How to Grow Spinach in a Pot?

Spinach is a summer season vegetable that is grown everywhere in India. It can be grown in your home gardens and commercially open fields. Further, known for lush green leafy spinach is high in iron, vitamins, plus antioxidants too. Spinach crop harvested after eight weeks from sowing. This write-up you’ll learn about growing spinach in a pot.

In hot climates, spinach produces seeds instead of growing foliage. It contains lots of nutrients and antioxidants and also is healthy in the diet. Eating spinach in your diet can recover the health of your eyes, reduces the stress, prevent cancer and lower blood pressure levels. 

Planting Spinach (How to plant baby spinach)

• Take a pot that is 6-8 inches deep, or you can use a deep pot too. Plant spinach seeds 1 inch deep into the pot and lightly cover seeds with soil.
• The distance between them must be 3 inches apart and if you want your spinach leaves must be large then make it up to 5 inches.
• This will take up to 7-10 days in germination. If the soil is cold, then it will take about 21 days.
• When the plant is 3 inches, spinach thin to 12 inches. Then, cut out the weak seedlings with scissors at the soil level. Now, you can grow 15 plants per family member.

Watering and Feeding

To grow spinach in containers instantly, put the soil uniformly moist during the growing season. Avoid dredge dirty water on the spinach leaves; mulch around plants with straw or chopped leaves to avoid getting soil on leaves. A thin solution of side-dress plant or fish emulsion with manure tea each couple of weeks throughout the growing season. Side-dress spinach with aged manure at midseason.

When to Harvest Spinach Plants?

You can harvest spinach leaves as they are large enough to eat.

• Cut leaves from plants 4 to 7 inches long that have 6 to 8 leaves. First, cut the outside leaves.
• Let the left young leaves develop at maturity. If you cut all the leave from the plant, cut the leaves 3 inches above the soil, this can generate new leaves for the second crop.
• Large spinach leaves plus old leaves may be bitter in taste;
• Harvesting leaves leave sooner rather than later. Long days more than 14 hours a day plus heat weather temperatures above 75 ° F can make the spinach to bolt, flower and produce seed.

Storing Spinach

You can store your spinach leaves in the refrigerator that you harvested. If you are not using spinach immediately after harvesting, then you can store the spinach leaves in a plastic bag for around one week. Further, if you are storing spinach in your freezer at 0 ° C then, it can last for more than a year. 

Spinach Diseases and Pests

Many insects can attack spinach plants. Here are the most common spinach pests-

#1. Aphids

Aphids are supposed to be the most common pests of spinach. Enemies who exist in nature carefully monitor on them. But, you still want to be careful then you can use neem oil.

#2. Wireworms and cutworms

The cutworm can cut young seedlings at the ground level, and the wireworm depends upon the roots and leaves for food. Older transplants do not attract these insects. Older transplants will not attract these types of insects.

These insects eternally attracted to transplanting, which is tender. To catch wireworms, you can begin with planting carrots that are fully grown in the pot. Pick up the carrots from the soil every two days and exclude trapped wireworms in it. Cutworms mainly respond to spinosad sprays.

#3. Flea beetles

These are the insects that can feed on young bait. We can see waste from flea beetles within numerous little holes that leave the spinach leaf to seem as if someone shoots it with a gun. Spinach leaves which are attacked by flea beetles can sometimes have perforated areas. These insects are so small that they can’t be visible from the human eye. You can use mulch which is reflective below the plants. 

#4. Snails and slugs

These snails and slugs can make holes on the spinach leaves. Holes from these will be bigger than those made by flea beetles. You can use traps and bait to control these insects in the most suitable way.

#5. Leaf miners

These insects can leave dark marks on the spinach leaves. They can feed up inside the spinach leaves. Contacting insecticides will not work effectively as it requires some more and other solutions. Spinach leaves that infected from leaf miners must remove and killed before the larvae get in the stage of maturity. 

Also Read: Growing Arugula In Pots

Some common diseases of spinach

#1. Downy mildew

This disease can cause light green or sometimes yellow spots on the upper layer of spinach leaves along with the white coloured fungus under the spinach leaf layer. There is no remedy for this type of disease and the removal of spinach plants affected by this disease, is the only choice you can do. Moreover, you can stop this type of disease through keeping the plants at the proper distance so that airflow is good and water has to be connected directly to the soil so that the leaves dry up.

#2. Damping-off

Due to this disease, the seedling will die as soon as it starts falling. You will require sowing seeds that are of best in quality and further evade giving too much water so that you can at least stop the disease at some level. The compost has to prepare fully in a hot pile before you put into the pot in the soil. You can prevent these diseases by taking some necessary actions towards it.