How to grow spinach in pots or containers at home is super easy. You can take my word for it; it is a worthwhile endeavor delivering edible results in just a few short weeks. I have found that spinach simply fits the bill in many ways.
Top of the list, is that spinach is a super easy leafy green vegetable to grow in pots, in a home setting. Although calling for huge amounts of water, it is a basically low maintenance vegetable.
Once you supply it with the right conditions it will do the rest. It is also a resilient crop which tends to remain standing whilst other vegetables around it are being ravaged by disease or pests.
In this tutorial, I will be sharing how I went about growing spinach in pots from scratch using seeds. I am aware of other approaches were you regrow it from stubs. Other home gardeners also grow spinach indoors under lights and so on. Some even grow it as microgreens and no further yet others grow spinach indoors using hydroponics. I hope to expand this tutorial on those approaches in the future.
Step 1 – Get your spinach seeds ready
The first thing I did was to get some spinach seeds. There are different varieties. Go with the most accessible variety to you. Suppliers include gardening shops or seed shops or even online, you can order the seeds. The method in this tutorial applies on just about any variety (you may just want to check with your supplier which variety does well during your intended time/season of planting).
Spinach seeds as shown here are tough. They are the proverbial tough nut to crack. To speed up germination you have the option to soak them in water overnight. In this case I didn’t follow that route. I planted them as is.
Also learn how to grow other vegetables from scraps such as Chinese cabbage, potatoes, regular onions and green onions a.k.a. spring onions.
Step 2 – Get a container and soil
Next, get a suitable container. I have seen questions on the best spinach container size. Here, I used this container that is some 30 cm/12in across and 45 cm/18in deep. More than anything, the depth of the container is a priority over the radius of the container. Your spinach container depth has implications on the roots of the crop.
Spinach is a vegetable that develops significantly long roots. You want your container not to impede freedom of the roots so that your vegetable does well. The size of the container across will determine how many individual spinach crops can be accommodated. You certainly do not want a constrained container which will lead to overcrowding.
Concerning the soil, I used soil around my garden and mixed it with compost. You can also mix soil with chicken manure, horse manure or even cow manure. Fill your container with this mixture and go to step 2.
Step 2 – Plant your seeds in pot and see your spinach germinate
Once you have the right container size for your spinach, filled with soil it is time to go ahead and plant the seeds. Before I planted my spinach seeds in the container I poured enough water onto the soil filling the container. I wanted the soil to be saturated with moisture as any watering in the next couple of weeks would be light due to the delicate germinating seeds.
To plant the seeds, I created tiny holes on the surface of the soil in the container using a stick. The holes were 1cm/0.39in deep maximum, in order for the seeds not to struggle to germinate and come out on the surface. I then covered the small holes lightly with some soil after inserting seeds in each hole (you may put double or triple seeds per hole if you so wish).
Shown here are the seeds germinating in my spinach pot some 4 days after planting. Although not easily visible, they are coming out all around the surface of the container. Things looking up and promising at this point. After the initial watering, I sprayed very light showers once or twice before germination. The need to water the surface this way is informed by climatic conditions.
Step 3 – Add manure/compost at 10 days, implement thinning as needed
This is how things looked at about 10 days after planting the seeds (6-7 days after germination). The vegetable is looking good and aggressively growing. At this point I was watering once per day. I also took time to put some additional cow manure on the surface.
My spinach plant spacing became a matter of concern around this time. It was becoming clearer that the crop was crowded and thinning would be necessary.
About a week later I took a decision to create better spacing between the spinach considering the size of my container. I aimed to allow about 5-6cm/2.36in between each plant.
Although I could have planted the plants that I removed during the thinning process in other container, I wasn’t ready for it, so I discarded them. I make a note here that soon after thinning, I watered the pot at about twice my daily watering levels just to make sure the remaining plants continued in good condition.
Thinning is the process of removing excess plants to reduce overcrowding and consequent competition for food and water and inevitable poor results.
After this thinning exercise, the remaining spinach plants flourished. I was utterly enjoying my experience growing spinach in pots. So shown above is how the spinach looked in the pot a further two weeks down the road. It was ready for harvest!
Step 4 – First harvest…how to harvest spinach
My journey growing spinach in containers had reached its crescendo at about four and half weeks from day one when it all started. It was time to do some harvest.
I have come across questions on how to harvest spinach. Harvesting is simple and straightforward. Using a kitchen scissors I nipped a bunch of leaves from the container. I aimed to cut the leaves further below on the steam. Do not remove the tiny center leaf. It represents the new cycle of life after your harvest.
Once you have harvested the spinach leaves, you must speedily refrigerate them in order to delay the wilting process. Spinach has significant water content. Once removed from the mother plant it tends to wilt easily unless properly handled.
Shown above is my harvest en route to the kitchen! This was an exciting and absolutely fulfilling feeling.
Shown above is how the spinach remaining in the pot looked. After the harvest I immediately watered the spinach. It took about two days for the new leafy greens to beginning aggressively growing again.
As a matter of fact, the harvest was to the plant pruning which in the plant universe actually triggers better and aggressive growth. It is therefore important to harvest or prune your spinach vegetables often to trigger better results.
The upgrade
My initial steps on growing spinach in pots as explained above led me to arrive at an important finding. The spinach did so well, it was so nice to eat but it ran out too quickly. I had to wait several days before enjoying some more spinach from the same container.
I made a decision to replicate my steps above but this time using a bigger container. So I pulled out an old dish sitting around which I basically repeated on the steps I have been explaining in this tutorial to produce the crop you see above. So this is about three weeks after planting the spinach in this bigger container.
This bigger container which is about 3.5 times the size of the old container will allow bigger harvest each time around. I still maintain the smaller container I started with and will probably enjoy several more harvests from it before making a decision on the way forward.
Summary on how to grow Spinach in pots.
Here is a to-the-point summary of how to grow Spinach in pots. Refer to my step-by-step tutorial with pictures for detail.
- Spinach is easy to grow in pots/containers.
- Use any soil mixed with compost/manure.
- Grow spinach seeds best suited for your climate.
- Spinach must be watered frequently.
- The leafy green takes between 4 and 5 weeks to get to first harvest.
- Pruning and harvesting helps the vegetable grow better/faster.
- Using a bigger pot/container is recommended for bigger harvests.
Conclusion
This tutorial sought to share my experience on how to grow spinach in pots. This is so simple to do anyone can do it with great results. While a low maintenance vegetable, spinach is a thirsty leafy green. As a gardener, you should be prepared to water it frequently once it has germinated.
Take care to prune/harvest it regularly to facilitate continued growth with better results (in my experience) each time around.
If you have a bigger family or wish to enjoy your leafy greens without limitations, I recommend starting from day one with a bigger container.
