![]() Pat dry with a paper towel and put in a freezer bag with the towel to absorb moisture. So store fresh spinach unwashed and don’t wash until ready to use. How to Store Spinachįresh spinach leaves are good up to a week. Or try to slow the bolting: Pinch off the flower/seed heads, keep the soil moist, and provide shade. If spinach starts to bolt, pull the plant and use the leaves.Be aware of day length and heat: Increasing daylight (about 14 hours or longer) and warmer seasonal temperatures can cause spinach to bolt (develop a large stalk with narrower leaves and buds/flowers/seeds), which turns leaf taste bitter. Bitterness will set in quickly after maturity. ![]() Don’t wait too long to harvest or wait for larger leaves.Harvest a few outer leaves from each plant (so that inner leaves can develop) when leaves reach desired size, or harvest the entire plant, cutting the stem at the base. Grow them in the summer, when common spinach can’t take the heat. Malabar Spinach ( Basella alba), a vine, and New Zealand Spinach ( Tetragonia tetragonoides), a perennial, are two heat-tolerant leafy greens that resemble common spinach both are heat-tolerant.‘Giant Nobel’ is a plain leaf variety and an heirloom that is slow to bolt ‘Nordic IV’ is bolt-resistant. Smooth- or flat-leaf (also called plain leaf) varieties have spade-shape leaves.‘Melody’ is resistant to cucumber mosaic virus and downy mildew mildew-resistant ‘Remington’ will grow in spring, summer, or fall ‘Tyee’ can be planted in spring or fall, and is resistant to downy mildew. Semi-Savoy has slightly crinkled leaves and can be difficult to seed.‘Bloomsdale.’ The ‘Winter Bloomsdale’ variety is a crinkled-leaf, fall variety, tolerant to mosaic viruses. Savoy spinach has curly, crinkled, dark-green leaves, e.g.The variety ‘Baby’s Leaf’ is good for containers ‘Catalina’ is heat-tolerant and resistant to downy mildew. Baby-leaf style spinach is tender, with small-size leaves.There are four main types of spinach suited for spring and fall plantings. Sow every couple of weeks during early spring for a continuous harvest.Plant in rows 12 to 18 inches apart or sprinkle over a wide row or bed.Sow seeds 1/2 of an inch deep every 2 inches and cover with 1/2 inch of soil.For a fall crop, re-sow in mid-August when the soil is no warmer than 70☏.(For a summer harvest, try New Zealand Spinach or Malabar Spinach, two similar leafy greens that are more heat tolerant.) Common spinach cannot grow in midsummer.Leaf miner damage to radish tops does not affect their root growth. To distract leaf miners, sow radish seeds in alternate rows.Remove the mulch to harvest some spinach then replace the mulch. Protect the young plants with a cold frame or thick mulch through the winter, then remove the protection when soil temperature in your area reaches 40✯ in spring. Gardeners in northern climates can harvest early-spring spinach if it’s planted just before the cold weather arrives in fall.Although seeds can be started indoors, it is not recommended, as seedlings are difficult to transplant.(Cover the soil with black plastic to speed its warming.) Spinach requires 6 weeks of cool weather from seeding to harvest, so sow seeds directly into the soil as soon as the ground warms to 40☏.Alternatively, prepare the soil in late summer or early fall, when spinach can also be sown where winters are mild. Spinach tolerates full sun to light shade prepare soil about a week before planting by mixing in compost.
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