Six and a half weeks in, and I’ve been out checking leaf size every second morning. The NZ Spinach in Buddy’s Cairns plot went in on the 4th of May, and today’s the day I stop watching and start picking.
The tell isn’t one thing, it’s three together. Leaves need to be a decent 5 to 8 centimetres, thick and slightly fleshy rather than thin and papery. Colour should be a deep, glossy green, no yellowing at the tips. And the growing tips need to be actively branching out, not just sitting there as a single stem. Two of my three plants ticked all three boxes this week. The third is a week or so behind, smaller leaves, less branching, still worth waiting on rather than stripping early.
That third plant is the honest bit. Not every plant in a bed hits the mark on the same day, even from the same sowing. If yours is lagging, leave it. Forcing an early pick off a slow plant gets you bitter, thin leaves and a sulky plant that’s slower to bounce back.
How I’m picking
Snip the growing tips rather than stripping whole leaves off the stem. NZ Spinach branches from where you cut, so pinching 5 to 8 centimetres off each shoot tip pushes the plant to throw out two or three new shoots in that spot. Strip a plant bare and you’ll set it back for a fortnight. Take the tips regularly, little and often, and it just keeps producing.
Realistic yield: this isn’t a one-and-done harvest like a cabbage. One healthy plant, picked every four or five days, will keep giving you a handful of leaves right through until the weather properly cools in Cairns, which up here is a fair while off yet. It’s a slow trickle, not a windfall, but the trickle doesn’t stop.
Only real hassle so far has been remembering which plant is the slow one before I’ve had my coffee.
