plant, and tend your garden all year long.
Spinach is one of the most versatile greens you can grow. It makes great salads, smoothies, veggie dishes like spanakopita or simply steamed and served with a bit of vinegar.
The latter was how we used to have it when I was a kid. It was a simple family favorite. – Yes, I was the kid who loved spinach. 😋🥬
Ok, true confession, I pretty much only plant spinach in the fall, keep it in a hoop house, eat it all winter and into the spring and don’t replant in the spring.
We tend to get freak super-hot spells earlier and earlier (think 90°F) which kills the seeds or baby seedlings, so now I move on from fall sown spinach to a summer crop.
Cool Hardy Spinach
Spinach is a cool weather crop which makes it a great fall green.
It is hardy to 15° or 20°F which means in much of the country, it can overwinter without any protection. Therefore, you can easily harvest spinach fresh from your garden all winter long.
This photo is of some fall sown spinach with some early winter frost.
Therefore, you can easily harvest spinach fresh from your garden all winter long.
For those of us who get colder winter temps, grow it in a hoop house. This gives you a micro-climate that nudges up the temps enough to grow it longer into the cold months.
Here is a photo looking into a hoop house at the fall planted spinach during the winter when snow was on the ground.
Types of Spinach
Although there are some spinach substitutes that will grow in hot weather, here we are talking about the cool loving types with two types of leaves.
Smooth leaved varieties:
Easier to wash
Less volume per plant
Savoy leaved varieties:
Tend to be darker green
More harvest volume per plant
Longer wash time
Seeding Spinach
Spinach is one of those crops that doesn’t like to be transplanted, therefore you are going to want to direct seed it.
Because spinach does not take up allot of space, you can put in anywhere, even in containers.
Granted, if you are a huge spinach freak, you might want to give it more space in your garden.
Plant seeds 1/8th – 1/4″ “deep.
For baby leaf spinach plant seeds 2-4” apart. If you want to plant for baby bunches, go with the 2” apart.
If you are growing in rows and want space in between, good row widths are 12-18”.
I don’t plant in thin rows, I plant in strips.
Because my raised beds are 3-4’ wide, I can harvest from both sides, therefore I will plant a band of each variety I want, with a little space in between the types, that way I use the whole bed and get more harvest.
This also means I can plant a strip of spinach and strips of other direct seeded plants like bak choi, mustards, radishes, dill, carrots or turnips.
This works well if you don’t have a large garden and want to grow some other direct seeded plants as well as spinach.
Seeds germinate best in soil temperatures of 32-60°F, so, it will depend on your planting zone when to plant.
If you have shade cloth you can put over the bed during the day, this will allow you to plant a bit sooner. If the temperatures cool down at night, you can remove the shade cloth for the overnight, although this is not necessary.
If you are planning on harvesting whole plants, then you will need to succession plant every two weeks for a continual harvest.
An online course that covers everything you need to grow food in the fall and winter.
Harvesting Spinach
You can harvest either the baby or at full sized leaves.
Here are a couple of strategies:
If you want only baby spinach, then you do want to succession plant every two weeks to keep your harvest going.
What I do instead, as the plants get bigger, I only harvest the outer leaves.
As long as you only harvest the outer leaves, the plant will keep growing.
Once the plants start to grow into each other, you may need to choose some plants to harvest whole plant so others can grow bigger.
By doing this, I use less seed and get more harvest.
Preserving Spinach
I don’t wash my spinach when I put it in the fridge, Instead I wait to wash it until I am going to use it. I find it lasts longer in the fridge when it is not wet.
If you are not going to use it all then consider making a spinach lasagna or spanakopita and freezing meal sized portions.
You can also freeze spinach either raw or blanched.
The frozen spinach you get in bags from the supermarket has been blanched. But you can freeze it raw also. No matter which you do, you want the spinach as dry as possible before freezing. This is why I prefer to do it fresh as is easier to dry it.
You can also make spinach chips by drying it in a dehydrator.
Pests & Diseases Affecting Fall Grown Spinach
One of the reasons I love growing in the fall is that I don’t have the pest pressure that can happen in spring and summer.
🌿Aphids and leaf miners can go after your spinach, but I haven’t seen this with fall grown spinach unless I leave the plants into the later spring when the temps have warmed up.
🌿Two diseases that can affect spinach are downy mildew (Peronospora farinosa f. sp. spinaciae) and fusarium wilt (Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. spinaciae). I have not had problems with these, which is wonderful living in such a humid climate as I do in zone 7b.
Fusarium wilt is primarily soil borne so if you have this issue, you’ll need to address your soil heath.
Downy mildew tends to happen when temperatures are warmer, again, less a problem with fall sown than spring sown spinach.
Some varieties have been bred forresistance to some diseases, so if they are a problem in your area, look to the hybrid varieties below as options. These are hybrid varieties – NOT GMOs.
Tested and Trusted Spinach Varieties
Over the years I have grown at least twelve varieties of spinach.
The ones below are the four I have zeroed in on as growing the best for me for the last four years. I also include an honorable mention.
Bloomsdale Longstanding
45 Days to Maturity, Open Pollenated
If you want flavor, this one still is the best. There are various “Bloomsdale” varieties and I have tried all I have come across. Although Winter Bloomsdale is good, I still think the “Longstanding” variety has the best flavor.
David Landreth developed the original Bloomsdale spinach in the 1800s. In 1925, the variety was improved and reintroduced to the market by seed breeders Zwaan and Van der Molen in Voorburg, Netherlands, under the name Long Standing Bloomsdale. The spinach variety won the All-America or AAS Award in 1937 and continues to be a popular variety today.
This variety is generally easy to find. At the time of writing this, I buy it from High Mowing Organic Seeds.
Bloomsdale Longstanding is a wonderful overwintering spinach for a bountiful harvest.
Giant Winter
Days to Maturity, Open Pollenated
Giant Winter, or Giant of Winter is the English translation of the Dutch, Gigante d’Inverno. Anther from Zwaan and Van der Molen, who developed it in 1926.
With large dark semi-savoyed leaves, this is another great winter spinach variety.
It was bred for overwintering in a high tunnel or under a layer of mulch in the cold months. It does get big, likely the largest variety I have grown so if you want nice big juicy spinach leaves, this one might be for you.
This is not one I grow in spring as it really doesn’t like the heat, so as the name implies, this one really is a winter wonder.
I get it from High Mowing, which is where I have been buying spinach seed from lately, but Baker Creek, Adaptive Seeds and Territorial Seed Company all have it – so you have options.
Renegade Spinach
43 Days to Maturity, F1 Hybrid
If you are looking for a more disease resistant variety, especially against powdery mildew, then look to this hybrid variety.
I first grew it about six years ago and it continues to do well, so it stays as part of my spinach bed. I do like to grow more than one variety each year (that goes for other crops too) because any variety can have an off-year, so growing more than one gives you a bit of insurance.
Sometimes I think I won’t reorder seeds when I run out, but then it keeps doing so well, I order and grow it again.
I get it from High Mowing Organic Seeds.
Ted Tabby
34 Days to Maturity, F1 Hybrid
I keep growing this one because it looks so pretty. The thick juicy round leaves are smooth dark green with red veins. The red color comes out when it is cold and goes away in heat.
I have tried three red spinaches, and this one has outperformed the others. Red Tabby was bred by the Dutch company Rijk Zwaan. Do we see a pattern here? Seems we owe much of our luscious spinach variety from breeders in the Netherlands.
The red color comes from an antioxidant called betacyanin.
Being a hybrid, it is another good choice for a disease resistant spinach.
This one has a milder flavor than some others which is pleasing and works well in salads as baby spinach.
I get it from John Scheeper’s Kitchen Garden Seeds, or Territorial.
Space – Honorable Mention
10 years ago or so, I grew allot of Space Spinach and really loved it. It germinated and grew well, was a smoother leaved variety and was reliable. Then it disappeared from seed catalogs.
About three years ago is appeared again and I was looking forward to growing it again. I tried it two years in a row and it did not do well – bummed. I still have a soft spot for Space Spinach which is so called because it takes up less space in the garden.
I am going to try it again, and felt it deserved a place on this list. I get it from High Mowing Organic Seeds and is bred by Bejo Seeds.
This is another one to try for is downy mildew resistance and what used to be for me, a long harvest window. I would plant it in fall, and still be eating it the beginning of April.
Reported Health Benefits of Spinach
Although I am not a doctor and therefore cannot make any health claims, research shows that spinach is:
A source of vitamin A which is great for healthy skin and lungs.
Vitamin C which many of us use to strengthen our immune systems when we think we might be a cold.
Calcium to support strong bones and teeth.
Iron to develop the protein hemoglobin for oxygen transport through the bloodstream, which helps combat fatigue and make a strong like Popeye (if you don’t know who that is, he is an old cartoon character, have some fun watching this compilation video._ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxO758l7JVM
Fiber to regulate the digestive tract, a help insure the other nutrients are taken up in the body.
Several minerals including folic acid, magnesium, manganese, and lutein, a carotenoid that aids in eye health.
Potassium which has been shown to lower blood pressure.
By seeding spinach in the fall, you have a spinach harvest all winter long.
May your spinach and the rest of your fall and winter garden bring you a bounty of food – Debby Ward, Member of GardenComm International
Starting when I was a kid, of our outdoor autumn rituals was to rack all the leaves that had fallen from the trees.
Now, if you are a lawn lover, removing them from your grass is beneficial to keep your grass growing well. Matted leaves can kill your grass, yet they are awesome for your garden beds.
The thing is, I often see folks bag those raked leaves up and have them taken away. Then they go buy bagged mulch for their garden beds.
The leaves that fall from your trees have amazing many benefits for your garden beds.
Lets look at why to let the leaves lie to benefit your garden.
The leaves act as a natural mulch and insulation. Fallen leaves are nature’s protective blanket, shielding your garden beds from harsh winter conditions while regulating soil temperature. They also keep moisture in to keep the roots of your plants watered.
People in my classes often hear me talk about building soil from the top down, the way nature does it. Organic Matter builds soil health naturally. As leaves decompose, they become soil and enrich your soil with essential nutrients, improving its structure and fertility—perfect for a thriving organic garden.
I love talking about soil and all the critters in healthy living soil that become your workforce, helping you in your garden. Decomposing leaves foster a habitat for worms and microbes which break down organic material and boost soil health naturally.
This encourages those beneficial microorganisms who work for you in your garden.
When training folks in my garden design system, I keep going back to talking about supporting biodiversity in your garden – no matter what sized garden you have, from containers to acres.
As you can see from the first two points I made, these leaves promote biodiversity. Leaves create a safe haven for pollinators and beneficial insects, like ladybugs and butterflies, helping your garden ecosystem flourish come spring.
Going back to those people who remove their fallen leaves and buy bagged mulch, by using the leave for mulch you reduce waste and save money.
By letting leaves stay put, you’re recycling nature’s resources directly in your garden and cutting down on waste sent to landfills. Plus, you can spend your money on other things!
By embracing this simple, eco-friendly practice you gain a healthier, more vibrant garden!
Remember, Let the Leaves Lie to benefit your garden.
