Day of the Triffids

[ausmac]

Thought I'd share this pic from my garden. I planted a couple of spinach as its a veg I like, and over the last few weeks it went from a little thing lower than knee high to this giant that towers over me. Never new spinach could do this.....

Comments

[helenatroy]

Ha! Before I noticed your title I was going to say "Oh no! Triffid spinach!"

[willowistari]

I...had no idea spinach could do that either, WOW.

[myskat]

we call that "bolting" makes the spinach tough and not too tasty

[sammason]

This. It means the plant is about to flower and then make seeds. Sadly, it also mean the leaves would taste bitter if you picked them. After enjoying the plants visually, if you don't want seeds from them, you'd do well to pull them up and put them on your compost heap.

[armygeezer]

That is Swiss Chard...not spinach, although I use it like spinach.

[hippydippymama]

Spinach that goes gonzo like that looks a lot like Swiss Chard.

[ausmac]

Not sure what it is called in your area, but here in Australia we call it spinach. I know there are other varieties but it is the most common type of spinach here.

[virginiadear]

I could be misremembering, of course, but it sticks in my mind that a while back on this forum someone in New Zealand posted either pictures or a link to pictures of spinach or "spinach" which looked like eight-feet-tall shrubs, quite luxuriant and pretty. And astonishingly enormous, for spinach.

One of my neighbors was always delighted to get shared Swiss chard from my garden even during the hottest days of summer, no matter how bitter the chard might have been. He'd saute it up in olive oil with garlic and onions, and declared it made fine eating. Might be a matter of perspective, or what you're used to eating: he grew up being "dosed" with messes of dandelion greens, as a youngster through young adulthood, and he maintains to this day (this is a gentleman in his eighth decade) that "bitter greens" will do you a power of good.