Spinach is regaining its
popularity as a garden vegetable because more people are using it in salads. I
still love it best cooked just long enough to wilt it, with some olive oil in
which I’ve crusted a clove of garlic. It also freezes will. It is not hard to
grow, and it is also a quick crop forty to fifty days to harvest and even less
if you eat the thinning when you thin your rows.
The problem most gardeners have
with spinach is that they try to treat it like lettuce, but even more so. It
bolts in hot weather just as lettuce will but does so more quickly. Spinach is
really a spring or fall crop, though you can edge a bit into the summer months
if you grow a “long-standing” type. Though heart and dryness are factors, it is
the lengthening days that cause spinach to bolt, or to send up a tall, useless
seed stalk and stop producing. The lengthening days approaching midsummer
signal the spinach to go to seed. In warm climates it is grown in late fall, winter
and early spring. Even in the north, some gardeners sow seeds in late fall that
come up in the spring not fool proof, but worth a try.
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| Spinach is regaining its popularity as a garden vegetable because more people are using it in salads |
There’re two kinds of spinach.
The most familiar is the dark green, crinkly leaved sort; the other is a
lighter colored, flat-leaved version. New Zealand spinach and “Malabar Spinach”
are not really spinach, though both taste something like it when cooked and are
sometimes grown as spinach substitutes in warm climates or warm weather.
Select a Site
Plant spinach is full sun or part
shade the later if the crop will be growing in warm weather. You might start a
fall spinach crop between rows of a tall crop such as corn or beans, which will
have been harvested once cool weather comes. Spinach for salads needs only a
few square feet of space for the whole crop. For growing spinach to cook,
however, I recommend a good 40 square feet at least, because it loses so much
volume in cooking or freezing.
Select a Soil
Spinach prefers a light soil, but
with plenty of organic matter. Otherwise the soil will not retain the moisture
the plant needs. As a leafy crop it thrives on very fertile soil, and it is
almost impossible to overfeed it. Nitrogen is especially important. If you’re
using commercial fertilizer for it, 10-10-10 is a good choice. You do not need
to fertilize the soil to a great depth, though, because the plants are
shallow-rooted They’re a little fussy about pH, preferring
the 6.0-7.0 range, so add lime if your soil is acid, but don’t go overboard
because it doesn’t like very alkaline soil either.
Planting
Spinach is sown directly into the
garden or cold frame. Purchase new seed each year because it does not stay
viable for very long. For spring
planting you can start as soon as there’s some ground in your garden that has
thawed. This might be as early as eight
weeks before the last frost. Some gardeners even get the furrow ready in the
fall, so all they need to do the following spring is drop the seeds in and not
worry about working the soil while it is still muddy.
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| Spinach leaf miner larvae burrow inside the leaves and produce tan patches. |
Plant single rows 12 to 15 inches
apart, or plant several rows close together about 6 inches with a space of 1 ½ feet
on either side, or plant in a block so that plants will all be I foot apart
each way after thinning. Seeds should be ½ inch deep and if possible 1 inch
apart. They’ll germinate in five to nine days, or a bit more if it is very
cold. When where are two true leaves on the plants, they should be thinned to
four inches apart, then thinned again so that the plants are eight to twelve
inches apart. Use the discarded young plants in salads. Unless you want a great deal of spinach all
at once for cooking or freezing, it is best to save half a packet or so, then
sow one or more extra crops at intervals of about ten days. But stop sowing
around mid-May the idea is not to have spinach maturing during the long warms
days of July and August. May sowings should be of a long standing type, as an
extra safeguard against bolting.
Start fall sowings in the late
August, even later in warm climates. These should be sown a little thicker and
deeper than spring crops, because germination is less reliable in warm weather.
It helps to keep the soil moist with frequent watering and r a light layer of
salt hay.
Growing
Mulching will help to keep the
soil moist, but I would avoid very acid mulch such as sawdust, bark or peat
moss because these can lower the pH below the plants tolerance. Salt hay or
straw is better. If you’re over wintering a crop by keeping young plants
dormant, it is best to mulch them heavily after the ground freezes to keep it
frozen evenly. Alternate freezing and thawing can damage the plants.
Cultivating or weeding is important if you do not mulch, but do it carefully,
so as not to harm the spinach plants are four to six inches tall, a top
dressing with a high nitrogen fertilizer such as fish emulsion or bone meal
will spur growth. With spring crops remember to keep the growth going to bring
the plants to maturity before they can bolt.
Pests and Diseases
Home gardeners generally do not
have many problems of this sort. Spinach leaf miner larvae burrow inside the
leaves and produce tan patches. The easiest control is to pick off affected leaves
and destroy them. Keeping the garden free of debris and weeds will help. By
growing very early or late crops, you might avoid this bug’s season. You can
also cover young plants with a very fine mesh or cheesecloth so that the fly
that lays the eggs that produce these larvae cannot land on the plants.
Spinach blight or “Yellows” is a
mosaic virus spread by aphids. The leaves turn yellow, and the plants are
stunted. You can control the virus by controlling the aphids, or you can grow
resistant varieties. Also practice good garden hygiene. If there are yellow
spots on the leaves and a moldy substance underneath the problem is the disease
called the blue mold? It appears occasionally in very wet weather. Best
defenses are weed control good drainage, and vigorous, well-fed plants. If they
still get blue mold, throw them out and try again in better weather. Fusarium
wilt can affect spinach, but there’re resistant strains you can grow.
Harvest
You can reap your spinach two
different ways by cutting the outside leaves and letting the centers keep
producing or by cutting the whole plant just at soil level, like a head of
lettuce. I think the best approach is to cut some outside leaves as you need
them but not to leave the plant growing too long. Always cut the while plant f
you see buds starting to form at the center; otherwise it will bolt and become
useless. Sometimes the roots will send up some new leaves after the plant is
cut but not enough to warrant leaving them there if you need the space.
Varieties
Long standing Bloomsdale, a
savoy, or ruffled type, is probably the most popular bolt resistant spinach.
But also try “Popeye’s Choice and America”. For falls crops grow the
cold-resistant “Winter Bloomsdale”. Melody and Hybird Number 7 are more disease
resistant than most. “Giant Nobel” is good smooth leaved spinach.
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| Plant spinach is full sun or part shade the later if the crop will be growing in warm weather |
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