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SPINACH: not just for Popeye

Growing, Eating and Preserving

Did you know that you can plant spinach outside while there is still snow on the ground?
In my world (central Alberta), that generally means mid April. In fact, the best time to plant spinach outside was yesterday; the next best time is tomorrow.  Spinach THRIVES in Edmonton’s cool spring.  1st Spring, 2nd Spring, False Spring, Spring around the corner …. You name it, in the spring, spinach is your best friend.  But when the weather gets hot, it’s done.  It’ll bolt (go to seed) in a heartbeat.

Did you know that 100% of the vitamin C in “fresh” spinach is gone within 4 days of harvest?  I can pretty much guarantee that the spinach we buy from the produce department of our local grocery stores was not harvested within the last 96 hours.  And even if it was – are we really going to use it within hours of buying it? 

I confess that when I learned that sad fact, it took the appeal out of so-called “fresh” (store-bought) spinach for me.  But I love fresh spinach, in fact, I’m a huge advocate of it. I just want to make sure it’s FRESH.  Only one way to do that, and that is to grow it myself.   So, that is what I do.

WHEN?

The secret to growing great spinach is to remember that it likes cool weather.  In central Alberta, if we plant it later in May, when we plant the rest of our garden, it’s just getting going by the time the days and nights are pretty warm.  This may be good for you and me, but it’s not so good for spinach.  Keep it cold.  That means – APRIL planting!  As soon as the sun has melted the snow in your predetermined spot and the soil is workable, get out there and plant your seeds. Four to six weeks BEFORE the last frost expected, typically anytime after the beginning of April to EARLY May.  It’s okay if there is snow still around, and it’s okay if it snows right on top of your seeded area, even on top of your newly sprouted spinach plants.  Spinach laughs at spring snows. 

When you’re feeling sorry for yourself because the days are still cooler than you’d like, remind yourself THIS IS GOOD SPINACH WEATHER.  Get OUT THERE and plant some! 

WHERE? 

Choose and area that receives lots of bright sunlight – 6-8 hours a day.  Partial afternoon shade is alright. 

in WHAT?

Spinach loves a rich, well-draining soil – with plenty of regular compost enhancement.  Raised beds are perfect. 
The last thing your spinach seeds want is to sit in a soggy spring puddle of melted snow. 

If you’re in a small space with little or no soil, no worries. Even a small balcony or patio space will help.  Good size containers at least 12-18 inches across and at least 6-8 inches deep can easily hold 4 or 5 spinach plants.  Galvanized pails, plastic pots, terracotta planters or fabric bags will all be comfortable homes as long as their drainage is good. 

HOW?

Direct sow.  If you’re in the country and have a big garden, go ahead and plant in rows 10 inches apart.  I am in the city, and my growing space is considerably less; typically, my rows are 6 inches apart.  For spinach, however, I usually just broadcast the seed in my growing area and let them grow up in a loose spinach forest.  Cover with no more than ½ inch of soil. 

Keep your seeds well-watered until they germinate, which usually takes less than a week, but can take a little longer in cooler temperatures or if you’re growing certain spinach varieties. Once your seedlings develop their first true leaves, you can start thinking about thinning your plants out so each plant is spaced about 6” from its neighbour. 

Spinach enjoys regular and consistent watering and will sulk if it gets too dry.  Water when the top inch is dry to the touch.  Best to water at the bases and keep the leaves as dry as possible. Mulching with a few inches of organic mulch can slow evaporation and reduce the need to water.  *I use chopped straw, but you can also use chopped leaves. Don’t use them both at the same time – best to do one or the other.

Since I don’t grow spinach once the weather starts to get hot, it’s a relatively short season.  I don’t feel the need to fertilize as I top up my growing areas with compost every spring, and the breakdown of the mulch keeps the area well nourished.  Keep your spinach patch well weeded – but again, if you’re mulching, that keeps the weeds at bay.  Mulch will also help prevent issues like mildew because it keeps the moisture off the leaves. 

Once the spinach is ready to start thinning, make sure you’re harvesting regularly. There is no reason you cannot have fresh spinach on the table every other day until the weather gets too warm and it begins to bolt.  By continuing to harvest, you’ll be paying attention to your plants, continuously checking for weeds, pests or drought.  General garden care is all they need.  dryness.  Once they begin to bolt, read the writing on the wall and let them go.  You can now plant that same area with lettuce or flowers, or even some nice herbs like basil that will appreciate the summer heat. 

WHY eat spinach? And why plant it in your garden?

Why should you want to plant spinach? Because it’s good for you, that’s why. 
And because spinach is the segway between winter and spring.  It’s the first garden vegetable you’ll be harvesting.  By the time they start to complain about the warm weather, you’ve got lettuce growing and amaranth and other leafy greens fully present and doing beautifully. 

Spinach is a nutrient-dense leafy green that boosts eye health, lowers blood pressure, supports heart health and aids digestion. Packed with vitamins A, C, K, folate, fibre and iron.  It helps protect your immune system, reduces inflammation and strengthens bones. 

As a rich source of vitamin C, spinach is wonderful served fresh in a salad.  But lightly cooking (which harms the vitamin C of course), increases the availability of other nutrients like iron, calcium and vitamin A.  So use it a lot, in many different ways.  Pairing it with healthy fats like olive oil or avocado oil improves the absorption of nutrients.  

To harvest:
I begin harvesting by gently pulling baby plants that are too close together.  When they get a little bigger (about 3 or 4 weeks old), I start pinching off some of the larger leaves. By the time the plants are fully mature (6 to 8 weeks) they’ll begin to form a rosette shape in the center of the plant.  You can continue to pinch off the bigger leaves, including a center stalk that might sprout up (its starting to bolt).  Then you can pull the whole plant out. 

To use:
Fruits and vegetables begin to deteriorate within the first hour of harvest – in every way, including nutrition.  Nutrient content rapidly declines right after picking, so snip off as much as you plan to use.  Store anything you don’t eat in the fridge, but eat it as soon as possible.  Make sure you’ve shaken all moisture from rinsing it off, and pat dry.  Wrap in a paper towel and place in an air tight container. 

To preserve:

Freezing:
If you need to pick more than you can use, you can always freeze it.  Before freezing, blanch or steam for two minutes in or over a pot of boiling water. Strain immediately and plunge the hot spinach into ice water to stop the cooking.  Once cool, strain again, and squeeze as much moisture out as you can.  You can press the brightly coloured steamed spinach into silicone muffin pans (holds about 1 cup) or silicone ice cube trays that hold ¼ cup.  Lay on the level in your freezer for at least 4 hours. Once they have frozen, you can remove them from the trays and pop them into labelled plastic bags or containers.  This makes the spinach easily accessible to throw into soups, or to lightly chop and throw into stir-fried vegetables, scrambled eggs or omelettes.  Freezing is my preferred way to preserve whatever excess spinach I might have.

Canned Spinach: WHY?
Of all the ways to preserve spinach, this would be the least healthy. Yes its convenient, but “how can it possibly taste good?” says the person who admittedly has no recollection of ever having tasted it. My dad used to buy canned spinach when I was a young child. Must have been some fond childhood memory of his. I remember him opening the can and eating it straight outta the can with a fork. Only once was it sufficiently compelling to me that I asked for a taste. Though I cannot remember what it tasted like, I do recall being profoundly disappointed, and I recall that I didn’t ask for another. Ever. When I was a child, there was no ‘fresh’ spinach on the grocery store shelves, and no frozen spinach either. But there was canned. The only other way was to grow it yourself, but I didn’t grow up in a gardening family, and I didn’t even know one could grow food.

“I’m strong to the finich, cause I eats my spinach. I’m Popeye the Sailor Man.”

A popular cartoon when I was very young was Popeye the Sailor Man, featuring a pipe-smoking, spinach-eating, unusually physically strong sailor man who always had to fight bad guys. When he was getting beaten, all he had to do was eat a can of spinach, and instantly he was strong as an ox, and no one could beat him. As an adult, I wrongly assumed that he was created as a marketing gimmick to get kids to eat their canned spinach, but I’ve since learned that the spinach came later, as some kind of explanation for his strength. His famous quote: “I’m strong to the “finich”, ’cause I eats me spinach.” Whether it was the original intention or not, the consumption of spinach is reported to have increased by a third after Popeye started eating canned spinach on TV in the 60’s. It certainly was enticing to me as a child, and had fresh or frozen spinach been available to the average household I might have learned to like it. As it was, I was in my twenties the first time I tasted fresh spinach. In a salad. In a restaurant. I was immediately converted, and it became a favourite dish in our house for many years.

For the record, canned spinach is NOT good for you, neither commercially canned nor home canned. At 70 minutes per pint, 90 minutes per quart under 11 pounds pressure, there is not enough nutrition left in the jar (or can) to justify the salt.

Freeze Drying:
Once spinach-season is over, my preferred way to serve spinach to my family is freeze dried. The brand I used to buy was Thrive Life, which was the most nutritious way of eating spinach that didn’t come straight out of one’s own organic garden. The company stopped selling to individual homes in 2025, choosing instead to sell exclusively to big businesses. Huge loss to the public.
Freeze dried spinach, if processed correctly and immediately after harvest, is the most nutritious, delicious and convenient way to eat spinach all year long. Second only to FRESH out of your backyard garden – of course.

Any which way you serve it, spinach is a great addition to your garden in the coolness of early spring – aka NOW! 
It has earned an honoured place in my garden. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts, and any tips you might have for growing spinach.

Now go plant some.

Warmly,

Cindy

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Homemade Greek Spanakopita

Spanakopita is a delicious savoury Greek pie made of perfectly crispy layers of phyllo (fee’- low) dough and a soft filling of spinach and feta cheese. Spanaki = spinach, pita = pie, so quite literally it means “spinach pie”. I’ve learned that there are as many different recipes as there are Greek grammas. Kind of like cabbage rolls, and just like the BEST cabbage rolls are the ones your gramma used to make, so it is with spanakopita (spana-KO-pita). I’m sharing with you the way I was taught by a family friend Erie Kourounotis – with a few modifications I’ve made over the years. Yes, it takes a little time to assemble, but it is much easier to make than you might expect. *tip: I find that its better if it sits at least half an hour from the oven before served. That helps the filling to set, and makes the crust easier to cut.

Most of the time in my house Spanakopita is the main dish, with perhaps a Greek salad on the side, and probably some tzatziki or hummus to serve with it, but it also makes a great side dish for a big family dinner, or to bring with you as a potluck dish.

Spanakopita can be made in a large 9×15 baking dish (usually cut into 15 pieces) or individually in the form of rolls or triangular hand pies. I like them in the individual hand pies, but I’ve never made them like that. However you prefer them, that are always a soft delicious spinach-cheese filling wrapped with golden, crispy phyllo pastry.

Crust
Phyllo dough is layered sheets of tissue-thin pastry. You buy it in the freezer section of the grocery store, near other frozen pie crusts. It comes tightly folded in a long thin box, many extremely thin layers of crispy pastry. Keep frozen until you use it, but thaw it out several hours in advance.

Filling
The key ingredients in a classic spanakopita recipe are spinach (or other leafy greens) and feta cheese. Erie taught me to use fresh greens, but I discovered that I can fit a lot more greens in if I lightly steam them first, then roughly chop. You can also use frozen spinach – thawed first and completely strained. Squeeze ALL liquid out or you will have a soggy spanakopita (bleh). I generally prefer to use greens I’ve freshly picked from the garden, and lots of them. Swiss Chard, Amaranth, assorted other garden greens like tatsoi or bok choi – or whatever you have on hand.

I had some greens in the fridge from a day or two ago, and picked lots of fresh greens in the morning from the garden. Lightly steam just until they wilt and are a beautiful bright emerald colour. Then coarsely chop to make it easier to incorporate the remaining ingredients throughout.

To add flavour: dill, onions and garlic. I use a LOT of dill – at least a full cup, depending on how big the batch is. I also use garlic and onion. I know some people use parsley, I don’t. No particular reason except that Erie – didn’t.

I picked a bunch of dill in the morning, snipped the green ferny parts off the stems, swished in cool water to clean and then drained. Finely chopped.

To bind all ingredients together: eggs.
I never use salt because the feta cheese is quite salty already, but I do like pepper.

OLIVE OIL. Because you must. Spanakopita cannot be spanakopita without olive oil.
* I have seen people put olive oil in the filling – I don’t do that. I use it all on the pastry.

Assemble everything in place, beat the eggs separately, then mix into coarsely chopped greens.
In the picture in back: eggs. Left to right: olive oil, at least 1 cup, crumbled feta, freeze dried chopped onions* and minced garlic, loose Italian parsley (I don’t generally add parsley but I picked it for another dish and I had some left over so I added it), chopped fresh dill.

SPANAKOPITA

– Enough for a 9×15 glass baking dish
Ingredients:
– package of phyllo pastry, thawed at least 6 hours. I usually take it out of the freezer the night before and thaw in the fridge. Set it on the counter while you assemble your filling, BUT DON’T TAKE OUT OF ITS WRAPPING, otherwise it will dry out.

Doesn’t matter which brand. I’ve tried several and so far, they’re all pretty much the same in my opinion.

– green leafy vegetables: spinach, Swiss Chard, spinach, Asian greens of all sorts, lambs quarters, amaranth (pig weed), orach, . . . . usually I use an assortment of whatever I can find ready in my garden. You can even add a little bit of kale.  The more you use, the thicker your pie will be with beautiful, wholesome GREENS! I shoot for at least 10 cups of finished steamed greens. 
– 3 or 4 eggs (depending on how much green you’re using)
– 2 or 3 cups feta cheese, crumbled (depending on how much green you’re using)
– LOTS of fresh dill weed (1-2 cups finely chopped)
– 2 to 4 cloves garlic minced
– 1 large onion chopped (in this picture I used freeze dried onions because I didn’t have any fresh garden onions on hand)
– 1 Tablespoon pepper (you can use less if you’re not a huge pepper fan). NO salt.
– olive oil, probably about a cup(ish).

Thoroughly mix everything together. I find the easiest way to do this is with my hands.

Directions:

1.    Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.   Wash greens and set aside to steam or blanch. Fill clean sink with COLD water to plunge your steam greens in to stop the cooking process.  Use ice if desired. 

2.    Heat a large skillet over high flame, to steam your greens in.  Add one cup water and bring it to a boil.

3.    Coarsely chop washed greens and add large handfuls to the HOT water in skillet.  Cover with lid to steam, and cook JUST TILL vegetables become a brilliant bright green. Don’t over cook, you’re just looking for it to be slightly wilted. Remove from heat and plunge into cold water to cool quickly. 

4.    Repeat till all the greens are steamed and cooled.  Strain well, and roughly chop again. Be sure to squeeze all remaining water out of them.

5.    Add strained greens to a large bowl for mixing, and set aside.   

6.    In the same skillet, wipe out the water and heat a 1/3 cup olive oil. Saute chopped onion and minced garlic till soft and translucent.  Add to bowl of cooled, strained greens.  

7.    In a small bowl beat the eggs and add to greens and toss to thoroughly combine by hand.     

8. Crumble feta cheese, and add to bowl of greens, add chopped dill and black pepper.  Toss by hand to thoroughly combine.

9.    Pour about a cup of olive oil in a shallow bowl that you can dip your hand into. Unroll your

Assembling your masterpiece:

10. Lightly brush oil over the inside of baking dish. Place two to three sheets of phyllo dough in the pan folded over in half to fit; use a pastry brush or your hand in oil to lightly brush the oil onto pastry.  Repeat this step with 5 or more phyllo sheets (use at least 6 layers, I usually use half the package of phyllo).   Plan to wipe oil over top every 2nd or 3rd layer of single ply door.

Dip your hand in the oil and drizzle it all over the surface, spreading it with your hand.

11. Spread the mixture of greens evenly over the phyllo sheets, gently patting down. I usually end up with about 2 inches deep of greens. The more the better, they’ll still cook down a bit.

12. Cover the vegetable-cheese layer with remaining phyllo sheets, brushing each one with olive oil. Tuck the excess phyllo dough into the edges.  Make sure the top is brushed completely with oil. 

*hint: purists oil between every layer, but that is a lotta oil. I’ve had spanakopita I’ve purchase from specialty bakeries that dripped oil when you eat them. That is too much oil for me. I know I’m killing tradition, but you can make these kinds of decisions when it’s your own kitchen.

13. * optional: you can use a knife to score the top of the phyllo (don’t cut all the way through, just through the top phyllo sheets) to create about 12 – 15 pieces.

14. Bake in preheated 350F oven for 45-60 minutes or until the phyllo turns golden brown. If its browning too quickly, cover loosely with tin foil for the last 15 or so minutes. Remove from oven and allow it to set 15-30 minutes to set up. Then, finish cutting into pieces.

15. You can enjoy this dish warm, or as leftovers at room temperature or even cold. 

    If you didn’t use all the pastry, wrap any remaining phyllo layers back up and put into original package to refrigerate.
    They don’t last very long in the fridge.  I usually simply divide the package in half for top and bottom, and use the whole package in one large recipe.  Or if you have enough, make a smaller dish in addition to the large one. 

    give it at least 15-20 out of the oven before you finish cutting the pieces

    I’ve been making this dish since about 1990, and at the beginning Dan wasn’t a big fan. That suited me just find; he’d have a piece at supper and that was that. I wrapped the remaining pieces individually in plastic to take for lunch the rest of the week. When Mom moved in, we did pretty much the same thing, with slightly less leftover.

    finished spanakopita – ready to eat.
    I recommend serving it NOT hot so the filling sticks together better.

    One day at dinner, Dan had a second piece – he claimed he was “starting to really like it“. But I had a system, and in my system there was no room for Dan to start “really liking it“. I told him so, but we had turned a corner – never to turn the clock back. Dan is usually a little more reluctant to try new foods than I am. Nevertheless, he had turned that corner and I needed to adjust to having less leftovers. I always tell people that “Dan is allergic to anything ‘green’. He thinks if green food touches his fork he’ll die.” This is only half joking. When I met him the only thing green he’d eat was iceberg lettuce (hardly green), and fresh peas (if he himself stood in his grampa’s pea patch). He’s come a lonnnnnng way baby!

    I make spanakopita as often as I can in the summer time, using whatever green leafy vegetables are ready in my garden. But I specifically grow swiss chard for that reason. I think of Erie K. every time I do, and I am grateful to her for teaching me how to make it. It truly has become a household favourite. I started making it because I loved it, and one by one over the years, each individual in our family went from thinking it was okay to acquiring a serious taste for spanakopita. Even Dan!

    I hope you’ll give this dish a try, Please let me know how it works out.

    Enjoy!

    Cindy Suelzle