Baby spinach is also in high demand in the summer, while it is a real winter crop. Baby spinach often does not germinate above 22°C. But during the hot Italian summers, especially in July and August, the mercury can even linger at 28 to 30 degrees at night. You can imagine how difficult it is to provide the same production during the hot seasons.
How is the quality of baby spinach preserved?
We have taken different measures to face these problems:
- Using particular fabrics reflecting sun to cover our tunnels
- Using cold water taken from deep wells
- And following different practices learnt across the years.
Despite all these measures taken the yield at the end of production is always lower than expected and volume cannot be guaranteed. The outcome usually is about 30-40% but sometimes we even do experience a complete loss of the batch in very critical situations.
Always looking for innovations
One of the solutions found is to produce spinach in the mountains. It's easier to grow baby spinach there because the night temperatures are lower and therefore favorable. However, the weather in the mountains and in the area close to the sea is unpredictable. That makes it difficult again. In the case of rain, hail, strong winds and all unfortunate conditions, the crop can be damaged easily in the open field causing a shortage again. You might ask why we do not use tunnels, but this is very problematic for snow in winters, so we are still searching for solid alternatives.
Work harder for the same quality
Behind a pallet of spinach in this period there is a lot of work that needs to be done in summer time. And, as on every other aspect of business and life in general, we all need some luck too to get the best result!
