Lesson 1: Sowing the Seeds

Steady Performer
Many experienced gardeners find it difficult to stop true spinach "bolting" (running to seed) when exposed to full summer sun. Spinach beet is much more tolerant of open aspects. It's also a steady performer in ordinary soil, although you'll get better results if you incorporate well-rotted manure or compost into your plot.

Sowing Beet Spinach
After raking the soil into a fine tilth (prepared surface soil that's ready to plant), mark out a row with garden twine and stakes. Use a hoe to make a 2cm-deep "drill" (channel) and sow groups of 3 or 4 seeds at 20-cm intervals. Cover, firm, label and water your new drill. Space drills 35cm-40cm apart. Perpetual spinach's forgiving nature and all-summer cropping makes it a useful vegetable for containers. Pick a good-sized container around 45cm wide and 45cm deep. Fill it with soil-based John Innes No 2 compost or multipurpose soilless compost and sow your seeds as you would do in a vegetable plot. Aim to end up with around four plants in a container this size.

Try These
Seed suppliers don't seem to offer named varieties of beet spinach in the way that they do for other vegetables. If you want something a little different, give Swiss chard a try. Another member of the leaf beet family, it has spinach-like leaves and wide, pale, fleshy stalks. It's as easy to grow as perpetual spinach.

Pic: GAP Photos/ FhF Greenmedia