I had a spinach salad in a restaurant the other day and LOVED it! I like it better than lettuce! ....While I was enjoying my salad, I decide that I would grow my own this summer, only to find several varieties on the seed websites.
Does anyone know what varieties are good for salads, or are they all good? The leaves in my salad were about as round as a walnut with 1" stems on them, and was medium green in color.
For salads, what's the best variety of spinach?
You can grow almost any variety of spinach. Pick the leaves at that size for 'baby' spinach for salads, or let them get bigger if you want to cook and use it. My personal favorite variety is Space hybrid - it lasts a long time before bolting, and if I plant it in the fall, it over winters nicely to get a very early spring crop.
We grow Tyee for our restaurant customers, it is savoyed, has a wonderful flavor with a little heavier texture than some we've grown.
Johnny's Seeds has both of them! :) Yay!!
....Hey, what does savoy mean? I looked in Gardenology but it doesn't have a definition for savoy, and dictionary.com said something about French history..... :-S Je ne sais pas!
Savoy cabbage is deeply wrinkled and textured.
Savoy means the leaves are wrinkly in texture. If the leaves show some wrinkles but not a lot, it's called 'semi-savoyed'. Savoy leaves tend to catch more dirt and need a good cleaning if the plants are not mulched well, but it does give them a better texture than smooth leaves.
Ahhhh.......thanks! :)