About Spinach

Do you want to become big and strong like Popeye? Well why not try growing spinach. Spinach is extremely good for you and is becoming more and more popular. Spinach is best eaten raw in salads or as side dishes. You can also lightly cook Spinach with eggs and have them as scrambled eggs, which is delicious. Find out how to grow spinach with our tips and advice here.

Sowing and Harvesting times

This is when you can Sow and Harvest Spinach in the UK.

Sow	March to September
Harvest	April to October

Varieties

There are quite a few varieties of Spinach you could try growing. Some of our recommendations are:-

• Toscane AGM
• Medania AGM

Where to plant.

When growing Spinach you need to know that it is an extremely fussy grower. If you don’t get the growing conditions right it will not grow for you.

Spinach needs lots of moisture to the plant to grow. To do this you can add lots of well rotted manure or compost in the ground. You can also add compost to the soil. When you are planning to grow spinach find somewhere that is partial shade so that it keeps the moisture of the plant.

You can even grow Spinach in between plants that would add some shade to it so that it helps keep the moisture.

Sowing Spinach

If you are a spinach fan you will need to grow lots of plants, this is because when you boil it or fry it the leaves become literally nothing as you will know. So with plenty of plants you will always be harvesting some.

Spinach can be sown where it needs to be grown it does not have to be grown in pots or trays first. Do not sow it to early though as it has a tendency to bolt if you do this. The time to plant it ideally is from April to June.

If you are wanting to grow large spinach plants you need to sow around three seeds together every 15cm apart. Once the seeds germinate pull two of the seeds away from each clump just leaving one plant every 15cm.

If you want to grow small plants scatter the seeds thinly in a row, you will not need to thin these out.

Looking after your Spinach

Spinach needs to be kept well watered at all times, if you don’t do this is will bolt and you will have no option but to pull the plant out. To keep the moisture in apply a mulch round the plants.

Harvesting Spinach

Spinach can be harvested at the size of the desired leaf that you want, the more you pick the leaves more will grow.

You can find out more information on Spinach here. You can also learn about growing other vegetables here. Why not try growing your own flowers with our tips here.