Grow Leafy Green Spinach in your Home Garden

If you’ve ever grown your own vegetables you’ll appreciate what a thrill it was for me this morning to pick the first crop of my own home grown spinach. It just doesn’t come fresher than that!  The spinach plants are tall and healthy and covered with curly dark green leaves. They’re simply packed with goodness and vitamins.

Best of all, my spinach plants are organically grown so they haven’t been spoiled with chemicals or sprays.

Now I grant you, spinach is easy to grow. And you don’t need more than a dozen plants or so for the average family. But if you really want a lush crop of spinach there are certain conditions that have to be met.

Firstly your spinach plants will need plenty sunlight and a good fertile soil enriched with compost or leaf mould.

Then of course they will need sufficient water.  It’s the height of summer here in the southern hemisphere and the days can be very hot so around midday, as soon as the leaves begin to look tired – and even before they wilt – I give them an overhead sprinkling of water and they revive very quickly.

How to pick spinach

Some gardeners attack their spinach plants with kitchen knives and cut down the entire plant. As far as I  am concerned this is unnecessarily aggressive. It’s a total waste too because you lose the whole plant with one picking.

I prefer to harvest spinach by giving my plants a light “pruning.”  To do this I only remove one or two healthy adult leaves from the outside of the plant. In this way the spinach plant doesn’t even noticed that it has been pruned and it continues to  thrive and produce more leaves in abundance.

A quick and easy recipe for creamed spinach with my next post.