Discover when I plant my spinach so I can harvest it for months and not just weeks…
I didn’t know much about spinach until I started growing it in my early adulthood. My parents never prepared it at home. I guess it just wasn’t among the most popular vegetables in socialist Yugoslavia. So the only time I ate it was in primary school. The school cook would occasionally prepare it as a creamed sauce and serve it as a side dish to mashed potatoes. But apart from that, I had no other close encounters with this leafy green…
And what a shame that was. I had no clue of what I had been missing out on. Not until I harvested and tried it in a salad for the first time. It happened late in May. In my first gardening season ever…
I learned a lot about growing spinach in that year. Perhaps the most important lesson I learned at the time was that it’s utmost important you plant this leafy green at the right time. If you do it too late, you don’t get any harvest out of it. However, if you sow it at the right time, you can harvest it for months!
Don’t expect endless harvests from your spring spinach sowings…
It was late in March when I planted the spinach for the first time in my life. Snow melted away only weeks ago. The weather was slowly warming up, but it was still cold outside – too cold for gardening according to almost every local gardener. That didn’t stop me though. I caught a gardening bug during winter and was eager to start. So I jumped straight into it.
To be honest, I didn’t really know what I was doing at the time. All I had was a simple strategy. The strategy was to plant as many different vegetables as I can get my hands on. And then hope for the best. So I did just that. I planted everything from lettuce to chard. From garden leek to garlic and onions. I even planted asparagus from seed!
Of course, I didn’t forget about spinach either. I dedicated an entire row to it as well…
It only took a few weeks before plants started to come out of the ground. I was excited at first, but soon got frustrated. You see, I had a hard time differentiating what was what. I didn’t know what was a baby vegetable and what was a weed. So I had no choice but to wait things out and see what happens…
As plants continued to grow, I was able to identify most of them and my initial excitement came back. The spinach was not a tough nut to crack either. Although I never held it in my hands before, I recognized it the moment I saw it. It’s dark, green-coloured leaves really stood out!
I harvested it the moment I recognized it and made a salad out of it the same day. It tasted deliciously mixed with lettuce, chard and onion greens!
This very first spinach harvest of mine happened towards the end of May. I excitedly continued to harvest it’s leaves for about a week of so. Then, just when I got used to it’s incredible taste, something horrible happened…
All my plants suddenly grew a long stem from the centre and stopped growing new leaves. I was out of my spinach produce literally over the night. I felt devastated. It was like someone would took a piece of my heart away from me!
Later on, I discovered what happened. My spinach bolted. It shifted from leaf to seed production. This happens to it as a rule when days get long and warm – and days in May are indeed already long and warm (almost hot) too. It was just nature at work and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
So, here’s my advice to you if you intend to grow it in spring:
- Do it as early in spring as you can. Do it as soon as snow melts and soil thaws.
- Also, protect your sowings with row cowers. Or, even better, put the cold frames over the sown rows to speed up the seed germination.
Time does matter when it comes to spring spinach sowings. Never forget that. You want your seeds to sprout as quickly as possible. You want your plants to come out of the ground as soon as possible. And most importantly, you want your spinach to grow to harvest size while it’s still cool outside. And while days are still relatively short.
Otherwise, you will only be able to harvest it for a very short time. You see, there’s a reason why spinach is labeled as a cool season vegetable.
Plant it in late summer or early autumn and harvest it for months…
Despite the fact that I loved the taste of spinach’s dark, green leaves, I didn’t grow it next year. I thought it’s a complete waste of time. Why would I want to grow a leafy green which I can harvest only for a week or so in a whole year?
Those were my exact thoughts before I discovered that I could harvest spinach for much longer than merely one week…
So, another year passed and I moved to my wife’s house to Bled in the meanwhile. I had no garden at first. Then a growing patch in a local community garden freed up and I claimed it. I planted and grew all sorts of vegetables (just like I always do), but spinach wasn’t one of them (you know why)…
Then, one afternoon in late autumn, I experienced a spinach growing epiphany. My understanding of when to plant this leafy green as well as how to grow it turned upside down!
As I was walking towards my growing patch to pick up some of the last produce of the season (winter was only weeks away and there was a heavy frost in the forecast), I noticed something familiar in the neighbouring garden. A dark, leafy green vegetable with big, healthy leaves just waiting to be picked…
Is that a spinach?! I couldn’t believe my eyes, but it was spinach indeed. And it was thriving. It was thriving in cold, almost freezing weather, at the end of the gardening season, when all other plants out there were barely keeping themselves alive!
Although I had to wait almost a year to put my newly acquired knowledge into practice, I was ready to profit from it when the time came…
I planted my first spinach seeds towards the end of summer. In the second half of August to be exact. By the end of September, plants were already big enough for harvest. But unlike in spring, the harvest didn’t end after merely a week. No. I was able to keep picking the leaves almost daily throughout the entire October and November!
And the only reason I stopped in November was because of snow and freezing temperatures. I just couldn’t get to plants anymore.
The spinach you plant in autumn may give you a good harvest very early in spring as well…
Believe it or not, the story with spinach sown in late summer and early autumn gets even better. When I visited my garden patch for the first time after the winter, I was shocked to see that spinach survived through all the snow and cold we had…
In fact, it didn’t just survive. It’s leaves were already big enough for a harvest. So I had a first spinach leaf pickings before a new gardening season even started!
It didn’t end there though. As weeks went by and temperatures rose a bit, the overwintered spinach grew even more rapidly. The more I picked it, the faster it grew. It continued to thrive all the way up until the end of April when the combination of warm weather and longer days forced it to bolt.
So, all in all, I was able to harvest this leafy green vegetable for almost four full months in that year. In October, in November, in March and even in April! That’s a lot longer than just one week in May. Don’t you think?
The secret to planting spinach is therefore not in spring, but in autumn. This leafy green grows best in autumn because the temperatures are cool and because the days are getting shorter and shorter. It’s also very frost (and even freeze) resistant, so you don’t have to worry about below-freezing temperatures either. It can handle it – provided that you are not living in extremely cold places such as Alaska or Siberia, of course.
Now you understand why I always plant and grow my spinach in autumn. And almost never in spring. It just makes a ton of difference when it comes to harvest!
