Vegetable · Amaranthaceae
When to plant spinach
A cold-season crop that bolts almost immediately in long days and warm soil.
Sow direct
6 weeks before
Counted from your last spring frost.
Days to maturity
40-50
From sowing to a first picking.
Frost tolerance
Hardy
How much cold the plant itself will take.
Those weeks become real dates once you name a place.
Timing, in frost-relative terms
Seed packets rarely give calendar dates, because a date that suits one latitude is wrong at another. They give offsets from the last spring frost instead, and those offsets are what make spinach plantable anywhere.
- Sow direct 6 weeks before the last frost.
- Expect 40–50 days to maturity, counted from sowing.
- Sow again every 14 days for a continuous supply.
- Can also be sown in late summer for an autumn crop or to overwinter.
Getting the timing right
Spring sowings must go in early - six weeks before last frost - to crop before bolting. The autumn sowing, six to eight weeks before first frost, is usually far more productive.
Frost tolerance
Overwinters under snow in zone 5 and regrows in spring. One of the few crops that genuinely prefers frost.
Classified as hardy, with damage expected below -9°C (15.8°F)15.8°F (-9°C).