The first gardening article I ever published was about how to grow spinach. Sometime around 1980, my name appeared along with “Growing Spinach Southern Style” in Organic Gardening magazine. Thirty years later, I hope I am still writing about how to grow spinach.
I grow spinach as a cool-season crop in spring and fall. The plants are tremendously cold-hardy when given some protection. My area normally gets little snow cover in winter but plenty of ice, so I protect my overwintered plants with a sturdy cold frame. They sail through winter.
Spring spinach is a quickie crop because lengthening days cause the plants to bolt and produce blossoms and seed. Seed production is spinach is painfully slow, so I buy seeds instead of saving them. And, although many extension publications say spinach seeds should remain viable for 5 years, I think 2 to 3 years is a more realistic estimate.
Spinach Needs Nitrogen
One of the basics of how to grow spinach is to keep the plants very well fed. Here’s a take from page 165 of Starter Vegetable Gardens: “Spinach is a nitrogen-hungry crop, and overwintered plants in particular benefit from booster feedings with a water-soluble fertilizer.”
To an organic gardener, that is a loaded sentence! Here's why. In rich organic soil, nitrogen is released very slowly when temperatures are low. Then, as the soil warms, roots take up more of this essential growth nutrient. Clearly there’s a problem with garden spinach, which needs abundant nitrogen to make new growth, yet grows best is cool soil. This is why I suggest a liquid nitrogen source, which bypasses the soil’s supply and goes straight to the spinach.
