Companion Planting: 4 Plants to Grow with Spinach

Spinach is one of the world's healthiest vegetables, and it's also a delight to grow in the garden. Some specific plants can even help spinach grow faster, increasing yields and reducing crop concerns.

Advantages of Growing Spinach

Spinach flourishes in cool-weather gardening because of its high iron concentration and several culinary uses. Spinach has been shown to grow effectively with a wide range of other seasonal crops. This nutrient-dense vegetable is frequently the first produced in the spring. It's also one of the last trees to fall in the fall.

Spinach requires very little upkeep and can be harvested in short periods. As further, spinach isn't as susceptible to viruses or pests compared to other common greens such as kale or arugula.

In hot temperatures, though, spinach is prone to becoming bitter and bolting. Certain companion plants can provide shade to spinach plants in the month of summer and prevent them from becoming bitter. 

Let us discuss such companion plants to grow along with spinach which can not only provide support to the spinach plants but can also subsequently help in increasing the overall yield.

Kale

Kale is a Brassica family plant that thrives when grown with spinach. Kale can be grown as baby salad greens or as full-grown plants with spring vegetables. Kale, like spinach, is cold-tolerant and ideal for succession planting in the early spring or late fall. They're also botanically and physically distinct.

Kale will not compete for nutrients or attract the same pests as other greens. The main advantage of interplanting with kale is that it allows making use of unused space. 

Cauliflower

Cauliflower is a huge plant that is not suited for small-space gardening. The biggest benefit of combining cauliflower with spinach is that you can make the most of your space. You can harvest two crops from the same amount of land if you seed spinach beside newly transplanted cauliflower. By the time the slow-growing cauliflower becomes too big, you'll have finished harvesting the spinach and let the cauliflower take over. You won't have to worry about below-ground rivalry since these plants have separate root zones and demand different nutrients.

Garlic

Garlic is sown in the fall and harvested in the summer, which is the polar opposite of most garden veggies. This makes it the ideal partner for spinach, which thrives in the cold and, in most areas, can equal garlic's hardiness through the winter. If you want to get the most out of a small space, carefully timed companion intercropping, such as this combination, will provide extra harvests with little effort. Garlic dedicates much of its life underground, so there's plenty of room for a shallow-rooted, fast-growing crop like spinach in late fall and winter.

Tomato

In the hottest portions of the season, the gentle shade of tomato plants keeps the spinach from bolting (flowering). Tomatoes are quite simple to raise, as long as you are prepared to deal with pest and disease issues. They're wonderful for low-maintenance crops since they can give shade as they get larger. Tomato leaves serve as a useful shield for spinach.