Qingming Festival is coming, go home to worship the ancestors, family gathering, and there is an extra beautiful dish on the dinner table, garlic spinach. This long-lost spinach evokes the homesickness of countless wanderers working outside, and it is like a green nostalgia, often in the dead of night, bringing sleeplessness that misses their parents in their hometown.
(i)
Spinach belongs to the Chenopodae family and is an annual or biennial vegetable native to Persia (now Western Asia, Iranian generation). According to Decandolle, it was cultivated in Iran about 2,000 years ago, and then spread east and west.
According to the "Tang Huiyi" Yun, "Emperor Taizong's mud pollo country offered pine prismatic grass, similar to red and blue, it is like a disease, and the fire can benefit the taste." According to the vernacular that modern people are easy to understand; During the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang, the country of Mu Polo offered spinach to the Tang Emperor, which was red and blue in color, and the spinach seeds were similar to quinoa, and could be eaten after cooking. In the "New Book of Tang - Legend of the Western Regions", it is also recorded that Zhenguan paid tribute to spinach in the twentieth year (647 AD).
Spinach is one of the green leafy vegetables very suitable for human consumption, containing 91.8 water per 100 grams of fresh spinach, 2.4 grams of protein, only 0.5 grams of fat, 113 kJ of calories, 3.1 grams of freshwater compounds, 0.7 grams of crude fiber, 103 mg of calcium, 1.8 mg of iron, 3.87 mg of carotene, 0.04 mg of ammonium sulfide, 0.13 mg of riboflavin, 0.6 mg of niacin, 39 mg of vitamin C. The content of protein, calcium, iron, carotene, riboflavin, and niacin in spinach is relatively high, especially the carotene content, which is 3.60 mg higher per 100 grams than yellow carrots. In addition, the content of vitamin B6, folic acid, iron and potassium in spinach is very high, and it is known as a beauty product in ancient times.
"Therapeutic Materia Medica" describes the efficacy of spinach as follows: cold, slightly toxic. Benefit the five internal organs, relieve stomach heat, and relieve alcohol and poison. Serve Danshi people, eat well. It is recorded in the "Compendium of Materia Medica": spinach, through the blood veins, open the chest, the lower qi is in the tone, the upper thirst is moist, and the root is good.
The "Suiju Diet Recipe" believes that spinach "opens the chest, clears the stomach, moisturizes the blood, stools are astringent and people suffering from hemorrhoids should eat". Modern medicine also believes that spinach should be eaten more in spring, which contains a variety of vitamins and folic acid, which can nourish the heart, but also prevent stroke and anemia.
Everyone knows that Song Meiling lived a long life, living 106 years, and it is said that she has always liked to eat spinach during her lifetime. Spinach is rich in iron and chlorophyll, which does have a certain health effect on the human body.
(ii)
There are many types of spinach, and according to the seed form, it can be divided into two varieties: thorny and thornless. Thornless species is also a round leaf type, the fruit is irregular round, thornless, leaf hypertrophy, wrinkled, oxalic acid content is relatively high, oval, oval or irregular, petiole short, weak heat tolerance, late moss, suitable for wintering cultivation. There are thorny species, that is, pointed leaf type, the fruit is diamond-shaped with thorns, the leaves are small and thin, halberd-shaped or arrow-shaped, because of the soft texture, less astringency, suitable for consumption. Strong cold resistance and heat resistance, early maturation, early moss, suitable for spring cultivation.
No matter what kind of spinach, the leaf area is large and the tissue is tender, so the water requirements are high. In the process of management, sufficient moisture is required, thick meat when growing vigorously, high yield and good quality. Under the conditions of high temperature and long sunshine and drought, vegetative growth is inhibited, reproductive growth is accelerated, and it is easy to draw moss unripe, and water demand management should be paid attention to.
Gu Shiyun: "The bitter cold in the north is not over, and the pine edge under the snow is like an iron armor." Don't you know that Wushu is rich in winter vegetables, and frost leaves and dew buds are more cold. "From the poem, we can see that spinach has the characteristics of frost and cold resistance, and it loves cold. In fact, spinach is indeed a hardy green leafy vegetable, which can withstand a low temperature of about minus 7 ° C without being frozen to death. Spinach is a veritable hardy vegetable, seeds can germinate at 4 °C, the temperature suitable for vegetative growth is 15~20 °C, and the growth above 25 °C is poor. Therefore, when the temperature rises above 5 °C after the beginning of spring, it can be sown in the open air, and if the ground temperature is insufficient and affects the emergence of seedlings, it can be sown early by using mulch film combined with small arches.
In order to avoid late sowing and with the pace of spring, the taste and quality of spinach grown in a high temperature environment have decreased, and it is easy to smoke, so the edibility and commerciality of spinach in late spring have seriously declined. Although spinach has a wide adaptability to soil, if you want to obtain high-yield and high-quality spinach, it is still necessary to choose loose and fertile, water-retaining and fertilizer-retaining soil, and good drainage and irrigation conditions as a prerequisite for increasing yield and quality. It should be noted that spinach is not acid tolerant, and the suitable pH is 7.3~8.2. Spinach is a leafy vegetable that requires more nitrogen fertilizer and appropriate phosphorus and potassium fertilizer.
As the old saying goes: "If you don't plant the land with manure, you are pure foolishness", which means that the soil is the carrier of crops, and it also needs a supply of nutrients to meet the needs of a bumper harvest of crops. If you don't use fertilizer, the yield will not go up, which is equivalent to working in vain. Therefore, it is necessary to apply enough fertilizer according to the growth needs of spinach to meet the growth needs in order to ensure a bumper harvest.
Deep turning 20~25 cm, land preparation with fertilizer, after spring according to soil fertility, apply rotted organic fertilizer about 4000 kg, superphosphate about 40 kg, evenly sprinkled into the selected field. Flat and fine, spring should be made high, the width of the furrow is 1.2~1.5 meters, and it is ready for broadcasting. Spinach is usually sown and emerges with a few leaves, which can be eaten as a vegetable. Dry or wet seeds can be sown in spring. There is no need to soak seeds to promote germination before sowing like summer and autumn. The mu sowing amount is about 3~3.5 kg. After watering the bottom of the surface, you can sow the seeds, use a tooth rake to rake the topsoil, so that the seeds are sown into the soil, and the surface can be covered with a layer of grass and wood ash, or a thin layer of high-quality soil.
Spinach is sown in early spring, because in February at the time of the transition of winter and spring, the temperature is unstable, and it is still cold at first, so in order to keep the ground temperature stable, it is necessary to cover the plastic film insulation in the early stage, which can be directly covered on the surface of the furrow. After emergence, the film is removed or changed to a small arch cover, the small arch is covered day and night, and the rain cover is clear, and the temperature can be maintained, and the spinach seedlings can see more light and refine the seedlings, and the seedlings should be carried out in time.
Top dressing fertilizer water, in the early stage, you can use rotten human and animal manure to apply lightly, apply fertilizer frequently, or you can use urea top dressing. In the late stage of spinach growth, especially 15 days before harvest, fast-acting nitrogen fertilizer should be applied to promote the vigorous growth of spinach and improve quality and yield.
(iii)
In the seventies, the production team acquiesced to the retention of a small piece of private land, like a patch, in front of and behind the front of each house. Spinach has a long growth cycle, is small in size, and is relatively difficult to serve, so farmers only plant a little bit in a trellished way and save it for the Spring Festival. In the mother's vegetable garden, green vegetables are the protagonists, stubble after stubble; Cabbage was introduced after moving towards a market economy; Spinach is used as an aristocratic dish, such as Xue Baoqin wearing a stunningly snowy landscape.
Spinach in the snow, energetic. The leaves are like condensing blue, clinging to the ground; The roots are red and stretch straight to the ground. Uprooted, one by one (it felt like a blossom at that time), washed, lying on the vegetable plate, and getting rid of the "red-billed green parrot". At that time, spinach was purely applied organic fertilizer, so the thick roots of the deep color leaves were particularly fat, stir-fried, sweet, slippery, and a fat feeling only available to meat. In the years when oil and water were rare, spinach (and cabbage) often gave the villagers a bit of meat lust.
The spring breeze is ten miles, and everything is revived. At this time, the vegetable garden in the countryside was already green. This green spinach is the earliest delicacy of this spring, what are you waiting for, pick up the basket, just pick this lovely fresh fragrance.
I remember when I was a child, my family was poor, and I basically couldn't eat eggs, eggs were used to exchange soy sauce, vinegar and salt, and I could only eat them when I had a birthday or exam exam, and there was also a situation where I could eat poached eggs - sick, fever and cold, when it was more serious, I didn't want to eat, but at that time I felt uncomfortable and poached eggs were not very delicious.
I remember when I was a child, I loved to eat the spinach poached eggs made by my mother, boil the water, under the spinach, beat the eggs into the pot after the water boiled, watch the eggs into the water, slowly turn white in the spinach bush, the yolk is gradually turned white and slowly wrapped, feel that this process is very magical, at this moment I know that the delicious poached eggs are about to cook, soon, the lid of the pot opens, the water vapor slowly disperses, the water in the large iron pot is clear, the spinach is green, the white poached eggs are hidden in the spinach bush, smell the faint fragrance, I will swallow a mouthful of saliva fiercely, Some can't wait to take a sip of the aroma of spinach, quietly waiting for the delicacy, quietly, a white poached egg will appear in my bowl, a poached egg wrapped in many green spinach, I often can't wait to use chopsticks to find out the poached egg that seems to be deliberately hidden, greedy a large mouthful, can directly bite the yolk, suddenly, a faint salty taste, spinach aroma, egg white's smoothness, egg yolk soft glutinous together in the mouth, close your eyes, taste carefully! What a fragrance! It's still the familiar taste of my mother's cooking, and at this moment, in addition to satisfaction, I feel happy, and I thought: If I could have a poached egg every week, wouldn't it be too happy!
Now, my mother has been away from me for four full years, and I can no longer eat the spinach poached eggs my mother made... The poached egg is still the poached egg, but it lacks the taste of mother...
Text/Chu Guoliang
The author is a retired cadre of the Party School of the Xiangtan Municipal Party Committee and a fourth-level researcher. He has been rated as an excellent correspondent of Xiangtan Daily for 6 consecutive years, and his works have been published in authoritative newspapers and periodicals such as People's Daily, China Special Products News, China Social Science News, China County Economic News, and Leadership Science. He has successively edited or participated in the compilation of many township literary and historical materials such as "Son of Xiaoxia", "Meilin Today", "Qingshan Cultural History", "Xiangtang Cultural History" and "Yunhu Cultural History".