How to Grow Spinach from Start to Finish

Growing spinach is an excellent option to enhance and refresh your dinner table. Spinach can be used for all sorts of dishes like salads, soups, sides, and stuffings. If you grow spinach at home, you can enjoy these dishes with simply a trip to your garden. It grows quickly, ready in a mere month and a half, and, what's more, the leaves can be harvested at practically any point, meaning they are ready when you are. It is also a great option to carry on gardening into the cool seasons and rotating your crops, as spinach will not tolerate hot weather.

Spinach Origins

Wild spinach is believed to come from the Middle East and southwest Asia. It was first grown as a crop in Persia, before spreading east and west to China and the Mediterranean region. It was made popular throughout Europe by the French in the 14th century. It was also well-liked in England and Germany at this time. Many years later, in the 1800s, it made the trip across the Atlantic to be farmed by Americans.
Spinach is among the most nutritious veggies, with high amounts of Vitamin A, Vitamin B9, Vitamin C, and Vitamin K. It does contain a decent amount of iron and other minerals, but it's not the iron-superstar that we have been made to believe.

Growing Spinach

Beginning with the soil, make sure you have a high loam content, with a high level of nitrogen. The pH should be approximately 6.5. Spinach is fairly sensitive to acidity, so you'll want to get your soil examined to verify the pH is high enough (low pH is acidic, high pH is basic, and 7.0 is a neutral pH). As mentioned before, spinach prefers cool weather, so your soil does not have to be too warm to begin - 50F should suffice, but try to make sure you don't encounter huge temperature swings and serious frosts in the coming weeks.
Moving on to seeds, it's best to use fairly fresh ones, although spinach seeds can store up to 3 years before planting. When sowing your spinach seeds, put them about 1/2" deep into the ground, and space them at 4-6" linearly, with 12" between rows. There's a reason for keeping them spread out like this, and that's so that thinning is kept to a minimum. Spinach roots are very sensitive as seedlings, so having to transplant or disrupt seedlings too close together can cause damage to them. So it's best to give them room to grow. Just think of it as trading space for time or effort.
Spinach requires not less than 3/4 inch of rain per week. So be ready to water if you don't receive enough rainfall.

Diseases and Problems

There are 2 common issues to understand when growing spinach. The first issue concerns molds and fungi. Spinach prefers cool and damp environments, but so does fungus and mold. Take the proper precautions to make sure that water doesn't linger longer than needed. This includes ensuring that the area is well ventilated (the spacing should help with this) and well drained. You can also do your manual watering in the late morning, to promote evaporation. Secondly, if your spinach grows slowly and shows indications of yellowing leaves, you may be using a soil that's too acidic, as mentioned above. Prevention is the best solution here, so you may want to get your soil analyzed prior to growing.

Harvesting

One nice thing about spinach is that the leaves are edible at any time during the growing process. Generally 1-1.5 months is the right time, but try harvesting some younger leaves to test out the flavors and timing in your garden. Once you harvest the leaves, try not to handle them too much to avoid damage.<

And finally, to find out more on how to grow spinach, including spinach varieties, pests, and other tips, check out my website VegetableGardensMadeEasy.com.