Atriplex hortensis
Green orache, garden orache, French spinach, mountain spinach, giant spinach: this was the leafy vegetable grown in European gardens before spinach took its place. Cultivated since the Middle Ages, it has one decisive advantage that spinach lacks: it continues producing in midsummer, when spinach has already gone to seed.
Characteristics:
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Spinach flavor: tender, mild leaves, raw or cooked, without bitterness.
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Heat-resistant: where spinach bolts, it keeps producing.
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Very long harvest: from March to autumn, by staggering sowings.
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Tall annual: up to 1.50 m, useful as a temporary windbreak.
Sowing advice:
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Exposure: full sun to partial shade.
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Soil: cool, rich in humus, loose and calcareous-free. It benefits from an addition of compost and tolerates slightly saline soils well, a legacy of its coastal origins.
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Method: sow from March to September, directly in place, 1 cm deep. Stagger sowings every three weeks to spread the harvest throughout the season. See how to sow your seeds.
Care advice:
- Thin to 30 cm apart. Water regularly to keep the soil cool and the leaves tender.
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The key step: cut back the stems regularly and pinch out the tips to delay bolting. Once the flower stalk has formed, the leaves become tough and harvesting stops.
Harvest advice:
- Pick the young leaves as needed, starting from the bottom. The youngest can be eaten raw; the larger ones are best cooked.
Beneficial companion planting:
Benefits for biodiversity:
- It tolerates poor, saline soils, making it possible to grow a leafy vegetable on difficult ground where few species thrive.
- Once it has gone to seed, it provides abundant food for small seed-eating birds in autumn.
Uses:
- Young leaves raw in salads; larger leaves cooked like spinach—in soup, tart, gratin, or sautéed with garlic. Its texture remains firmer than spinach when cooked. See our heirloom and perennial vegetables.
Harvesting your own seeds:
Let one plant go to seed at the end of the season: it will produce abundant flat seeds surrounded by a papery bract, which should be harvested when dry. Orache also readily self-seeds—pull out excess young plants in spring. 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 Auvergne Volcanoes, we choose reproducible, non-hybrid varieties, tested for their germination rate, carefully sorted and packaged, with no chemical treatment. Our conviction: to give gardeners back the ability to sow, year after year, seeds that truly belong to them.
Spinach for hot summers, in its classic form.
