Spinach

Spinach is an annual. For winter harvest, sow hardy varieties from mid-August to early October, so that the plants already have several true leaves before the first hard frost without snow cover. In severe frost, cover the rows loosely with horticultural fleece or spruce brushwood, ventilate on frost-free days against mould and keep harvesting from February/March, before the spinach bolts.

You propagate spinach by direct sowing in the bed only; vegetative methods such as cuttings or division are not possible with this annual species. You have two main windows: for spring spinach, sow from the end of February to April, as soon as the soil can be worked. For autumn and winter spinach, a second sowing follows from August to September. Sow the seeds 1 to 2 cm deep in rows about 25 cm apart, press the soil down well and keep the bed evenly moist. At temperatures between 10 and 20 °C the seeds germinate in about ten days, and after 6 to 8 weeks the spinach is ready to harvest.

If you want to save your own seed, let some plants from the spring sowing bolt and harvest the seed heads only when they are completely dried and brownish; then let them ripen further. Important: spinach is wind-pollinated and cross-pollinated, and mostly dioecious (male and female plants separate; only the female ones bear seed). For true varietal purity you need a distance of at least 200 m from other varieties. For home use a small plot is enough; to genuinely preserve a variety, let 10 to 20 plants flower if possible, to keep genetic diversity. Note that modern F1 hybrids cannot be grown on true to type, only open-pollinated varieties.