Grow Spinach
If you love spinach salads and eggs Florentine, you owe yourself a big patch of Popeye's favorite food. Spinach needs cool weather to thrive, but if you choose planting times carefully and look for heat-resistant varieties, you can grow it anywhere in the country.
Instructions
1. Choose a site that gets full sun in cool weather and partial shade in warmer temperatures. Soil should be light, fertile and moisture-retentive, with a pH of 6.0 to 7.0.
2. Dig in plenty of well-cured manure to ensure the right soil conditions and to provide the nitrogen necessary for good leaf production.
3. Sow spinach seeds directly into the garden as soon as the ground can be worked, normally anywhere from four to eight weeks before the last expected frost. (Because spinach resents transplanting and seeds germinate well in temperatures as low as 50 degrees F, there's no advantage to buying plants or to starting seed indoors.)
4. Plant seeds 1/2 inch deep and 2 inches apart in wide rows. For a continuous harvest, sow every two weeks until daytime temperatures start to average 75 degrees F.
5. Begin sowing fall crops in mid-August in cool climates, later in warm ones.
6. Thin seedlings to 6 inches apart when the plants are 4 inches tall. Be ruthless; crowded plants are more likely to bolt (go to seed prematurely), and you can use the cuts in salads.
7. Keep the soil moist, and feed plants manure tea or fish emulsion every 10 days until they're 6 inches tall (see "Make Manure Tea").
8. Mulch established plants to conserve moisture and deter weeds, and cover the area with floating row covers to discourage insects.
9. Cut spinach leaves as you need them from the outside of the plant, or harvest entire plants when they reach maturity and before they begin to flower. (If you see buds starting to form at the center, cut the whole plant immediately.)
Tags: cool weather, Grow Spinach, inches apart, inches tall