Spinach!!!

Hi,

I'm new to this forum and i'm writing on behalf of my father who's not very good with computers.

The question i have is how tall can spinach grow?

My dad has been gardening for a while but has never seen his spinach grow this tall. I believe it to be around 2 meters or there abouts. I'll send you the pics... thanks Z

 

It is tall because it has flowered and gone to seed.

In the first year of its life spinach typically produces only leaves and remains about a foot high. In the second year it wants to flower and sends up a flowering stem around 3 feet high. At that time fewer leaves are produced and they may not taste as good although you can still eat them.

After it has flowered most people just dig them up and start again with fresh seed and new plants to get the best quality spinach. You can prevent them flowering for a while by cutting off the flowering stalks ruthlessly but it is like holding back the tide. Your dad's plant is well past this stage. But if he composts it and sows new seed he might get some little plants that will overwinter. They will produce loads of spinach in the spring before also flowering. And so it goes on!

 

Hi Madahhlia,

Thank you for your reply.

Have you seen anything this tall, or is my dad getting excited over nothing. I have tried to find out how tall they can grow but have found nothing. Do you think this is a contender for the record and if so what do i do?

Any help with this is appreciated....thanks Z

 

I'm afraid it doesn't look out of the ordinary to me! They do go up to at least 3 or 4 feet when they flower, so unless it's over 6 feet it's still well within normal bounds.

 

If you look at the pics it taller than than the washing line and I'm 6'4 and it's taller than I am, I used a crate to fix the top of the stalk straight.

I think my dad uses seeds from the sub continent to grow his veg, do you know what this particular spinach is called?

 

Not sure Zed, but looking at the leaves in your second photo, it could be some kind of chard, rather than spinach.

Chard is grown for its edible leaves, the same as spinach, but will produce much taller flower spikes if allowed to flower or 'bolt'.

Best to cut off all those flower heads and see if the plant produces some new leaf growth afterwards.

 

It is Beta vulgaris the same as Chard (and beetroot I think) but a different subspecies.
Sow fresh seed now. I always grew it as a biennial, plants one metre apart. Plant year two plants between year one plants.

Once they bolted they weren't worth rescuing.

 

I think my father was saying it was ready to drop its seeds soon, and will re-seed.

As the size of its stalk is over 8ft is it worth recording this somewhere because he has never come across this size chard/spinach plant before. He said normally they grow around 3ft or 4ft but this year this plant just carried on growing. thank you for the feedback

 

I've had leaf beet AKA chard/perpetual spinach grow to around 2m high when gone to seed. It happens regularly if you grow enough of the stuff and I grow hundreds of them as greenstuff for our hens. Seeds need to be sown in open ground for optimum growth and in fertile soil plus kept moist.