Spinacia oleracea Seeds | Bloomsdale Spinach
LATIN NAME: Spinacia oleracea
COMMON NAME: Bloomsdale Spinach
Plant Profile
Like any spinach, Bloomsdale is a low annual rosette of thick, dark leaves, dioecious in its flowering life, with females bearing their seed clusters in the leaf axils. What the cultivar adds is extreme savoy: the blade is puckered and blistered like a sheet of crumpled cloth, the petioles stand stout, and the whole plant holds a deeper green than flat-leaved lines through the coldest part of the season.
The classic seed listing is ‘Bloomsdale Long Standing’, and the phrase is literal: the line stands in the field a long while before bolting. In a dioecious crop where males climb and finish early, a selection that delays the upward push of any plant extends the picking window, and that, more than flavour, is why the name survived a century of catalogues.
Water steadily at the root and keep the leaf dry at night to hold downy mildew out of the puckers. Slugs love the shelter of a savoyed crown, so check under the leaves after rain. Where the winter is long, a cold frame over the row turns the bed into a standing larder; lift the lid in mild spells or the plants will stretch. When a plant sends up its bolt, cut it whole and let its neighbours fill the gap. For a flat-leaved contrast in the same cool bed, Spinach seed lists the species’ general lines, and Arugula sows alongside it for a peppery cut.
Science & Biotechnology
Spinach’s iron fame is half legend, but the leaf’s chemistry is genuinely rich: lutein and other carotenoids colour the deep green, folate concentrates in the blade, and the tang of oxalic acid runs through the sap as calcium oxalate. Blanching or pairing with dairy moderates the oxalate, which is the practical reading behind the old creamed-spinach tradition. As with the species generally, nitrate management in the petioles is a live research question, and the savoyed types share the dioecious sex system that makes Spinacia oleracea a genetics model.
Uses & Benefits
The crinkle is more than looks. Blistered tissue stiffens the leaf so it stands up to frost and snow load rather than lying flat into the mud, and the puckered surface sheds rain instead of pooling it. The trade-off is washing: sand lodges in the folds, so home cooks rinse savoyed leaves twice and market packers prefer flats for pre-washed bags. That single texture trait has split the spinach industry into two branches, and Bloomsdale anchors the winter-garden branch.
Harvest from the outside of the rosette, taking a few leaves per plant and leaving the crown, or shear whole plants a centimetre above ground for a cut-and-regrow second round. The thick savoyed leaf wants real cooking: steamed and pressed, folded into cream, layered in lasagne, or wilted with garlic into a winter omelette. The texture stands up where flat spinach would collapse to a smear, which is exactly why cooks keep the crinkled type for winter pots.
Growing from Seed
Spinach is one of the few kitchen greens that sweetens in frost, and savoyed types are the hardiest branch of it. The rosette presses low as cold arrives, cell contents concentrate, and the leaf continues to grow in mild spells through winter. Gardeners in mild-winter regions sow it in autumn for cutting straight through the cold months; where winters are severe, a low frame or a mulch of straw holds the crown until spring growth resumes.
Prepare a bed of loam, generous compost, and a little coarse sand, firm and moisture-retentive but never sour. Sow at one to two centimetres depth in rows 25 to 30 centimetres apart, thinning at the two true-leaf stage to leave strong plants 8 to 10 centimetres apart. For an autumn crop, sow while the soil still holds summer warmth and the rosettes will size up as the light fades; for spring, sow as soon as the ground can be worked.
Our Take
My rule has settled over the years: flats for spring bags, Bloomsdale for everything the frost will touch. It is slower to make a plant than modern hybrids, and it repays the patience twice over once the weather turns.
Related Reading
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