Few people know how to grow spinach in the garden, how to cook it deliciously, how useful it is. Spinach culture is popular in many countries. In Western Europe, even produce combines for harvesting. In Japan, with an acute shortage of cultivated areas, up to 24 thousand hectares are allocated for spinach, that is, 2-2.5 square meters. m per person. And in our Krasnodar Territory, judging by the number of seeds sold, its sowing in open ground is no more than 2-3 hectares per 5 million inhabitants of the Kuban, that is, 0.02-0.03 square meters. Most likely, this is due to ignorance of what kind of culture it is, how and when to plant spinach.
Dietitians, nutritionists believe that it should be consumed at least 3-4 kg per year, which is used not only as a salad, but also as a medicinal plant.
Spinach as a healthy plant
Garden Spinach is an annual plant. Fleshy leaves are used for food, sometimes they are corrugated, have an ovoid, rounded or arrow-shaped shape. This is a dioecious plant; moreover, females are more leafy and vegetate longer than males. By the amount of protein contained, spinach is second only to legumes (peas, beans). Its leaves contain sugar, vitamins C (65-75 mg%), groups B, P, PP, K, E, A, various organic acids, salts of potassium, calcium, sodium, iron, copper, phosphorus, and other useful substances.
By the content of iron salts, spinach is in one of the first places among vegetable crops, and the structural formula of chlorophyll of this plant is close in chemical composition to human hemoglobin. In addition, vitamins, especially ascorbic acid (vitamin C), and carotene (provitamin A), are heat-resistant, almost do not break down during cooking or canning.
Spinach leaves remove harmful substances from the body, such as toxins, salts of heavy metals, cholesterol. The French call it the "broom of the stomach", as it positively affects the activity of the digestive glands, forcing them to work more intensively. In addition, spinach, due to the content of saponins, enhances gastric motility.
When to sow spinach in the open ground in the Kuban
This is a cold resistant plant. And in dry, hot weather, having formed 4-6 small leaflets, they begin to shoot, becoming unsuitable for eating. Therefore, late spring sowing of spinach in our Krasnodar Territory is not worth practicing.
In the conditions of a short day, when sowing is carried out in early spring (“February windows”) or in autumn (September), the light stage of development passes slowly, the duration of the vegetative phase increases. As a result, a powerful rosette is formed from 10-12 large leaves, which leads to an increase in yield to 3.5-4 kg from 1 square. m
Spinach seeds, although slowly, can germinate in open ground at a temperature of + 3-4 ° C. But the optimal temperature for both germination and growth and development is 15-18 ° C. In the phase of the rosette of 4-6 leaves, it easily tolerates frosts to -17 ° C, and even lower under snow. For example, in the winter of 2002/2003, the temperature at night in December-January on some days dropped to 18-20 ° C of frost, and without snow. At this temperature, 53-56% of the plants that gave an early harvest survived.
Specialists-agronomists studied several dates for spinach sowing: late summer (second – third decade of August) and autumn (three terms in September and first – second decade of October). Observations of growth and development showed that sowing in August and in the first or second decade of September allows you to get a spinach leaf yield in October-November of 3.5-3.7 kg per 1 sq. Km. m
In some years, during the warm autumn, spinach yielded a crop even in December, if for sowing, arrange arcs of 6-8 mm wire, cover them with plastic wrap. The crops of the second and third ten-day days of September, sometimes the first ten days of October, tolerated winter well in the conditions of the central zone of the Krasnodar Territory. The temperature in winter for the previous 3 years did not fall below 10-12 ° C of frost. Harvest of spinach leaves from sowing in mid-September was ready for harvest in the first decade of March. Each subsequent sowing period yielded a harvest of 5-7 days later than the previous one. Early spring sowing in February-March yielded a crop in the first or second decade of May. Productivity from the early spring sowing period was 1.3-1.7 kg per square meter. m
Thus, for the conveyor harvesting of spinach in the Kuban in late autumn or early spring, it is necessary to plant it, or rather, carry out stepwise sowing from about August 15 to mid-October with an interval of 10-15 days.
Increasingly, I see green spinach leaves on the market shelves. This makes me happy. But far from growing spinach on an industrial scale. It's a pity!