Spinach (Spinacia oleraceae) is a dioecious plant that forms an edible rosette of fleshy leaves. Depending on the variety, the spinach leaves may be triangular or oval in shape, and the leaf may be smooth or wrinkled. An interesting variety is spinach with red petioles and veins (Bordeaux F1). The leaf surface is shiny in all varieties. Due to the short growing season, spinach is grown as an catch crop or as a forecrop.
Contents:
- What position for spinach?
- Spinach - neighborhood and shift
- Spinach: cultivation
- Spinach care
- Pot spinach
- How to harvest spinach?
What position for spinach?
The best place for spinach is a quiet, warm, slightly shaded place, and the soil is heavier, fertile, fairly moist, with a pH similar to neutral. Spinach grows well in the first or second year after manure.
Spinach is a short-day plant, so it should be remembered that high temperature, long day and little rainfall deteriorate its quality and cause premature knocking out of the seed shoots. That is why we do not grow spinach in the summer. The optimal temperature for plant growth is 15-18oC, and the seedlings can withstand temperature drops as low as -6oC. For this reason, we can grow spinach in early spring, late autumn and even in winter.
Spinach neighborhood and alternation
Due to the short growing season, spinach can be sown in early spring. It is a good forecrop for cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini and Chinese cabbage. As an aftercrop, it feels good in positions after early potatoes, cabbage, carrots, peas and beans.
A favorable neighborhood for spinach is tic beans, cabbage, parsnips, tomatoes, leeks, turnips, radishes, celery, zucchini, rhubarb, chamomile, strawberries, thyme, savory and mint.
Spinach: cultivation
Spinach seeds can be sown virtually all year round, taking into account the harvest date: for the summer harvest (at the beginning of April), for the autumn harvest (at the beginning of August) and for the winter (August / September). We can sow spinach under covers as early as March. The seeds are sown to a depth of about 2 cm, quite densely, in rows every 20-30 cm. After about 2 weeks, the seeds should germinate.
The most popular is the autumn sowing date, in order to enjoy the fresh leaves in the winter. In winter spinach cultivation, when snow-free winter is promising, it is good to cover the plants with, for example, agrotextile to protect them from drying out by cold wind and burning by the sun. Well wintering varieties include, among others Winter giant, Greta F1 or Monnopa.
Spinach care
Spinach is not particularly demanding. Watering, weeding and loosening the soil is basically all you need to do to keep it he althy. Due to the fact that the cultivation of the soil for sowing spinach should be careful and the soil fertile, there is no need to supplement the plants with top dressing. However, if necessary, it is best to feed them with natural preparations, such as biohumus, liquid manure or plant extracts. We use mineral fertilization only when it is necessary to supplement the deficiencies in the soil.
Spinach - growing in a pot
Not only garden owners can enjoy fresh spinach all year round. All you need is a slightly shaded window sill or balcony, a pot with fertile soil and it's ready! We can sow seeds regularly, every 2 weeks, so that we still have fresh leaves. An interesting alternative to traditional varieties are the so-called baby leaves, i.e. varieties intended for harvesting at the stage of young leaves. Not only can they be harvested much faster, they also contain more nutrients than traditional varieties. The most interesting baby leaves adapted to cultivation in our climate are the following varieties: PV 1449 F1, Maya F1, Kyowa F1, Yuma F1 and Inca F1. Spinach in a pot requires no more attention than other plants. It is enough to water and fertilize it regularly.
How to harvest spinach?
We can regularly collect young leaves, or cut off the entire rosettes after approx. 6-8 weeks after sowing. The moment of harvesting is important - necessarily before flowering. If the harvest is delayed, even slightly, the leaves will become bitter and unfit for consumption.
