Growcer experiments with baby spinach to overcome common spinach-related challenges in a vertical farm.
Spinach is well known and loved for its nutritional value that’s rich in iron, vitamin C and E, potassium and magnesium. As good as it is on the plate, spinach comes with a few unique growing challenges.
Typically, growing spinach in a vertical farm means irregular, low germination rates and bolting (which is flowering too soon, and dreaded by growers of all kinds). Lower germination rates and bolting reduce the available yield and quality of spinach.
In a previous post, Growcer’s R&D team shared the various experiments conducted to boost germination and reduce bolting in spinach. However, like the true scientists they are, they did not stop there. How can we improve germination, reduce bolting, and improve yields even further?
Baby Spinach Trials
Why
Growcer’s R&D team sought to develop a spinach production system that:
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Reduces the challenges seen with spinach production
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Increases spinach yields
How
The game plan was to experiment with growing baby spinach. This differs from adult spinach in two ways:
1.Baby spinach has a higher planting density (more crops in less space because the plant is smaller!)
What this looks like is increasing the plant density from 64.6 plants/m^2 to 1,458 plants/m^2.
The higher density was achieved by swapping growing rafts for blocks that had more planting slots, closer together. For comparison, Growcer’s normal growing rafts are big with 32 planting slots whereas the new rafts are almost half the size with 308 planting slots. Remember: baby spinach doesn’t need that much room to grow so it could handle the higher plant density of the new rafts.
