What it is
New Zealand Spinach (Tetragonia tetragonioides) is in the Aizoaceae family. Not a true spinach, but a heat- and salt-tolerant sprawler that gives spinach-like greens all summer.
How to grow it
It wants full sun, water it low, and give it tolerant, even sandy soil. Target a soil pH around 6.0–7.0. Space plants about 12–18 in apart. Expect roughly 55–70. Warm-season; heat-loving.
How it's used
New Zealand Spinach is used: cooked (briefly blanched).
🔎 How to identify it
- Thick triangular fleshy leaves
- Sprawling succulent stems
- Tiny yellow flowers
Edibility
How to grow & propagate new zealand spinach
Everything I've worked out about starting this one, keeping it alive through a Texas year, and turning one plant into many — free.
How to propagate new zealand spinach
New Zealand Spinach is grown from seed. Start it in the season it favors, keep the seedbed evenly moist until it's up, and thin to give each plant room to size up.
Growing new zealand spinach in Texas
Give it full sun and tolerant, even sandy soil. Match the spot to the plant and most of the battle is already won.
This one thrives in heat that flattens other plants, so it earns its space through a Texas summer. Get it established before the worst of July, keep water steady, and it'll produce when little else will.
Once it's rooted in, this is a low-water plant — overwatering does more harm than drought here. Water deeply to establish, then back off and let it prove how tough it is.
Harvesting
Figure on roughly 55–70 before you're harvesting. Harvest at peak and keep harvesting — most vegetables produce harder the more you pick, and one left to over-mature tells the plant its job is done. The part you're after: leaves and tips.
Making more for free
Every seed we sell is open-pollinated, which means you can save your own from the best plants and it'll grow true next year. Let a few of your strongest plants finish and go to seed, dry it fully, and store it cool and dark. That's the whole point of heirlooms — buy once, grow forever.
Part of the free Texas Roots plant database, compiled by Jordan Polasek from his greenhouse in El Campo, Texas. Free to read and share. If it helped, the best thanks is to grow something.