Aurora Orach Mix OG (38 days) Heat Loving Vegetable

Orach, Aurora, Greens, Organic,Organically Grown Heirloom  also known as Garden Orache, Red Orach, Mountain Spinach, French Spinach and Sea Purslane

• Superb in salads or cooked as a green,Open-pollinated
• Orach does beautifully as a container plant
• 3 times more Vitamin A than normal spinach
• Seeds Per Packet: 300
• Seeds Per Ounce: 8,000
• Very tasty and easy to grow
• Oregon Tilth Certified Organic Seed

If you love spinach but the plant tends to bolt quickly in your region, try growing orach plants.

Orach is a little known but highly useful leafy green. It’s similar to spinach and can usually replace it in recipes. It’s so similar, in fact, that it’s often referred to as orach mountain spinach. Unlike spinach, however, it doesn’t bolt easily in the summer. This means that it can be planted early in the spring just like spinach, but will keep growing and producing well into the hot months. It’s also different in that it can come in deep shades of red and purple, providing striking color in salads and sautés. But can you grow it in a container

Growing In Containers

Growing orach in pots is not too different from the usual methods of growing leafy greens in containers. There is one thing to keep in mind, though – orach mountain spinach gets big. It can reach 4 to 6 feet (1.2-18 m) in height, so keep this in mind when you’re choosing a container. Pick something large and heavy that won’t tip over easily. The plants can also spread to 1.5 feet (0.4 m) wide, so be careful not to overcrowd them. The good news is that baby orach is very tender and good in salads, so you can sow your seeds much more thickly and harvest most of the plants when they’re only a few inches tall, leaving only one or two to grow to full height. The cut ones should grow back as well, meaning you can harvest the tender leaves again and again.

How to Grow Orach

Orach is grown much like spinach in USDA zones 4-8. Seeds should be sown in full sun to part shade about 2-3 weeks after the last frost for your area.

Sow seeds ¼ to ½ inch deep spaced 2 inches apart in rows a foot to 18 inches apart. With germination temps of between 50-65 degrees F. (10 to 18 C.), seeds should sprout within 7-14 days. Thin the seedlings to 6-12 inches in the row

. The thinnings can be eaten, tossed into salads much as any other baby green. Thereafter, there is little special orach care except to keep the plants moist. Although orach is drought tolerant, the leaves will have better flavor if kept irrigated.

This delicious plant tolerates both alkaline soil and salt and is frost tolerant as well. 

Harvest the tender leaves and stems when plants are 4-6 inches in height, about 40-60 days after sowing. Continue to harvest the young leaves as they mature, leaving the older leaves on the plant. Pinch flower buds to encourage branching and continued production of new leaves. Successive plantings can be made until the weather warms and, in cooler climates, mid-summer plantings can be made for a fall harvest.