Growing Spinach
Spinach is excellent in cool weather and frustrating in heat.
When to plant
Put spinach in the cool part of the season. Compare early-spring and late-summer or fall sowings in your garden, allowing for the variety and local conditions. A baby-leaf harvest needs less time than a bed of full plants.
Make room for the crop
Choose the harvest style before thinning. Give full plants room to expand, or deliberately pick young plants from a denser patch. Keep a few marked plants for comparing the date of first useful leaves with the date of stem elongation.
Water
Check moisture during emergence and leaf growth, especially where the bed dries unevenly. As warmth increases, watch the center for a rising flower stalk. Record that stage and leaf quality rather than treating every smaller harvest as a fertility problem.
Harvest
Pick tender leaves. Harvest reference: University of Minnesota Extension.
Use the maturity estimate to schedule a first inspection. Let the plant’s condition and the harvest you want decide the picking date.
Common problems
Record the date of first stem elongation and compare leaf quality between sowings. Keep insect holes separate from leaf discoloration in your notes.
Use the disease-condition checklist to decide what to inspect and which cultural conditions to improve. It does not identify a pathogen from these observations.
Field notes
Sow early, harvest promptly, and use fall plantings for better quality.