Growing Malabar Spinach: A Complete Profile
By Growing Home Greens Team · August 10, 2026
Malabar spinach isn’t a true spinach at all, but a heat-loving vining green with a mild flavor and a thicker, more heat-tolerant texture than actual spinach, which bolts and turns bitter the moment summer heats up.
A genuine climber
Transplant, sowing seed indoors a quarter inch deep, 5 to 6 weeks before transplanting out after all danger of frost has passed, then space plants 6 inches apart in rows 36 inches apart. Direct-seeding after frost also works, sown 1 to 2 inches apart. This is a real vine and needs trellis support to perform well; without one it sprawls rather than climbing, which makes harvest harder and airflow worse.
Keep pinching for a longer harvest
Pick young leaves and stems throughout the season, and pinch the growing tips regularly. Pinching encourages branching, which spreads the harvest out over a longer window instead of concentrating growth into one long, unbranched vine.
Malabar spinach has no recorded companions or antagonists in our data. See the full companion guide for malabar spinach for how it’s tracked. Its need for a trellis makes it a good fit for a vertical spot in the Garden Designer, planted where a true spinach would already have bolted by midsummer.
Source: Malabar Spinach: Key Growing Information, Johnny’s Selected Seeds.
Companion planting guide for Malabar Spinach · Find your planting dates
Typically viable in USDA zones 5-11. Not sure your zone? Look it up by ZIP code.
Method: Either: Start indoors for an earlier harvest, or direct-sow outside for less fuss. Malabar Spinach tolerates either.
See exact start-indoors, direct-sow, and harvest dates for your zone →
How many Malabar Spinach plants fit per square foot?
Spacing: 2 per square foot (square-foot-gardening spacing). Mature height: 6-10 ft.
Varieties worth considering
- Red Malabar spinach (Basella rubra): Johnny's Selected Seeds sells this red-stemmed form as its main malabar spinach offering; the growing requirements are the same as the plain green form, so this is what most gardeners plant. (source)
Cited from the source shown next to each variety. We haven't grown these ourselves yet, so treat this as a research-backed starting point, not a personal endorsement.
Where to buy malabar spinach seeds
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Some links on this page also go to other retailers we may earn a commission from as an affiliate, at no extra cost to you. We only recommend products with a genuine consensus of positive, independent reviews. See the sources cited on each item.
See it growing
Search YouTube for "growing malabar spinach" videos → (a live search, not a hand-picked video; results vary and aren't vetted by us)
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Growing Malabar Spinach: A heat-loving vining green, not a true spinach, with a mild flavor and a texture that holds up better than actual spinach once summer gets hot.
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