Spinach seedlings pictures

There is absolutely nothing complicated in sowing spinach for seedlings, the process is in many ways similar to planting other crops. The following instructions will help you plant the seeds correctly:

• Choose a container. The root system of spinach is superficial, so the container should be shallow (about 7-8 cm high). It is convenient to sow in a common box or individual cups (200 ml), cassettes (example in the photo below). An important condition: at the bottom of the container there must be drainage holes for excess water to flow out.

• Prepare soil mixture. Suitable soil is loose, nutritious, with neutral acidity (pH 6.5-7). In the garden center, you can buy soil for growing cabbages or universal soil for seedlings. You can make a mixture with your own hands: garden soil, compost or humus, sand (in a ratio of 3: 1: 1). You can also mix coconut fiber and biohumus (3:1).
• Decontaminate the soil. The soil that you have prepared with your own hands is recommended to be disinfected in advance (for example, ignited in the oven or steamed).
• Prepare seeds for sowing. Spinach seeds have a tough outer shell and are tough. Therefore, it is very important to treat the seeds before sowing in order to soften the shell. As a treatment, it is useful to soak the seeds for 1-2 days in water at room temperature. When soaking, it is necessary to change the water to a new one every 6-8 hours. Such preparation will help to get earlier and friendly shoots.

• Drain well. In addition to drainage holes, it is necessary to put a 1.5 cm drainage layer on the bottom of the container. Perlite or fine expanded clay is well suited for this role.
• Fill the container with soil. The container is filled with earth, but not to the very brim, leave a very small gap.
• Make grooves. Grooves should be made on the surface of the soil: their depth is 1.5 cm, the distance between them is 3 cm. If you sow in individual cups or cassettes, then simply make holes 1. 5 cm deep in the center.
• Plant . Now you need to sow spinach for seedlings, the seeds are sown with an interval of 2-3 cm from each other.
• Fill the furrows with soil. After planting, the seeds are covered with soil.
• Water the soil liberally. This must be done from a spray bottle, while the water must be clean, at room temperature.
• Now you need to make a mini-greenhouse : cover the container with a lid or cling film.

Caring for spinach seedlings is very simple, growing does not require complex manipulations and procedures. Conventionally, care can be divided into two stages: before germination and after.

Immediately after sowing , the container should be moved to a dark place with a temperature of 18-20 degrees. You need to keep the seeds in greenhouse conditions, that is, the container must be covered with something (lid, cling film). In this case, it is advisable to open the shelter for ventilation for 20 minutes once every 1-2 days. Carefully monitor the soil moisture, when drying, you need to moisten it with a spray bottle.

Under normal conditions, the inputs will appear in about 5-7 days.

After the spinach seeds have germinated, the covering material must be removed. And then move the containers with seedlings to the south or southeast / west window sill.

Spinach seedlings do not need high air temperature. Optimum temperature: 15-18 degrees Celsius.

The soil in which the seedlings grow should always be moderately moist and should not be allowed to dry out. Watering is done after drying the top layer of the earth. Drying out can cause weakening, death of seedlings or provoke premature bolting.

Seedlings do not need additional illumination. Phytolamps are needed when growing seedlings in the winter. On particularly hot and sunny days, it is recommended to shade the plants at midday.

After the spinach seedlings have 2-3 true leaves, it is necessary to pick the seedlings into an individual container (cups, pots) with a volume of about 300 ml. As for the soil, the land with the same characteristics as for sowing seeds is suitable.

Plants should be watered one hour before the procedure. To transplant, you need to carefully pick up the seedling (with a stick, fork) and transfer it to a new container filled with earth. The most important thing is not to damage the roots, so be careful.

After picking, it is important to protect the plants from direct sunlight for the first 3-4 days. Therefore, it is better to put them in a room with diffused light.

Transplant seedlings in the garden after the ground warms up in open ground. That is, around the beginning or middle of May.

When choosing a place for a bed, keep in mind that soil fertility is important for spinach. For this reason, seedlings should be planted on high-quality, loose, nutritious soil, which is rich in organic matter. Loamy soil is best suited.

If the soil is not fertile enough, it is advisable to prepare it since autumn by adding phosphorus-potassium mineral fertilizers and compost for digging. And in early spring, nitrogen fertilizer is applied to the soil.

Seedlings are planted using the transshipment method (that is, the plant with a whole earthen clod is moved into the hole). Spinach seedlings are planted at a distance of 10 cm (i.e., the holes must initially be made with such an interval). The distance between the rows is 15 cm. It is not recommended to reduce the gap, because with dense plantings, the risk of damage to the greenery by powdery mildew increases.

Outdoor spinach care in autumn is simple: regular watering (especially in dry and hot weather to prevent stalking), loosening the soil after watering. If after transplantation there is a risk of night frosts, then it is advisable to put arcs on the bed and cover with agrofiber.

growing from seeds in open ground and at home, harm and benefits, photo

Author: Elena N. https://floristics.info/ru/index.php?option=com_contact&view=contact&id=19Category: garden plants reprinted: February 14, 2022 Last amendments: February 14, 2022

Content

• Planting and care for spinach
• Plant Spinach - Description
• sowing spinach 9000,
• When to plant spinach
9000 spinach from seeds

Top dressing: if spinach growth is retarded, apply nitrogen fertilizer to the soil, but if the soil was fertilized before sowing, top dressing is unlikely to be needed.

Read more about growing spinach below

Spinach plant - description

What does spinach look like? The height of the plant is from 25 to 50 cm or more. Its stems are bare, simple and branched. The lower basal leaves of spinach are petiolate, triangular-lanceolate, often with elongated lateral ears, or oval, oblong-ovate, entire, contracted into a petiole. The upper, and often the middle leaves are oblong, pointed, with a wedge-shaped base. Anther flowers with four stamens form a spike-paniculate inflorescence, and pistillate flowers are in dense glomeruli located in the axils of the leaves. The fruits of spinach are spherical or two-horned, sometimes soldered together, but, nevertheless, do not form seed.

Rosettes of spinach leaves, which form at the very beginning of the growing season, are eaten.

Sowing spinach for seedlings

When to plant spinach

Spinach, like any other herb, can be grown in a greenhouse, at home or in open ground. You can get the earliest greens if you pre-grow spinach seedlings. To do this, in late March or early April, spinach seeds are sown in boxes, paper or plastic cups filled with a moist, loose, disinfected substrate consisting of biohumus (1 part) and coconut fiber (2 parts). A layer of expanded clay 2-3 cm thick is placed under the substrate.

Stubborn spinach seeds with a dense shell before sowing are poured for two days with water, changing it every 6-8 hours. Then they are placed for disinfection for several hours in a pink solution of potassium permanganate, after which they are dried to flowability.

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Growing spinach from seeds

Spinach is sown to a depth of 1-1.5 cm, then the surface is slightly compacted, the crops are covered with film or glass and kept in a warm place until germination. As soon as the seeds begin to germinate, the film is removed, and the container is moved to the southeast or south window sill - the seedlings that have appeared will need a lot of light. But spinach seedlings are undemanding to warmth: it can be grown even on an unheated loggia. Another condition for the successful development of seedlings, in addition to good lighting, is to keep the substrate slightly moist.

Spinach is planted outdoors when the soil is warm. After transplanting, install metal arcs above the bed at a height of about 20 cm and cover the seedlings with agrofibre in case of night frosts and intense spring sun.

Growing spinach on the windowsill

How to grow spinach at home

If you want to grow spinach on the windowsill, keep in mind that the life of the bush is no more than two months: after a few cuts, the spinach releases a flower arrow, and its leaves lose their necessary for food quality. How to grow spinach at home? When growing a crop in the spring-summer period, the seedlings do not require supplementary lighting, but if spinach is grown from seeds in the autumn or winter, it can give a good harvest only if you organize daily additional lighting for it for 2-3 hours after the Sunset.

Sowing of prepared spinach seeds is carried out to a depth of 1-1.5 cm in the same substrate in which spinach seedlings are grown. Under the substrate, a layer of drainage 2-3 cm high is laid in the dishes. Spinach can be sown in boxes or containers at least 15 cm deep or in 1-2-liter pots, or you can grow seedlings in small cups, and in the development stage of seedlings 2- 4 real leaves, pick them into a permanent dish. Crops are covered with a film until germination.

Growing and caring for spinach at home is very easy. The optimum temperature for the development of spinach seedlings is from 15 to 18 ºC, watering should be regular and sufficient, especially in summer, as drying out of the substrate provokes premature bolting. In addition, you will need to spray your spinach daily in the early morning or after sunset. As for dressings, when sowing spinach in fertile soil, they are not needed. Spinach greens for cutting will ripen, depending on the variety, 3-5 weeks after sowing, but after 1-2 months the bush will go into the arrow and new greens will stop growing.

Growing spinach outdoors

When to sow spinach outdoors

Because spinach is hardy, it can be grown outdoors without the seedling stage. For a spring harvest, spinach is sown 4-6 weeks after the last spring frosts, and for an autumn harvest, 6-8 weeks before the first autumn cold. In the spring, as soon as it warms up and the sun shines for 14 hours a day, small flowers will appear on the spinach - a process called flowering or shooting, and it makes the leaves of the plant unfit for consumption. Therefore, many gardeners prefer to sow spinach in the fall. In the spring, at the end of April, early varieties of spinach are sown. You can sow the plant several times every 15-20 days. No more than 5 weeks pass from sowing to harvesting. Late varieties are sown until mid-August - they give a harvest in 6-7 weeks.

You can also sow spinach before winter - in mid-October. Before the onset of winter, the plant manages to form small rosettes, and in the spring, spinach left to winter in the ground will sprout very early, and in a couple of weeks you can include it in your diet.

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Planting spinach in the ground

Planting and caring for spinach in the field is quick and easy. The site for the plant should be sunny, and although the plant will also grow well in the shade, its productivity will be lower than when grown in the sun. Spinach prefers drained slightly acidic loamy soils with a pH of 6. 5-7.0. You can adjust the acidity of the soil by adding limestone to it: dolomitic limestone is added to soil that contains little magnesium, and calcite limestone is added to soil with a high magnesium content. Do this in the fall or at least 2-3 months before sowing.

Since the soil for spinach needs to be rich in organic matter, alfalfa, soybean or blood meal is added to the soil for deep digging. Or they dig up a site with mineral fertilizers from the following calculation: 30 g of superphosphate and 15 g of potassium chloride per 1 m². Before spring sowing, urea is introduced into the soil - 20 g per 1 m².

Spinach is sown in rows to a depth of 2 cm at row spacing of 20-30 cm, placing the seeds at a distance of 5-8 cm from each other. After planting the seeds, the surface is slightly compacted with the back of the rake, watered, covered with burlap for 3-4 days, and a plastic film is thrown onto the arched supports installed in advance at a height of about 20 cm. Seeds germinate at a temperature of 2 to 5 ºC in about 10-14 days.

When the seedlings have formed a rosette of 2-3 leaves, thin out the spinach - ideally the bushes should grow at such a distance from each other that they barely touch the leaves. Spinach care consists of regular watering, weeding, loosening the soil around the plants and protecting the spinach from the sun with a shade net when the air temperature rises to 26 ºC.

Watering spinach

Spinach is very moisture-loving. For watering it, it is better to use a hose with a sprinkler nozzle or a garden watering can with a splitter, but remember that with strong pressure you can wash away fragile shoots. Approximately one bucket of water is consumed per m² of beds. In dry, hot weather, watering is carried out at least three times a week, and in order to prevent water from spreading, make a furrow around the perimeter of the beds. After watering, when the water is absorbed and the surface of the soil is slightly dry, loosen the soil around the plants and remove the weeds. If you notice flower arrows on spinach, break them off.

Fertilizing spinach

If spinach grows well in the field, then there are enough nutrients in the soil, but if spinach grows slowly, feed it with a nitrogen fertilizer: cudweed meal or blood meal. Fertilizers are applied to a depth of several centimeters, after which the site is watered. In general, spinach needs top dressing only if the area was not fertilized before sowing or planting seedlings.

What to plant after spinach

To prevent soil depletion, spinach can be grown on one plot with a break of 3-4 years. According to the laws of crop rotation, roots are usually grown after tops, that is, after spinach, you can plant Jerusalem artichoke, swede, radish, radish, daikon, katran, turnip and other tuberous or root plants.

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Pests and diseases of spinach

Diseases of spinach

The most harmful diseases of spinach are fusarium, downy mildew, anthracnose, curl and viral mosaic. Spinach can also be affected by diseases such as ascochitosis, cercosporosis and ramulariasis.

Fusarium wilt, or root rot is a dangerous fungal disease that affects seedlings and young plants. In specimens affected by Fusarium, the color becomes dull, they begin to lag behind in growth, their leaves lose turgor, turn yellow, and the plants die. The process begins with the lower leaves, and when the plant is dug up, its roots are found to be rotten. You will not succeed in curing spinach from fusarium, especially if the process has covered the entire plant, so the affected bushes must be removed from the garden. As a preventive measure, you need to grow disease-resistant varieties of spinach, make sure that the bushes do not grow too close to each other, regularly loosen the soil around them and remove weeds, and the seeds must be disinfected with a solution of potassium permanganate before sowing.

Downy mildew, or Downy mildew is a fungal disease that manifests itself as yellowish spots on the upper side of spinach leaves, while a grayish coating forms on their underside. Then the spots acquire a brown-brown hue, the leaves droop, wrinkle, dry out and crumble. The disease progresses in cool damp weather. Ways to protect against peronosporosis, as well as from root rot, are mainly preventive, since when using chemical preparations, the toxic substances contained in them, accumulating in the leaves, will make them unsuitable for food. Folk remedies for fighting fungal diseases can come to the rescue:

• treatment of plants with a solution of 10 drops of 5% pharmacy iodine in 1 liter of milk, which is then mixed with 9 liters of water;
• treatment of spinach with an ash solution: 2 cups of ash are brewed with three liters of boiling water, allowed to cool, filtered through a triple layer of gauze, diluted with 10 liters of water and spinach is treated with this solution;
• 200-300 g of onion peel is poured into 10 liters of water, brought to a boil, allowed to infuse for 1-2 days, filtered and treated with infusion of the plant;
• 1-1. 5 g of potassium permanganate is diluted in 10 liters of water and sprayed with a solution of spinach.

Anthracnose covers the leaves and their petioles with rounded dark spots, in the center of which there are black raised pads.

Cercosporosis also affects the leaves and stems of spinach. First, rounded spots with a diameter of 2-4 mm are formed on them - red-brown with an ashy middle. Then the spots grow, merge with each other, the tissue inside the spots becomes thinner, dries and spills out, leaving holes in the leaf plates.

With ascochitosis , spots also appear on leaves and stems: convex, of various shapes and colors, but most often brown with a dark border. Affected tissues gradually dry out.

Ramularia, or leaf spot covers spinach leaves with grey-brown spots with dark edges. With the development of the disease, the leaves die.

Cucumber mosaic and mosaic viruses can be stored in soil, on seeds and plant debris and transmitted by sucking insects. Viruses penetrate the plant through damaged tissues, their presence is manifested by the formation of yellow or light green strokes and star-shaped spots on spinach leaves, which gradually merge with each other. The leaves are deformed, stunted, become dwarfed.

Leaf curl results in thickening and irregular growth of the leaf tissue, causing the leaf to curl, become wavy and blistered. Curly hair is often accompanied by necrosis, spinach leaves dry up and fall off.

Curly and Mosaic are viral diseases and there is no way to cure them - the plants must be destroyed. And with fungal diseases, you can fight with preventive methods and folk remedies, which we have already described to you.

Spinach pests

Spinach pests are also numerous. Among them are mining and beet flies, gamma scoop caterpillars, aphids, common bears and babanukhs.

Miner fly lays its eggs in the leaves of the plant, and the larvae that appear in June eat their flesh, which kills the spinach. You can scare away the pest by alternating rows of spinach with rows of beets, which the fly does not tolerate. However, do not sow spinach in an area where the beets have just been harvested, as it can get root rot.

The green or brown cutworm is one of the worst leaf-destroying pests of spinach. You can fight caterpillars by treating bushes with tobacco or pepper infusion, as well as infusion of tomato tops. And don't forget to weed the garden regularly.

Beet fly also lays eggs on spinach leaves. Destroy it by treating the plant with a two percent solution of Phosphamide.

Aphid is a sucking insect that makes punctures in young leaves of plants, sucking juice from them, and often infecting them with viral diseases. Processing spinach with an ash-soap solution will help you cope with aphids: 200-300 g of ash should be boiled in a bucket of water for 30 minutes, then cool, strain and add 40 g of grated soap or liquid dishwashing detergent. Most likely, you will not be able to get rid of aphids at once, but if you spray the spinach with an ash-soap solution 4-5 times with an interval of several days, the aphids will disappear.

Medvedka is a large and dangerous pest that feeds not only on plants, but also on small insects. She can move underground, on the ground and even through the air, which makes it very difficult to fight her. Nevertheless, it must be destroyed, since not only spinach, but also other garden and garden plants can suffer from this pest. The main thing is to find its nest and all the passages to it in the footsteps of the bear, and the tracks are best seen after rain. The discovered nest must be very carefully dug out so as not to frighten away the insect in it, put into a bucket and burned, and a drug to destroy the bear or pour soapy water into each passage in case there is no pest in the nest.

Babanukha is a cabbage or horseradish leaf beetle that also eats spinach leaves with pleasure. These bugs are best picked by hand and destroyed, and after harvesting, it is advisable to dust the spinach with a mixture of wood ash with hot red pepper powder and dry mustard.

Types and varieties of spinach

According to the ripening period, varieties of garden spinach are divided into early-ripening, mid-ripening and late-ripening. The best early maturing varieties include the following:

• Gaudry is a variety ripening for food in 2-3 weeks. It can be sown both in early spring and late autumn, both in open and closed ground. The diameter of the rosette of leaves of the Gaudri variety is about 23 cm;
• Gigantic is one of the most well-known cultivars producing leaves two weeks after sowing. This variety is one of the best for canning. Rosette of elongated fleshy leaves sometimes reaches a diameter of 50 cm;
• Virofle - an early maturing French variety, prone to the early formation of a flower arrow. The rosette of oval, fleshy, tender and smooth, greenish-yellow leaves reaches a diameter of 30 cm. The plant is resistant to cold, so it can be sown in early spring;
• Stick is a high-yielding variety cultivated in our country since 1995, used both for fresh consumption and for canning. The rosette of leaves up to 19 cm long and up to 14 cm wide is half raised and reaches a diameter of 30 cm.

Of the mid-season varieties most often grown:

• Matador - frost-resistant and moisture-loving, as well as not prone to early shooting, a productive variety of Czech selection, which gives leaves already three weeks after sowing. The plant has a medium-sized compact semi-vertical rosette consisting of smooth, glossy oval grey-green leaves;
• Bloomsdalesky is a new variety of Dutch selection, resistant to bolting, with a high rosette with a diameter of about 25 cm. Leaves are rich dark green in color, smooth, juicy and fleshy, in slightly pronounced bubbles;
• Krepysh is a high-yielding frost-resistant variety, not prone to early bolting, with a rosette about 25 cm in diameter of semi-raised, glossy, obovate green leaves with weakly expressed bubbles.

Late-ripening varieties of spinach include:

• Victoria is a moisture-loving and high-yielding variety with resistance to peronosporosis and bolting, which gives foliage 30-35 days after sowing. This plant has a compact rosette with a diameter of 14-19cm with dark green with a bluish tinge, strongly bubbly leaves up to 10 long and up to 7 cm wide;
• Spokane is a high yielding hybrid Dutch variety that is resistant to bloom and is recommended for both fresh consumption and canning. It has rounded, wavy, wrinkled-bubbly dark green leaves 10-14 cm long and 6-11 cm wide, collected in a compact medium-sized rosette;
• Varyag – a variety with a raised compact rosette of large green oval medium bubble leaves of slightly sour taste with medium length petioles. The variety is suitable for salads and soups.

In addition to those described, spinach varieties such as Khorovod, Povar, Zhirnolistny, Popeye, Nikitos, Normal, Prima, Casta, Melody, Mazurka, Virtuoso, Tarantella, Ladya and Dolphin, Puma, Space, Emerald hybrids have proven themselves well.

Also known in cultivation is the so-called New Zealand spinach, or tetragonia, an annual plant of the Aizaceae family. This plant is not related to spinach, although the nutritional value and taste characteristics of these plants are very similar, and in some respects tetragonia even surpasses spinach.

But many-leaved spinach, or zhminda, or spinach-raspberry is a relative of garden spinach and is valuable not only for tasty and healthy leaves that are added to soups and salads, but also for berries similar to mulberries, from which jelly, compote and jam are cooked.

Malabra or Ceylon spinach, or Basella, from the Basella family, is a herbaceous plant, a creeper whose fleshy leaves are tasty both raw and cooked. A refreshing drink is obtained from the infusion of the leaves. In nature, Basella grows in the tropics and subtropics of Africa and America, and in our climate it can be grown in the garden as an annual plant.

Benefits and harms of spinach

Medicinal properties of spinach

Spinach has many medicinal properties. Why is spinach useful? What valuable substances are contained in its leaves? They include carbohydrates, proteins and fats, fiber, organic, unsaturated and saturated acids, sugars, starch, vitamins A, C, H, E, PP, K, B vitamins, sodium, magnesium, phosphorus, iron, copper , iodine, zinc, potassium, selenium and manganese.

It is important that vitamins C and A contained in spinach are retained even after cooking. And the iron in spinach is in a form that is easily absorbed by humans and prevents the formation of cellulite. Due to the fiber contained in spinach, the intestines are cleansed, which helps to get rid of excess weight. Spinach normalizes peristalsis and eliminates constipation.

Spinach is recommended for diseases of the nervous system, anemia, malnutrition, diabetes, enterocolitis, gastritis, hypertension and anemia. Since the plant has a laxative, diuretic, anti-inflammatory and tonic effect and is perfectly absorbed by the body, it is useful for those recovering from a serious illness, pregnant women and children.

Spinach strengthens the heart muscle and relieves insomnia, and due to the lutein contained in the leaves, it clarifies vision, reduces fatigue and increases efficiency.

Fresh spinach juice helps cleanse the body, replenishes energy reserves, stimulates the functioning of organs - the liver, intestines, kidneys. With inflammation of the gums, they rinse their mouth, and with sore throats - the throat. Fresh chopped spinach leaves are applied externally for abscesses and stings of bees, wasps and other insects, and a paste of spinach leaves boiled in olive oil treats eczema and burns, removes freckles and whitens the skin of the face.

Spinach is eaten fresh, boiled or baked and is used in many complex dishes, snacks and sauces.

Spinach - contraindications

Spinach contains large amounts of oxalic acid, therefore it is contraindicated for people with problems with the urinary tract, suffering from urolithiasis, nephritis and similar diseases.

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