Growing Spinach For Its Tasty & Nutritious Leaves

Growing spinach as a health food is well deserved. It has the highest amount of vitamins A and B2 of any common vegetable and is loaded with iron, calcium, and protein. It’s excellent as a salad or cooking green.

Spinach likes full sun in cool climates, but in hotter areas, give it some afternoon shade. Test your soil’s pH before you plant: Spinach rebels if its home is either too sweet or too sour. A pH of 6.5 to 7.5 is just right.

Like any other leaf crop, spinach needs nitrogen to develop well, so dig in plenty of com-post, because spinach likes all the organic matter it can get.

Spinach doesn’t like to be transplanted, so I always sow seeds in the garden as soon as the soil can be prepared in the spring. I set them in the ground 1/2 inch deep and 2 inches apart. And,

When the seedlings get their second set of leaves, I give them a drink of fish fertilizer. As soon as the little guys are about 4 inches tall, I thin them out so they’re 6 inches apart.

Besides being picky about heat, spinach is sensitive to the amount of light it gets. No matter how well you tend your crop or how cool the temperature stays, the plants will start to bolt when they get more than 14 to 16 hours of daylight.

For my later- spring plantings, I try to slow down the process by growing bolt- resistant varieties.

As with most vegetables, don’t plant spinach in the same areas every year

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