Spinach, or Spinacia oleracea, is a cool weather vegetable native to Asia. It likes to grow in the spring and fall in loose, well draining soil with plenty of nutrition-- but it can be coaxed into growing into the summer. Growing spinach with companion plants can help to extend its season, but it can also reduce the likelihood of pest damage and improve the soil condition.
This guide covers what to plant with spinach, why each companion grows well with spinach, and a few things to avoid planting near it in order to keep both plants happy.
Skip Ahead: Companion planting benefits • The best spinach companion plants • Bad spinach companions • Spinach pests • Companion planting chart
Benefits of companion planting with spinach
Spinach is not a companion planting powerhouse like onions or marigolds, but it does offer some benefits. It grows quickly and has a low growing habit, which means it can fill and shade the soil between other (perhaps more exciting) crops.
Here are a few more ways that companion planting with spinach can improve your harvests:
- Providing shade: Spinach is a cool season vegetable, so planting it in the shade of a taller companion plant can help to keep its soil cool and extend its harvest window.
- Covering soil: As a low-growing vegetable, spinach is fantastic for shading the empty soil around other, taller plants. This can improve moisture and nutrient retention, and suppress weeds.
- Maximizing space: Spinach takes just a month to harvest, so it makes a fantastic catch crop to fill the space between slower-maturing plants. This is a great way to make the most of your garden space; it gives you an extra harvest while protecting and improving the soil.
- Deterring pests: Spinach won't deter pests, but it can benefit from proximity to other pest-deterring companions like alliums and marigolds.
- Attracting beneficial insects: Spinach companions like parsley will attract beneficial predatory insects that prey on spinach pests, improving the health of both your garden and your spinach.
The best spinach companion plants
Plants that grow well with spinach generally share part of its growing window (spring and fall) and its growing conditions: fertile, loose soil with consistent moisture.
Spinach grows particularly well with other leafy greens, including herbs like cilantro and parsley. These companion pairings make for a wonderfully low-maintenance vegetable bed in the spring and fall, but they won't do much to deter pests.
On the other hand, planting spinach with main crop vegetables like onions, potatoes, peas, and carrots can bridge the 'hungry gap' in late spring, when there's lots growing in the garden but not much left in the larder.
Spinach is easy to grow given appropriate conditions, so you may have success growing it with a wide range of vegetables, flowers, and herbs. Here are a few that are likely to do particularly well:
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1. Legumes
As a leafy green, spinach grows best in rich soil with enough nitrogen to spur lots of green growth. Legumes like peas and beans famously fix nitrogen in the soil, and while most of this nitrogen is likely taken back up by the legumes themselves, there is some evidence that neighboring plants benefit as well.
Spinach is a cool season crop, so it shares a growing window with sweet peas in the spring. In the late spring, when snap peas and beans are getting established, it'll be time to harvest spinach. You'll have another window one to two months before the last frost to plant spinach at the base of any remaining legumes.
Read More: The 10 Best Companion Plants for Peas
2. Alliums
Planting spinach with onions or garlic is a space efficient companion pairing, as spinach's long taproot won't compete with the allium bulbs for nutrients. Companion planting with onions will also help reduce damage from aphids, cabbage loopers, and diamondback moths, and may help with damage from aphids and leafhoppers.
In the fall, spinach can grow as a catch crop between garlic bulbs. If you winterize your raised beds, it can even grow on through the winter and into the spring. In the spring, sow spinach between onions with other onion companions like lettuce and radish to maximize space and mark the rows.
Read More: The 20 Best Companion Plants for Onions
3. Potatoes
Spinach and potatoes will grow well together for a short period in the spring. Spinach sown between just-planted potatoes will germinate quickly, marking the potato rows and giving you a nice catch crop before the potatoes become established.
Radish and lettuces are two more potato companion plants that serve the same purpose. Once you harvest the spinach in the late spring, the potatoes' foliage will grow to fill the space between plants.
4. Carrots
Carrots and spinach both grow best in well drained, light, fertile soil and full sun. They also both thrive in the spring and fall, making them great companion plants in a cool season raised bed.
Though spinach is a leafy green and will appreciate nitrogenous soil to some extent, don't give this pairing too much compost. Excess nutrition in the soil, especially in the form of nitrogen, can lead to carrots cracking and splitting.
Read More: The 10 Best Companion Plants for Carrots
5. Lettuce
Spinach and lettuce have identical requirements and make for a low maintenance, space efficient companion planting. This pairing won't necessarily ward off pests or attract beneficial insects, but it will make pest damage less likely for each plant than if they were planted on their own.
Grow lettuce and spinach side-by-side or interplanted in the spring and fall. Give them a very light, well drained, fertile soil and water them deeply as needed.
Read More: 8 Easy-to-Grow Summer Lettuce Varieties
6. Radish
Radishes are a great trap crop for flea beetles, which prefer radish leaves to nearly everything. They'll also enjoy the same growing conditions as spinach: light, fertile soil that drains well and a position in full sun.
Radishes and spinach sown together will mature around the same time, making them ideal companion plants for a quick spring or fall crop.
7. Strawberries
Spinach is one of the best strawberry companion plants, as it can help protect strawberries from fungal diseases and insects. Spinach produces a poison called saponin, which can help kill bacterial and fungal pathogens, and repel or kill insects.
As strawberries are particularly vulnerable to fungal diseases due to their low hanging fruit, they shouldn't be planted with other fruiting plants that are particularly susceptible to fungal diseases. Planting them with spinach gives the organic gardener a way to maximize space while reducing the odds of infection.
8. Cilantro
Cilantro and spinach grow well together in full sun and rich soil during the spring and fall months. As the summer approaches, cilantro will benefit from growing in the shade of taller cilantro companion plants.
9. Chives
Growing chives with spinach may help repel aphids in the spring and early summer. Spinach also shares some chive companions; carrots, cilantro, parsley, lettuce, radishes, and potatoes would all grow very well interplanted with chives and spinach.
Read More: Onion Chives vs. Garlic Chives: What's the Difference?
10. Parsley
Parsley is a biennial herb that's fantastic for attracting beneficial insects and, once it flowers, pollinators. If you struggle with pest control, the predatory insects drawn to parsley could help.
Parsley and spinach grow best in the same conditions, and they share companions like chives, radishes, and potatoes. As the summer approaches, tall parsley plants can also provide shade for spinach, extending their harvest.
If you decide to plant parsley and spinach together, avoid interplanting them with close parsley relatives like cilantro, dill, or fennel; planting these near parsley will make them more likely to attract pests like carrot fly.
Read More: The Best and Worst Companion Plants for Parsley
11. Marigolds
If you struggle with aphids, nematodes, whitefly, flea beetles, or brassica pests, companion planting with marigolds is a great way to deter them.
There's extensive research on French and African marigolds-- as well as calendula (pot marigolds)-- showing that it can have a marked impact on pest populations and yields for a variety of plants.
Read More: The 16 Best Companion Plants for Marigolds
Bad companion plants for spinach
Certain plants don't grow well with spinach, or actively inhibit spinach growth. It's always worth experimenting and seeing what works in your garden, but these plants generally don't thrive next to spinach:
1. Brassicas
Though spinach is technically a member of the goosefoot family (Chenopodioideae), it's often treated as a brassica for crop rotation purposes. Whether you treat spinach as a brassica or a leafy green in your garden, it's best to avoid planting it near cabbage, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, and other brassicas.
Brassica family plants are susceptible to myriad pests, including some caterpillars that can completely defoliate a plant in a short time. As spinach also attracts some of these brassica pests, you can protect both groups by interplanting them with other companions like alliums, instead.
Read More: The 10 Best Companion Plants for Broccoli
2. Fennel
Though fennel and spinach would enjoy the same conditions, fennel is likely to stunt spinach's growth. This herb releases a toxin in the soil that actually inhibits the growth of many nearby plants. It's a fantastically beneficial plant to grow for pollinators and biodiversity, but it'll do better in a flower garden than with vegetables.
3. Mint
Mint spreads too voraciously to make it a good companion plant for spinach or most other vegetables. That said, it can offer pest deterring benefits when planted near vegetables-- as long as it's contained. If you do want to incorporate it into your veg garden, consider growing mint in a pot.
Read More: The 13 Best Companion Plants for Mint
4. Rosemary
Though it's useful for attracting beneficial insects like hoverflies and protecting certain vegetables from pests, rosemary's soil needs are too extreme for most other plants. Rosemary likes very well draining, poor soil and short periods of drought-- not ideal conditions for spinach.
Read More: The 11 Best Companion Plants for Rosemary
Common spinach pests
Spinach attracts a roster of familiar garden pests, most of which eat its leaves. Some, like cabbage loopers and worms, can be picked off individually. Others, like aphids and mites, can be sprayed off with a hose blast.
- Cabbage loopers
- Beet armyworms
- Aphids (green peach and potato aphids)
- Mites (spinach crown mites)
- Spinach flea beetle
- Wireworms
- Leaf miners
Spinach rarely suffers serious pest infestations. Preventative measures can be effective-- companion planting with onions and marigolds, for instance, will likely reduce pest issues all around. Similarly, avoiding planting spinach with brassicas can reduce the likelihood of cabbage loopers finding it. But as ever, the best defense against pests is planting into the right soil and sun conditions and maintaining a healthy plant.