How To Grow Spinach Properly?

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Scientists, biologists assure that the most useful spinach is the one that has just been picked from the garden. From that moment on, it quickly loses its beneficial properties. Therefore, the most correct thing would be not to buy spinach in the supermarket, but to grow it in your own dacha and, tearing it off the garden, immediately serve it on the table

Origin and properties of the plant

Spinach came to our Russian tables from Asia. Several centuries later, by seed, it was distributed in Spain. The Spaniards are savvy people in the art of gardening. Therefore, they quickly organized the trade of this greenery, its seeds and the method of its cultivation throughout Europe.

Spinach is an annual plant of hay crops. He is dioecious. That is, one part of it is masculine, the other is feminine. By the way, male stems differ from female stems by a weak leafy part and rapid withering away, poor preservation.

Male stems account for approximately 30 percent of the crop. Spinach is "quick-shot" in the sense of ripening. We planted seeds in the soil today, the harvest can be harvested in a month, even less. The most delicious spinach leaves are the young ones at the root of the plant.

The health benefits of spinach

Spinach is a dietary product. As soon as it is not cooked unlike other types of greens. It is torn by hand into salads, they make mashed soups from it, put it on sandwiches and even sterilize it in various forms - for example, pickle its leaves, or make boiled puree from them and roll it into jars.

Such mashed potatoes, for example, in the form of a green sauce, can be served with mashed potatoes, meat, fish. Spinach is also shade dried, often flipped and stored in dark jars afterwards. In winter and spring, when there is no other fresh country greens, dried spinach is added to the first and second courses during their preparation to fortify the product.

Spinach belongs to gardeners, and scientists, oddly enough, do not belong to greenery in the beds, but to a vegetable culture. So this culture in terms of the content of vitamins in it takes a leading place among other vegetable crops. For example, the same carotene in spinach is contained in equal proportions, as in carrots, its content in tomatoes is twice exceeded and five times more carotene in spinach than in green peas.

Spinach leaves contain protein, which is a building block for the cells of the body. Moreover, other types of greens in the beds of protein, of course, do not contain, only fiber, moisture and vitamins.

There is a small amount of vegetable fat, a lot of iron and calcium in spinach. In case of problems and diseases with the digestive tract (gastrointestinal tract), spinach is recommended to be consumed because it contains a lot of fiber, but does not have acid in its leaves, which will have a positive effect on the state of the digestive system.

How is spinach planted?

Spinach is cold-resistant. Therefore, it can and even should be sown in early spring. As soon as the daytime temperature of 15-20 degrees Celsius is established on the outdoor thermometer in the spring, spinach can be planted. If you plant spinach late, it will release arrows, and its leaves will be small and tasteless.

Fertilize the soil before sowing with humus by adding a mixture of nitrogen and phosphorus to it. Caring for spinach is easy. It needs to be weeded and loosened from time to time in the soil in the beds.

Spinach, after it rises, loves a lot of water, good watering. Then you get its large and juicy rosette, fleshy leaves. Thinning the spinach is optional. Spinach is harvested when it has formed from five to seven leaves on each plant. If you allow spinach to be shot before harvesting it from the garden, consider that you have lost in its taste, nutritional value, and there will be no protein in such a plant.

Thinning if you take spinach, then only when 3-4 developed leaves appear on it. And it is better to remove male plants from the garden. At the same time, leave the plant in the rows at a distance of 20 cm from each other.

To get seeds for next year, it will take about 80 days from sowing to full ripening of spinach seeds. Spinach seeds are able to germinate and bear fruit within three to four years.

A fungal disease (downy mildew, root rot) can overpower the plant if you did not loosen the soil in the beds well, or because you planted it on too dense soils that are poorly loosened.

As insect pests, spinach can be overcome by mining flies. To avoid them, try to plant spinach farther from the beets, as well as weed it more often and take out the plucked grass outside the beds.