How to Grow Spinach: Growing Guide to Planting, Care & Harvest

Spinacia oleracea

Growing calendar

Typical timing for central Japan (Kanto region). Shift it for your own climate, and record your actual dates.

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Sow / plantGrowing

Guides

Common problems

Start from what you can see on the plant.

Wilting Yellow leaves Leaves dying White powder Leaf spots Pests Fruit problems

Pests and diseases (36)

Problems recorded for this plant, most serious first.

Bolting

MajorDisorder

A flower stalk rises from the center of the plant and the leaves turn tough and stringy, spoiling eating quality. Heading vegetables run to seed without ever forming a head.

Downy Mildew

MajorDisease

Pale yellow to yellow-brown angular lesions form on the upper leaf surface with a gray-purple mold in the matching spot underneath. Lesions merge, the leaves die back and the plant declines early.

Fusarium Wilt

CommonDisease

Lower leaves wilt during the day and recover morning and evening, and this cycle repeats as the plant dies back. Cutting the stem reveals characteristic browning of the vascular tissue.

Damping-off

CommonDisease

The stem pinches in at soil level, turning water-soaked to brown and thin, and the seedling topples over. Infection before emergence makes the stand uneven with missing plants.

Root Rot

CommonDisease

Fine roots rot brown to blackish brown, growth stops and the lower leaves yellow. The plant wilts easily in the daytime and eventually dies outright.

Fertilizer Burn

CommonDisorder

Leaf margins scorch brown soon after fertilizing and the whole plant wilts. Root tips turn brown and growth stops abruptly.

Cabbage Armyworm

CommonPest

Young larvae feed in groups on the leaf underside, eating only the tissue so the leaf turns translucent white. Larger larvae chew big holes and can strip a plant bare in a single night.

Pillbugs Slugs Leaf Spot Fusarium Yellows Late Blight Brown Leaf Spot Cucumber Mosaic Virus Rust White Rust Anthracnose Root-lesion Nematode Root-knot Nematode Bacterial SpotReplant DisorderNecrotic StuntChoanephora Wet RotOlpidium Root RotVerticillium WiltPenicillium RotMosaic DiseaseSlime MoldMottle DiseaseCrown RotPlant-parasitic NematodesGray Leaf SpotWhite Leaf SpotFusarium Wilt and Damping-offLeaf BlightAlternaria Black Spot

Written byYasuGrowing vegetables and fruit in Chiba, Japan, and building Gadenin. Corrections are welcome. 15 years of growing.