Spinach is one of the best garden vegetables you can grow, and it’s loaded with vitamins so it’s extremely healthy to eat. Fresh spinach is nothing like the canned stuff that, if you’re as old as me, you remember Popeye eating spinach from a can. Canned spinach is nasty. It’s like eating wet paper towels.
Why grow spinach
Some people say spinach is tough to grow. I have never found it to be. I think it’s one of the easiest veggies to grow. I have had no trouble growing it. The best thing about it is that it is easy to grow inside and outside. I grow it all year, so I have it fresh all the time.
I live in Minnesota, so growing it outside doesn’t work from late October till mid-May. My basement is where I grow it. I have a grow rack with grow lights, and it works great inside. It can handle cold better than most vegetables, but it doesn’t like heat. When it gets hot in the middle of the summer, you need to keep it out of the direct sun during the hottest time of the day.
My personal way to grow spinach
I grow it in a ten by twenty-inch tray that has spinach on one side and head lettuce on the other. I have fresh salad all winter. The cool thing is spinach is called a cut-and-come-again veggie if you cut it right. If you cut the leaves just below the leaf with a little stem, the spinach will grow new leaves. You can do this several times.
I had a 5-gallon grow bag out in front of my house last summer and I went out and cut some leaves off for my salad every day for two months and it kept regrowing new leaves. The black grow bag in front is my spinach that keeps going.
The black grow bag lower left
The tray I grow inside I have ten by ten inches of spinach and I do the same with this crop. I can keep it coming most of the winter. If it looks like it will not come again, I just plant another tray and it lasts me until the outside crop can grow again.
My inside tray
You can cut and eat spinach at any stage. If you like small tender leaves, you can cut and eat it when they are small. You want to make sure you cut it before it gets flowers or bolts. It will not taste good then. It will also not grow more if it bolts.
Sunlight
The outside crop needs to not get too hot and not have direct sunlight all day. I have it on the east side of the house. It gets good morning sun, but not during the hottest part of the day. I don’t recommend planting it in your garden. In most gardens, you want more sunlight than spinach will handle well. Plant it in a container or grow bag. You can then move it to a more hospitable spot when you need to.
Water
As far as watering is concerned, the outside crop in the grow bag I water a good spray every day. If you plant it in the ground, it will not need watering every day. For the inside crop, I water it every two or three days because it’s not hot and not in a bag.
Spinach is a great healthy addition to any salad, and it’s also great to put in smoothies. It is loaded with vitamins.
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