How to Grow Spinach

Fresh spinach (lat. Spinacea oleracea) is a healthy seasonal vegetable with high content of vitamin C and minerals. There are 20 known varieties of spinach. It is served cooked or lightly steamed as leaf spinach. Using raw spinach, common for example in Italy, as a salad, offers interesting possibilities. Spinach is a dioecious plant – male plants quickly develop a flower stalk, female plants have more leaves and bolt much later. Monoecious varieties have both sexes and female growth type, which increases yield and keeps plants usable longer. With its short vegetation period of 7 to 8 weeks, spinach is an excellent pre-crop or succession crop.

Soil and Sowing Spinach

It thrives everywhere on all loose and humus-rich garden soils. On heavy, wet and compacted soils it grows poorly. In dry conditions it bolts very readily. As a typical long-day plant that flowers very quickly in summer and only produces sufficient harvest in spring or autumn, spinach has a very limited sowing period, which can also be influenced by variety characteristics.

Fertilizing Spinach

Spinach usually manages with light feeding. Compost and complex fertilizers are sufficient. If we expect two harvests, we fertilize after the first cut with calcium ammonium nitrate. However, we always maintain adequate irrigation and weeding. Spinach is also attacked by pests, primarily the beet leaf miner. We use insect protection nets against it and spray against aphids.