Buy one get one extra bunch of spinach .... fresh from your garden and save the seeds as bonus!!

How about that? You went to your favourite organic vegetable vendor and got a bunch of fresh spinach .... with the roots intact! What will you do with it? Cook the leaves and throw the roots... Wait! You can get much more ..... you can get another super fresh bunch of spinach and lots and lots of spinach seeds to provide you spinach for a lifetime! Feeling like Popeye the Sailor? Come on ... spinach is really good for your health! Why not get some extra and that too at no extra cost except your labour of love!

We got these super fresh bunches of spinach in our Navadarshanam CSA box. They were vigorous, came with strong roots and were completely organic! We took all the outer leaves for cooking sparing the central baby leaves.

 Then planted them in a pot with my standard soil mix( red soil, cocopeat and compost 1:1:1). For the first two-three days they looked wilted .... then recovered and new leaves started to come.

Within 15-20 days they were ready to harvest. Now cut the whole bunch and cook!

If the bunch that you got from the market is already matured enough or you leave them in the pot a little longer then at this point the flower stems will show up making the stems little tough!

In Bengali, we call it shishpalong that literally means spinach with the flower stems. Towards the end of winter, these shishpalongs appear in the market. We Bongs have a few recipes that call for only this matured spinach! One of them is Gota-sedho (meaning boiled whole vegetables), a very simple and rustic delicacy that we prepare on the day after Swarashati Puja. It contains many vegetables all whole along with those shishpalongs with flowers and roots intact! Only shishpalong can hold its shape in that melody of veggie where normal spinach would melt and lose its shape! Feeling tempted? Stay tuned for my post on Gota-Sedho!

Well .... you want the seeds. Right? Just spare one or two plants when harvesting the greens and wait for the seeds to ripen and dry. Then harvest the seeds and sow! Just a single plant will give you enough seeds for the next few batches of spinach! Enjoy!