[Market-farming] Why do It II

Willie McKemie mf at austinfarm.org
Thu May 1 08:47:26 EDT 2008


> > Carrots?  Hard to grow, but a fall grown carrot is delicious around here
> > and in incredible demand.  Maybe I have to limit the amount per customer,

I used to grow about 10 acres of spinach over our zone 8 winters and 
have experimented planting other crops with the spinach.  Carrots have 
been most successful for me.  Carrot seed is quite small compared to 
spinach, but I just put some in the hopper and hope it gets spread 
out.  The carrots, of course, do not do as well as they might with no 
competition, but there ARE some carrots to pull after the spinach is 
gone.  The spinach competition does not seem to much affect the size of 
the carrot roots.  I pick individual spinach leaves, so the companion 
crop does not hinder harvest of spinach.

Onions can do fairly well planted with spinach, but the stands seem 
poor.  But, I have trouble getting good stands of ANY direct seeded 
onions.  Chard also can provide an "after the spinach is gone" crop.  
This year though, my chard has spider mites I think it picked up from 
spinach.  Beets planted with spinach have not done well for me.

All this is for spinach (and companion crops) planted November through 
February and harvested starting in December or January.

-- 
Willie, ONWARD!  Through the fog!
http://counter.li.org Linux registered user #228836 since 1995
Debian3.1/GNU/Linux system uptime  138 days  1 hours 22 minutes


More information about the Market-farming mailing list