It is very interesting to watch a video about growing spinach from seed indoors. The person in the video has probably spent many years indoor gardening and seems to have perfected her technique. She starts off by explaining that she bought herself a large pot with holes in it and then planted some seeds, some carrots, a potato, and a root crop. After several weeks, she has a thriving little garden.
There are many ways to do indoor gardening, but this lady does something that no one else does when it comes to gardening. She makes use of what I like to call cold frames. What are cold frames? They are special lighting systems that can be used to grow plants at different stages of the season, in other words, all year long!
I am not sure how she does this, but it is clearly an art form to her. At one point, she has several small plates on the bottom of each glass window. Each one has a different type of seed in it. As she places seeds on each plate, she inspects them closely to make sure she is placing them in the correct dish.
As she explains how to do this, the YouTube video ends. You can clearly see that she places her seeds in the holes and covers them up with a piece of the pine tree bark. She explains that the bark will not harm the seeds. She then plants two beautiful French blue flowers on each of the plates.
A couple of minutes later, she has a large mass of vegetables growing on the floor, thanks to the low light. To make it look very natural, she has a fake path going through the garden. As she walks through the path, she has a camera trained on her as she goes. The view is clear and so are the results. She has filmed her efforts to grow spinach using this method, and you can clearly notice the difference in the quality of the video versus the one she posted two years ago.
I have tried growing spinach in pots, but they require more frequent watering. The problem is that I can only use half as much water as I typically do when I plant vegetables in the garden. So, even if I do get an excess amount of water on the spinach, it is wasted. If I were to use the same methods, however, I could fill my garden with spinach and also use more water. Of course, I still need to give them some water from time to time.
So, she has discovered a method using a PVC pipe that allows her to plant spinach roots in a deeper soil area, without needing to use as much water. Instead, she just pours a little at a time, onto the PVC pipe, to allow the roots to absorb as much water as possible. Of course, after she starts getting an abundant amount of growth, she will be able to pour an additional third of a cup on the same spot, for a total of eight cups of water used, while she builds up the soil and starts to fill the paver beds with loose soil.
Her final step is to spread some of the loose soil over the top of the bed. In fact, she may earn some “well deserved” ribbons and make some wonderful veggies by growing spinach in a separate container or a garden planting bed, over the pebbles and rocks in her driveway. As her plants start to blossom, she may earn some extra “well earned” ribbons, too! Her experience growing spinach in a sustainable environment has allowed her to share her knowledge with others who might not be able to afford the time or expense of planting a garden, while she is doing something good along the way.