This is my first year gardening and am so very excited about it! I decided to do use the SFG method since we have nothing but clay soil where I live, plus it's less labor intensive and less expensive than tilling up the ground... Anyway, right now I have some peas, spinach, leaf lettuce, broccoli, onions, and cabbage growing at the moment and everything is doing well... almost.

I have 4 4'x4' beds and they receive full sun all day. The soil is a mixture of perlite, compost, and peat moss.

My spinach plants have grown anywhere from just out of the ground to about 3 inches and stopped. We had a pretty bad freeze in the middle of april and I believe it has stunted my spinach. It did continue to grow after the freeze, but not much. I have put some compost around it thinking that would help.... no. Is it gone? Should I just pull it up and wait for the fall to try again?

Also, along with the crazy freeze, we have had some very unseasonably hot weather as well (sometimes in the upper 80's!) got to love that mountain weather :). My strawberries are blooming and starting to fruit, but then the berries just turn brown and dry up! Should I invest in a shade cloth to protect them from the heat?

Thanks for the help!