Two spinach varieties that will surely satisfy your taste buds
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the first variety of spinach we will be looking at today is
Malabar spinach now this spinach variety
is a little different from other spinach varieties because it's a perennial
spinach
it just keeps growing as long as you care for it
and you can keep harvesting the spinach all along the
life cycle of the plant unlike other spinach varieties which only grow in the
cool season
this Malabar spinach will grow right
throughout the year and it is a perennial spinach so no matter what
kind of weather you have this spinach will keep growing and producing
lot of spinach leaves and there is no specified harvest time for this spinach
you can just keep harvesting as the plant grows and you can see the leaf
here
the leave is a little bit larger and
more fleshy come back to the other spinach varieties
now the reason i'm talking about. Malabar spinach is because
it's very healthy if you look at the nutritional profile
which you see on your screen right now and the best thing I like about the nutritional
profile is that
it's a very high in protein compared to the number of calories it has
of if you're eating a lot of vegetables and want to get in a lot of protein
Malabar spinach is a very good choice
now is generally not very easy to find
seeds from Malabar spinach
so I'll try to find a link for you to buy the seeds
and put it in the video description so make sure you check that out
now you can sow these spinach seeds directly in the soil
however I was starting my seeds in winter and for the seeds to germinate
I did start them indoors and it was much easier for me to start the seeds
indoors
and then transplant it into this container
and this is a very small 12-inch container
it holds about three gallons of soil and this is quite enough for the spinach to
start growing
at least for the next couple of years I'm hoping
and since this is a vining spinach variety D
you need to make sure that you for provide some kind of support
I'm just using some short tomato cages here
now the only problem that I've found with growing this spinach was that slugs were eating it too
But slugs like to eat all sorts of leafy vegetables
so if you're going spinach just make sure that you do some kind of slug control
and I'll hopefully have another video on how to do slug control easily in your garden
and here is a recipe with Malabar spinach
so sit back and enjoy and I hope you like the recipe
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so the next spinach variety we will take a look at today is flat leaf spinach
now the characteristic of the flat leaf spinach is that
it does not have any curls on its leaves so the ones that are curled are
called savoyed spinach
and this is the other variety which is called the flat leaf spinach
now these spinach seedlings can be grown indoors
you can sow the seeds in seed starting mixes
and then transplanted them later
so this is a cool season crops so I started my seeds in winter
and then I was able to transplant them in
other containers and in raised beds very easily
spinach is one of the vegetables that transplants very nicely
no problem with transplanting at all
so the first container you're looking at here
is a whiskey barrel now one of the benefits of using a whiskey barrel container
is that it gives you a large surface area and what that
lets you do is it lets you grow vegetables like spinach
which occupy a lot of space on the surface
and do not have very deep root systems but whiskey barrel container should have
more than enough soil that you need to grow spinach
you can even grow spinach insmaller pots like
the one you're seeing here these are also transplanted
after germinating and you can also grow spinach in raised beds
and raised beds also have a lot of area available and spinach grows
great in raised beds
and spinach just like most other leafy greens
can also grow in partial shade what partial shade means is that
the plant should still be getting about three to four hours of sunlight
every day and remember that this spinach variety
is an annual variety which means that
you grow the spinach you harvest the leaves while it's growing
and when the growing cycle completes and they start flowering
you can remove the entire spinach plant and use it
unless of course you want to save the seeds and use it for the future
crop the following year
spinach being a green leafy vegetable
has high requirements for nitrogen so make sure that you're using
lot of high nitrogen fertilizers like manure
fish fertilizer, seaweed
any fertilizer that's high in nitrogen so here is a bunch that we just
harvested
characteristic flat leaf spinach with light green leaves
and a very nice buttery taste
and you can harvest
lot of spinach from let's say growing on a raised bed
as you harvest the leaves the spinach plant will keep growing
keep producing more leaves and you can grow spinach for a long time
before the temperatures become warm and hot
and when the temperatures do get hot the spinach plants will go into bolt
which means that it'll start producing flowers and seeds
and stop producing anymore new leaves
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so I hope you enjoyed today's episode of growing these two spinach varieties
the reason I mentioned about these two varieties
specifically is because one variety which is the Malabar spinach
is pretty unique in the way that it's a perennial spinach
and the other spinach which is the flat leaf spinach
is an excellent buttery and delicious spinach
I'll see you again soon happy gardening