Spinacia oleracea
Origin: Palestine
Improvement status: Landrace
Seeds per packet: ~70
Germination tested 12/2025: 80%
Life cycle: Annual or Biennial
This Palestinian spinach from the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library is a very unique spinach with an intense, delicious flavor. Its pointy, dark-green leaves are used in stews and pies with onions, olive oil and wild sumac. Unlike commercial spinach, this special heirloom has the old-fashioned spiky seeds that look almost like celestial objects — think galaxies or nebulas. All spinach once had seeds like this, but the trait has been bred out of modern spinaches (along with who-knows-what other traits). This is a Ba’al (rain-fed) winter variety that is typically planted in late fall. It can handle small to moderate amounts of cold and even some snow. A generous plant, it typically offers several cuttings throughout the season. However, if planted during warm months, it will quickly bolt.
We grow and offer seeds like these, and work closely with our dear friends at the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, in the hopes that our doing so helps to remind people around the world — many of whose governments, like our own, are complicit in the Israeli oppression of Palestine — that Palestinians are not the evil monsters portrayed by their Israeli oppressors. They are people of the land who want and deserve freedom. They want to plant the seeds of their beloved plants, just as all the rest of us to. They want to cook their beloved dishes with these plants. And they want to share them tenderly with the people they love.
These seeds were produced in Hurley, New York, in a collaboration between Vivien Sansour's Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, Experimental Farm Network, and Hudson Valley Farm Hub. 50% of the proceeds will be donated to the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library to support their critically important work preserving a vital part of Palestinian culture in the face of political oppression, systematic violence, and cultural erasure.
