A reliable spinach, with oval, dark green and smooth leaves, with a pleasant and mild flavour.
About the variety. Matador is a mid-early variety with fast growth and high yield, highly valued for spring and autumn cultivation, with good suitability for overwintering through the winter months.
Indicative windows; adjust them to your local climate.
Suitable for pots
Frost hardy
Direct sowing
Growing guide
How to grow matador spinach?
A step-by-step growing guide, from sowing to harvest.
Sowing
Sow direct two or three centimetres deep in rows and thin to twenty centimetres. It germinates best in cool soil, between 10 °C and 18 °C, and fails almost completely above 25 °C, which makes late summer and autumn sowings the safest. It dislikes transplanting. Sow every three weeks through the cool season. At about 20 centimetres tall, this variety grows well in a pot twenty centimetres deep with drainage holes. Use a pot at least twenty five centimetres deep with drainage holes, and expect to water more often, because a pot dries out far faster than open ground.
Soil
It wants fertile, cool, free draining soil and above all not acid: the ideal pH is between 6.5 and 7.5, and in acid ground the leaves yellow and the plant never gets going. Rich in organic matter with good water retention. Do not sow where chard or beetroot has just come out, because they are the same family and share the soil borne diseases.
Climate
A cold weather crop, ideal between 10 °C and 18 °C, and hardy to several degrees of frost. Long days and heat make it bolt within days, which is why late spring sowings almost always fail. The Portuguese coast offers close to ideal conditions and allows harvests over much of the year. Inland in Portugal and Spain, concentrate the crop in autumn, winter and early spring, because from June onwards heat and long days push it to bolt and turn bitter. In France it grows easily from spring to autumn, and in Germany the whole summer works because it is rarely too hot. Light shade over the middle of the day extends the harvest in any warm climate.
Fertilisation
Because the leaf is the crop, nitrogen matters, but in moderate, slow release form. Mature compost before sowing and one or two waterings with liquid organic feed during growth give tender leaves without building up nitrates. Heavy late feeding makes the leaf brittle, attracts aphids and shortens shelf life after harvest.
Watering
Water regularly to keep the soil moist. Lack of water is the direct trigger for bolting and toughens the leaf. Water in the morning at the base. In sandy soil or a pot check every day in late spring, when the plant drinks most and a single dry day sets it bolting.
Weed control
Sown densely, the crop covers the soil itself and keeps weeds well in check. The work is concentrated in the first two or three weeks: hand weed or run a hoe very shallowly between the rows. Avoid disturbing the soil once the canopy closes, so you do not damage roots or bring fresh weed seed to the surface.
Pest control
Slugs and snails are enemy number one for this crop and can clear a whole sowing in one damp night. Use barriers of ash, eggshell or sawdust around the bed, collect them at night with a torch and fall back on ferric phosphate if needed. Aphids settle in the heart of the plant and are hard to wash out later: apply potassium soap at the first sign and encourage ladybirds and hoverflies with flower strips. Leaf miner draws pale tunnels in the leaf, which are simply removed by hand. Thrips and flea beetle attack mainly in dry warm weather.
Diseases
Spinach downy mildew makes yellow blotches on the upper surface and a grey felt underneath, and thrives in cool damp weather. Sow less densely, water in the morning, ensure airflow and use a three year rotation. Leaf spot and root rot appear in waterlogged, poorly drained soil. Yellow leaves and a stalled plant in acid soil are not disease: lime the ground before the next sowing and the problem disappears.
Harvest
Pick leaf by leaf from five or six weeks, always the outer ones, leaving the centre to keep producing. You can also cut the whole plant three centimetres above the ground so it regrows. As soon as the flower stem appears the leaf turns bitter: harvest everything at that point. Allow about 50 to 60 days from sowing to the first harvest of this variety. The reference colour is dark green, and that is what tells you it is ready.
