The best way to get the very earliest greens possible in the spring is to plant them in the fall.
We planted this spinach in our raised bed back in September along with a few kale plants. We then built a small greenhouse using cattle fencing panels and a heavy, 6-mil greenhouse plastic similar to the one in this video. This inexpensive, temporary structure has helped us keep our greens alive through the winter.
Spinach is especially tolerant of cold. It can survive the winter even here in Colorado where temperatures often dip below zero degrees Fahrenheit. Giving it at least one layer of shelter like this small greenhouse or a heavy row cover is usually enough to get it through the coldest months. In the spring it will start to grow quickly and provide some very tasty and nutritious g
reens. You can see in this photo how much spinach is growing in just a 2 by 4 foot space already by March 25th, while the spinach to the left was planted this spring at the beginning of the month (pretty much the earliest possible date).
The kale plants that have wintered in here are also growing big and healthy much earlier than the kale starts recently transplanted to their left and are providing some very early greens as well.
These small, early kale and spinach leaves are especially tasty as salad greens and pack a lot of essential nutrition. Harvesting outer leaves with a sharp pair of scissors allows us to come back for several more harvests until the weather warms up. Once they start to produce flowers they will not taste as good so we will cut them down to plant something else. By then we will have all kinds of new stuff growing. This way we almost always have fresh greens from the garden, even when it’s snowy and cold outside.
