Spinach is an incredibly versatile plant when it comes to cooking. There are thousands of different kinds of dishes you can make using different kinds of spinach. What makes spinach so versatile is the fact that there are so many different types to choose from. You may find yourself curious about what kinds of spinach are out there, and what the best use is for each of them. You may also want to learn more about how to care for spinach so that you may grow it yourself.
To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of different types of spinach, along with relevant information about them. We hope this article will inspire you to go out and plant your own spinach.
Spinach is a favorite of gardeners and chefs because it is both delicious and easy to grow.
What is Spinach?
Spinach sprouting in a garden. Spinach is very popular around the world, and is used in a large variety of different cultures. It has been popular in cuisine around the world for thousands of years.
Spinach is a flowering plant native to Persia (modern day Iran) that has spread across the world. Spinach is a popular edible plant that is used in a variety of different cuisines. It’s known for being incredibly healthy and full of vitamins.
Spinach has been used by humans for centuries. The first recorded instances of humans using this vegetable for medicinal purposes were found in the Mediterranean in the 10th century, but it soon became a staple of cuisine throughout europe.
Today, spinach is a staple in food all around the world. It’s cooked in a wide variety of different dishes, and it is considered a favorite food item in many cultures.
While spinach is readily available to be purchased in stores, you can also easily grow spinach yourself. Spinach is a popular choice to add to gardens, as it produces a bountiful harvest that’s great to use in your cooking.
If you’d like to grow spinach, you may also want to consider planning your own vegetable garden so that you can grow other edible plants as well.
How to Care for Spinach
Spinach is best suited for cooler climates, and as such should be grown earlier on in the spring season.
Spinach is generally easy to grow and care for. Spinach prefers full sunlight, but it will also do fine in partial shade. It needs to be well watered, but avoid over watering and letting the soil remain too damp. This plant grows best in cooler climates, and may not thrive in extremely hot environments.
An important part of growing your own spinach is understanding bolting. Bolting is when a plant begins producing flowers, and will therefore stop producing leaves. In order to prevent this from happening too early and maximizing your harvest, it is important to pay careful attention to the planting instructions for your spinach variety. Certain spinach plants bolt earlier than others, and some varieties bolt much later in the season. By planting your spinach at the right time and under the right conditions, you can prevent them from bolting prematurely.
It is best to plant spinach early on in the season, as it thrives in the cool spring months. However, you can also plant spinach at the beginning of the fall season if you’d like a harvest right before the winter. It is important that you learn the proper care needed to ensure that your spinach thrives.
If you’d like some additional tips for growing and caring for spinach, you can also check out this video:
Nutritional Value of Spinach
Spinach has been widely known to be an incredibly healthy addition to your diet. Many people use spinach in healthy smoothies, such as the one pictured here.
Spinach is known for being incredibly healthy. Spinach is full of vitamins and minerals, such as Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin K1, Folic Acid, Iron, omega 3- fatty acids, and Calcium. Many spinach varieties also contain potassium, magnesium, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B6, and Vitamin E.
Spinach is not the only healthy food that you can grow yourself. If you’d like to improve your overall diet and eat healthier, you can learn to grow your own food in your garden.
Spinach comes in a multitude of different varieties that can be classified into 3 different categories: Savoy Spinach, Semi Savoy Spinach, and Smooth Leaf Spinach. There are also a few other leafy greens commonly referred to as “spinach”, even if they are not true members of the spinach family.
Savoy Spinach
Savoy spinach has crinkly, crunchy leaves and tastes best cooked with savory foods.
Savoy Spinach has crinkly, crunchy leaves and a distinct taste compared to the other two kinds of spinach. Savoy spinach tastes best cooked, as it has a somewhat strong bitter taste when left raw. However, it is a popular choice in salads if you’re looking for something with a similar taste to kale.
This plant is best cooked with things like eggs, cheeses, nuts, beef, and poultry in order to really bring out the flavors. The bitterness of savoy spinach compliments these savory flavors nicely. It is full of vitamin C, beta carotene, and folate, making it an excellent choice to add to your healthy diet.
Savoy spinach varieties taste best when cooked with savory foods, such as the egg and potatoes spinach meal depicted here.
Savoy spinach thrives in much cooler temperatures compared to the other two types of spinach. As such, this is a good choice if you are planning to grow your own and you live in a cooler climate.
Savoy Spinach comes in a few different varieties:
Regiment Spinach
This spinach hybrid produces deep green leaves and is ideal for cooking. It’s leaves are soft and flavorful, making them an excellent addition to savory, creamy dishes such as soups and pasta meals. This plant grows very fast, and the leaves are soft, yet crisp.
Bloomsdale Spinach
This thick, juicy spinach produces a large yield and is ideal if you are looking to plant spinach specifically for cooking. Bloomsdale spinach is a very popular variety of spinach and is the most common type of spinach found in gardens. Bloomsdale spinach seeds are readily available to be purchased online.
Hammerhead Spinach
This variety of savoy spinach has curly, rounded dark green leaves. This type of spinach is usually used in salads.
Hammerhead spinach grows fast and is best planted during the spring, fall, or winter seasons
Palco Spinach
Unlike many other varieties of spinach, Palco spinach is actually capable of tolerating warmer temperatures. This variety is also much more resistant to bolting and boasts healthy, lush green leaves.
Semi Savoy Spinach
Semi Savoy spinach has crinkly leaves, but less crinkly than savoy spinach.
Semi Savoy spinach has a similar taste and texture to savoy spinach, but the leaves are much less crinkly. This, coupled with their resistance to diseases, makes them a good choice for gardeners and cooks.
Semi savoy spinach is rich in nutrients. This includes vitamins A,B, and E, omega-3 fatty acids, iron, calcium, lutein, beta-carotene, and glutathione.
Semi Savoy spinach can be used in a variety of different kinds of dishes, and this includes delicious salads.
There are a few different varieties of semi savoy spinach:
Tyee Spinach
This variation of semi savoy spinach has thick green leaves that are rich in flavor, both raw and cooked. Tyee spinach is best suited for cooler temperatures,
Indian Summer Spinach
This is a fast growing spinach with crisp, somewhat flat leaves. This variation is easy to grow and produces a lot of leaves in the spring, summer, and fall months.
Catalina Spinach
Catalina is a popular variety of spinach, commonly known as “baby spinach”. This variety prefers cooler temperatures, and should therefore be planted in the cooler spring or fall months. Catalina is a popular choice in salads.
Teton Spinach
Teton spinach produces delicious dark green leaves. Teton spinach is packed with vitamin A, B, and C, making it an excellent healthy choice for any meal.
Carmel Spinach
This extremely fast growing variety of semi savoy spinach is a great choice if you’re looking for an easy to grow spinach variety and need a big harvest. Carmel spinach is also quite disease resistant, which makes it a great choice for beginners.
As with most spinach varieties, this spinach does best in cooler temperatures.
Emperor Spinach
This dark green semi savoy variety has a medium growth rate and is best planted in spring and fall.
Kookaburra Spinach
Kookaburra spinach is a hybrid species of semi savoy spinach. Their dark leaves have a juicy, crunchy texture. This variety of spinach is much more tolerant of warmer climates.
Acadia Spinach
This variety of semi savoy has glossy dark green leaves with an oval shape.
Tasman Spinach
Tasman spinach produces medium green leaves and grows quite fast. They thrive best if planted in the early spring or fall.
Reflect Spinach
This variety of semi savoy spinach is a medium green color and has oval ruffled leaves.
Kolibri Spinach
This curly leafed variety of semi savoy spinach has medium dark green leaves. It is resistant to mildew and grows rather quickly, so this is a good choice if you’re looking for a hearty variety.
Crocodile Spinach
This variety of spinach takes a bit longer to grow, but it is more heat resistant compared to other types of spinach. It produces a lot of dark green leaves.
Avon Spinach
This semi savoy spinach is known for it’s delicious flavor and attractive curled, dark green leaves. This variety grows fast and is a great choice for your vegetable garden. Avon spinach is popular for use in salads.
Smooth leaf Spinach
Smooth leaf spinach, as the name suggests, produces smooth, flat leaves.
Unlike Savoy and semi savoy spinach, smooth leaf spinach has flat leaves. This kind of spinach is usually the first choice of gardeners and cooks, as it is much easier to clean and has a sweeter taste than the other two. Smooth leaf spinach is a popular choice for salads.
Smooth leaf spinach is a very popular choice for salads. It is easy to clean and has a delicious flavor.
Space Spinach
This variety of smooth leaf spinach is more sensitive to acidity than other kinds of spinach. As such, it is important to carefully monitor the soil pH of your garden if you plan to plant this kind of spinach.
As with most spinach varieties, space spinach thrives in cooler climates. It is best to sow the seeds in early spring and keep the spinach well watered during the warmer months.
Red Cardinal Spinach
Red carnival spinach gets its name from the reddish veins and deep red stems that it has. This variety of smooth leaf spinach is a great addition to salads, as the beautiful red coloring may fade out when it is steamed or cooked. However, red cardinal spinach grows and bolts much quicker than any other spinach variety, and as such it must be harvested quickly.
Red cardinal spinach requires a moderate amount of water, and is relatively easy to grow. It requires about 6 hours of sunlight per day.
Red Kitten Spinach
Similar to red cardinal spinach, red kitten spinach has dark green leaves and red veins. Its delicious flavor makes it a great choice for salads.
Renegade Spinach
This dark green hybrid spinach is bolt resistant. It’s also quite resistant against diseases. This variety can be grown in all seasons, due to the fact that it grows slowly and bolts very late.
Flamingo Spinach
This hybrid spinach is cold-resistant and takes a long time to bolt. Its leaves have an arrowhead-like shape and are dark green.
Seaside Spinach
This spinach produces small, dark green leaves shaped like little arrows. It is considered very juicy and delicious.
Space Spinach
This variety of smooth leafed spinach is quite heat resistant and has round, spoon shaped dark green leaves. This variety of spinach is easy to clean and has a meaty, delicious flavor.
Corvair Spinach
This spinach has straight dark green oval leaves. They produce a high yield of leaves and they are quite adaptable to any garden space.
Gazelle Spinach
Gazelle spinach has smooth, dark green leaves and long stems. They grow fast and are resistant to disease.
Wood Pecker Spinach
This hybrid smooth leafed spinach is a great choice if you want to plant spinach in late spring and summer. This is because they take a long time to bolt. This plant requires moderate watering.
While all these varieties of spinach do have their own specific needs and care instructions, spinach is generally a very easy vegetable to grow. If you’d prefer to stick to a simple care regimen, there are plenty of other easy to grow vegetables that you can add to your garden.
New Zealand Spinach
While not a true member of the spinach family, New Zealand has a very similar taste and is full of nutrients, making it a good substitute for spinach in cooking.
While New Zealand spinach is not actually a true member of the spinach family, it has a similar taste and is full of nutrients just like regular spinach. New Zealand spinach plants produce delicious, succulent leaves filled with delicious flavor. This spinach is delicious both cooked and fresh, and as such can be used in a large variety of different dishes.
New Zealand spinach requires adequate sunlight and regular, but shallow, watering.
Malabar Spinach
Malabar spinach looks and tastes very similar to actual spinach varieties, but like New Zealand spinach, it is not a true spinach variety. However, it has a very similar taste to spinach and is considered a good substitute. While it’s leaves look similar to spinach, it is actually a vine-like plant that is native to India. Unlike true spinach, Malabar spinach prefers heat and thrives in full sunlight. However, it can also grow happily in partial shade.
Longevity Spinach
Longevity spinach, like Malabar spinach and New Zealand spinach, is not actually a true spinach variety. However, it gets its name because it’s an incredibly healthy leafy vegetable, just like actual spinach. Longevity spinach requires lots of sunlight, and you should keep the soil moist, but be careful not to overwater.
Spinach is an incredibly versatile plant that comes in a wide range of different varieties. Spinach can be used in lots of different kinds of cooking, and there are plenty of different kinds of spinach to choose from. We hope that this list has provided you with useful suggestions for different spinach varieties that you can try to grow and cook yourself.
