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| With the cool temperatures of winter fast approaching, I thought I'd try my hand at growing some spinach this fall and winter.
So my question is this: How closely should I plant them if I intend to harvest full grown or as 'baby' spinach? Simple enough, right. Thanks |
Follow-Up Postings:
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| Soil or Hydro? I am in Zone 6 and started some about 2 months ago in soil. I more/less space according to square foot method, 9 per square foot with about 8 inches of really loose and fluffy soil. I planted mostly baby spinach. The spinach, and my outdoor lettuce, definitely grow much slower in the fall, likely due to the shorter days. My problem with spinach, both indoors and outdoors, is getting a high percentage of the seeds to germinate. |
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- Posted by hydroponica 5-6 (My Page) on Thu, Nov 6, 08 at 20:57
| My advice with spinach is to plant all your seeds regardless of how much space you want to plant. Just distribute them as evenly as you can. Spinach has a notoriously poor germination rate and it just gets worse as the seeds get older so plant all you have and get more next year. Then, once you find out what's going to come up you can thin them out or move them around as necessary. Plant it densely and you can harvest the baby leaves when they start to crowd and make room for the others to get bigger. |
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- Posted by hydroponica 5-6 (My Page) on Thu, Nov 6, 08 at 20:59
| Oh, and spinach does great in hydroponics BTW, once you get it started. I've grown it a couple times in DWC and got some huge plants. |
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| hydroponica~ what ppm range do you use to grow your spinach? I was inspired by your website and I tried to grow romaine lettuce and spinach in the same dwc but neither seemed to do well. I'm guessing the problem was trying to get the right balance of how far the light was from the plants without making them wilt and getting the right ppm. I pulled out all the lettuce and am trying to focus on the spinach right now. Do you have any advice? |
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- Posted by hydroponica 5-6 (My Page) on Sat, Nov 15, 08 at 13:37
| Spinach can be deceptively heavy-eating. You can grow it and lettuce together, but it helps if your lettuce is a strain that's more resistant to burning than most. I grew spinach and lettuce together using a tip-burn resistant Grand Rapids lettuce. In my experience you can't put too much light on lettuce or spinach, at least not with artificial lighting. The main concern in that regard is that spinach matures more rapidly in higher heat which means a smaller crop because it will bolt to seed sooner. So you end up with the struggle of cranking out as much light as possible to promote more rapid growth while keeping temperatures cool (say low to mid 70's or less) so your spinach keeps growing leaves instead of flowers. Check this link for a general guideline of what plants prefer. |
Here is a link that might be useful: pH and ppm for common vegetables
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- Posted by Biloy(fikse@yahoo.com) onFri, Apr 15, 11 at 11:24
| Here are some pics of my hydroponics spinach plants, I'm having some spots appear, not sure if it's from the lights or not.... any ideas? |
Here is a link that might be useful: Hydroponic Spinach Plants
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