Leaves & salads
Spinach
Spinacia oleracea
Timings for your region
Suggested: Moderate · Explained in the glossary
Sow outdoorsearly March – mid April and early August – mid September
Harvestmid April – early June and mid September – late November
Practical tip
A long-day bolter: sown between May and July it runs to seed before there is anything to pick. An autumn sowing overwinters and crops again in March.
Origin & history
Spinach comes from Persia and reached Europe through the Arab world and Moorish Spain; the name can be traced from Persian aspanākh through Arabic isfanākh to Spanish espinaca. It is documented in German monastery gardens from the Middle Ages onwards. Botanically it belongs to the amaranth family, making it a closer relative of beetroot and chard than of lettuce. It is also dioecious — there are male and female plants, and the male ones bolt first.
Varieties
For spring and autumn sowing, round-seeded varieties such as the open-pollinated classic “Matador” work well; for overwintering choose explicitly winter-hardy types like “Winterriesen” or “Verdil”. On heavy, damp soils F1 varieties with declared tolerance to downy mildew are the better bet — the packet then shows a “Pf” followed by a list of numbers. Baby-leaf varieties have small, smooth, tender leaves and are deliberately sown thickly and cut early.
Care
Thin to 5 cm once it is up — crowded spinach stays small and rots from below. Keep it evenly moist, because drought is the second trigger for bolting alongside day length. It needs no fresh manure and no nitrogen; a bed composted the previous year is plenty. Hoe between the rows a few times while the leaves have not yet covered the ground.
What can go wrong
Downy mildew is the main nuisance: pale yellow patches on the upper leaf surface, a grey-violet bloom underneath, always worst where the stand is dense and the air stays damp. The answer is cultural — sow more widely, thin rigorously, water at the base in the morning, take out affected leaves and choose tolerant varieties. Spinach also does not belong in the same bed as chard or beetroot: all three are close relatives, and three years is the minimum gap.
Harvest, storage & kitchen
Either pick individual leaves or cut the whole stand about four centimetres above the ground — cut above the growing point it will come again once or twice. Wash in several changes of water; there is nearly always soil at the leaf base. Spinach does not keep: use it the day you cut it, or blanch briefly, squeeze out, portion and freeze. Young leaves raw in salad, larger ones cooked — cooking collapses the volume to roughly a tenth.
All timings are guide values for the given climate, not a guarantee. Weather, aspect and variety all have a say.