Spinacia oleracea
Matador spinach, giant winter spinach: the benchmark variety for late sowing. While most spinach plants bolt as soon as the days get longer, Matador resists bolting much better — extending the harvest period by several weeks.
Characteristics:
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Large, thick leaves: dark green, tender, and fleshy, easy to clean.
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Bolt-resistant: it lasts longer than classic varieties before bolting.
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Late variety: particularly well suited to late-summer sowing and winter harvests.
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Hardy: it tolerates temperatures down to -10°C, allowing harvests throughout the cold season.
Sowing advice:
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Exposure: shaded in summer, sunny in autumn and winter. Even though it is resistant, it remains sensitive to the combination of heat and long days.
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Soil: clay-rich, rich in humus, and kept moist, with a good supply of nitrogen. Adding manure or well-rotted compost genuinely benefits it — it is a hungry vegetable. Soil that dries out triggers bolting immediately.
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Method: sow directly in place, 2 cm deep, in rows spaced 25 cm apart. From February to mid-May for spring harvests, and from mid-August to November for autumn and winter harvests — this second window is when it performs best. Stagger sowings every two weeks. See how to sow your seeds.
Maintenance advice:
- Thin to 15 cm apart. Water regularly and abundantly: keeping the soil consistently moist is the only real secret to growing this crop.
- Mulch the row to retain moisture and delay bolting.
Harvesting advice:
- Pick the outer leaves one by one, leaving the center intact: the plant will then keep producing for weeks. Never cut the whole clump.
- As soon as the flower stalk appears, harvest everything: the leaves will then become bitter and tough.
Beneficial companions:
Benefits for biodiversity:
- Its dense cover protects the soil from drying out and erosion between two main crops, including during winter.
- When dug in as green manure, it quickly returns organic matter to the soil and nourishes soil life. See living soil.
Uses:
- Young leaves raw in salads; large leaves with cream, in gratins, quiches, soups, or sautéed with garlic. They shrink considerably when cooked: prepare plenty.
Saving your own seeds:
Spinach is dioecious: keep several plants to ensure you have both male and female plants. Let them bolt, then harvest the seeds from the female plants when they turn brown. See how to save your seeds.
Commitment to Quality: at SemiSauvage - Permaculture, we grow and select our seeds with respect for all living things as our guiding principle. Based near the Volcanoes of Auvergne, we choose open-pollinated, non-hybrid varieties, test them for germination rates, and carefully sort and package them without any chemical treatment. Our conviction: to give gardeners back the ability to resow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.
The spinach that resists bolting: the variety for late sowing.
