Spinach: Matador

Description

This is real spinach – not the usual ‘chard’ that we often call spinach in South Africa. Matador spinach has less of a stem rib, and a more delicate, sweet flavour. It is ideal to grow as ‘baby’ spinach for use in salads and cooking.

This variety is open-pollinated and produces deep green, smooth leaves. Baby leaves are ready in 25 days or so, but at 45 days the leaves are full-size.

Spinach does best in the cooler season in South Africa. Sow in drills every three weeks or so for a continuous crop of delicious young leaves. Harvest leaves from the outside of the crop inwards so that the crown can continue to produce. Provide the plants with regular light waterings rather than rare deep soaks. 

Did you know?  Spinach’s legendary iron content was due to a misplaced decimal point in a scientist’s notebook back in 1870. The number was supposed to be 3.5 not 35!  The error was only corrected in 1937 but by then Popeye had already lifted spinach consumption in the US by a third. 

50 seeds