Overwintering spit bowl

Overwintering spit bowl
Overwintering spit bowl

Peter Norris
April 11, 2017

This year I have for the first time sown the overwintering spikes in August and planted in the bench in October - and to celebrate that they have all survived the winter, they have obviously decided to go into bloom. So where a few weeks ago there was a view of even earlier delicious and crisp spring bowls, I can apparently now soon enjoy a sumptuous yellow flower splendor. And I'm probably not the only one experiencing this this year.

The small spikes in the manure bank (which are seen between the large plants) are grown as I usually do: sown in September, overwintered in small pots in the greenhouse and planted out in the manure bank in March. Here I have never had the problem of the plants going into flower rather than forming a head, and there is as yet no sign that they are inventing it.

But it still gives too few spikes, although the flowering ones can easily be eaten as mere leaves. Therefore, it must be investigated whether the plants "in the end" can still behave like spit bowl caregivers. The plant is harvested by cutting the stem so that 3-4 leaves remain. Under normal circumstances, the plant will shoot again in the leaf corners (where a new shoot can just be seen in the close-up) - and if you remove all of them except the strongest, a fine little pointed bowl head will develop. On the other hand, the plant may have already decided that there should just be an explosion of flowers all over it.