Question

Visit or call a store with a plant nursery (Walmart, Home Depot, etc.) and describe the planting of spinach to an associate or customer as if you were really having this issue. Ask them what they recommend you should do. Do not mention the scientific method or even imply any of these steps while discussing your 'problem.' Listen closely to see if the associate/customer's recommendations align with what is expected for the scientific method.

Answer 1

Spinach is a cool-season crop that can withstand a hard frost or two, but turns to green goo when exposed to sub-freezing temperatures for any length of time.

Spinach is also very sensitive to heat. Seeds will not germinate if temperatures are over 75° (24°C), and spinach bolts quickly once temperatures begin to climb in summer.

Spinach grows well in any fast-draining garden loam. It thrives in soils with a lot of organic matter, as long as they’re not too acidic.

Incorporate 3” (8 cm) of good garden compost or well-aged manure into the bed at planting time.

For luxurious growth in spring and summer plantings, mix 2-3 lbs (2-2.3 kg) of alfalfa meal (per 100 square feet--9 square meters--of bed) into the soil at planting time. For fall and winter plantings, mix in 1 lb (1/2 kg) of fish meal, or some other animal-based, cool-season nitrogen source.

Spinach thrives in a slightly more alkaline soil than most vegetables (pH 6.5-7.5). If your soil is acidic, add finely crushed eggshells, ground oyster shell, or wood ashes to compensate. 1-2 lbs (1/2-1 kg) per 100 square feet (9 square meters) is sufficient for most garden soils. For other ways to raise soil ph, see Changing Soil pH.

Planting Spinach:

When planting spinach, you can sow seeds directly, or transplant seedlings to prepared soil. Spinach has fine, fibrous roots, so try to avoid disturbing them too much when transplanting.

Spinach Plant Spacing

When planting spinach in a single-dug or tilled bed (soil loosened 8-10” --20-25 cm--deep), plant spinach in rows 12” (30 cm) apart. Sow seeds ½” (1.3 cm) deep every 6” (15 cm) along the row, or sow more seeds and thin to this spacing. Cover with ½” (1.3 cm) of fine mulch.

For baby spinach, sow in a 3-4” (7-10 cm) band on ¾” (2 cm) centers, 40-50 seeds per foot. Harvest in 3-5 weeks.

When growing spinach in a deep-dug or raised garden bed (soil loosened 20-24”--50-60 cm deep), plant spinach on 8” (20 cm) centers (seeds or seedlings 8” (20 cm) apart in every direction).

Care and Feeding of Spinach

Watering:

Growing spinach requires regular watering, especially in spring heat waves. Drip irrigation works fine, but most spring ephemerals do best when their leaves get wet.

On a hot day, a splash of overhead water in the heat of the afternoon cools the leaves and the soil under the plants, and drops the overnight temperatures right into the 60-70° (15-21° C) groove most cool-season plants thrive in.

Fertilizing

If you build the fertilizer into the soil when planting spinach as described above, supplemental fertilizer isn’t necessary. If you add no organic fertilizers at planting time, a shot of fish emulsion, compost extract, or compost tea at the first spring heat wave will produce more luxurious growth.

Plant Care

Spinach needs no special plant care beyond watering and harvesting.

Spinach Pests:

The larvae hatch and burrow into the leaf, carving out tunnels and pockets the size of a quarter. The leaf cuticles protect them from parasitoid wasps and most garden insect predators.In many areas of the country, spinach is a relatively pest-free plant. Unfortunately, mine is not one of them. We have Spinach Leaf Miners (Pegomya hyoscyami). Leaf miners are tiny (1/4”--6.5 mm) flies that lay their eggs on the undersides of spinach, chard, and beet leaves.

Growing spinach where leaf miners are prevalent requires careful monitoring and quick action to prevent wider outbreaks later in the season. Mechanical controls work best with leaf miners.

Floating row covers can be used to exclude adults from the leaves, but they won't keep out leaf miners that hatch inside the row covers (from last year's beets).

At the first sign of tunneling in the leaves, check the undersides of leaves, and look for rows of 7-8 white, sliver-shaped eggs. Smear them over the bottom of the leaf with a finger, or spray with a garlic-soap spray. Pick off any leaves with extensive tunneling; you’ll see small grubs in the corner of the pocket. Put them on a piece of sheet metal or in a plastic bag in the sun for a couple hours, then compost.

Spinosad, an organic actinobacterium, can also be applied to the leaves, but you have to spray the undersides of the leaves, and the pests have to hatch and ingest the bacterium to become infected.

After consulting one of the spinach growers of the locality, his method of cultivating spinach little bit different from that of scientific one. Seeds are firstly sown in a nursery which are then transplanted but the spacing between the baby spinach plantlets is lesser as stated in the scientific method.

Spinach beds are not frequently watered, cow dung is used as a fertiliser and BHC (benzene hexachloride) is used as pesticide.