Heirloom
Monstrueux De Viroflay is a gourmet French heirloom spinach developed before 1866, prized for its dramatically oversized leaves that stretch up to 10 inches long with a smooth, deep green color. This fast-growing cultivar reaches harvest in just 50 days, making it perfect for gardeners seeking quick, generous yields of tender greens in cool seasons. The variety thrives in temperatures between 45, 75°F and tolerates partial shade, adapting well to fall planting when many other crops are winding down.
Partial Shade
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3-9
6in H x ?in W
Annual
Moderate
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What sets Monstrueux De Viroflay apart is the sheer scale of its foliage, those massive, smooth leaves are unusually large for spinach and deliver impressive harvests from compact plants. The heirloom pedigree speaks to over 150 years of cultivation, selected and refined by French gardeners who valued both productivity and quality. Its cool-season vigor and frost hardiness make it an ideal choice for extending your growing season into autumn, when the flavor actually improves.
This spinach is grown for fresh harvest and use in the kitchen, where the large, tender leaves make it ideal for cooking down into sauces, wilting into soups, or incorporating into gratins and other classic preparations where volume matters. The smooth leaf texture also makes it pleasant raw in salads when harvested young, though gardeners typically prize this variety for cooked applications where its substantial size becomes an asset rather than a liability.
Direct sow seeds outdoors in cool weather—spring as soon as soil can be worked, or in late summer for fall harvest. Plant seeds 1/2 inch deep, spacing rows 2 inches apart. Seeds typically sprout in 7–14 days at ideal temperatures. For successive harvests, sow every 2–3 weeks during the cool season.
Begin harvesting outer leaves once plants reach 4, 6 inches tall, typically around 50 days from sowing. Pick individual leaves from the outside of the plant, working inward, which encourages continued growth and extends the harvest window. For a full plant harvest, cut the entire rosette just above soil level. Morning harvesting, after dew has dried, yields the crispest leaves. The large leaves are ready to use immediately or can be refrigerated for several days.
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“This variety emerged from 19th-century French horticulture, developed before 1866 as part of a tradition of selecting spinach cultivars for superior leaf size and quality. French gardeners in the Viroflay region, near Paris, became known for developing market garden varieties, and this heirloom bears the hallmark of that meticulous breeding work. The name itself anchors the variety to a place and a time when seed saving and variety improvement were integral to regional agricultural identity. It has endured because gardeners and seed savers recognized something worth preserving: a spinach that produces abundantly without sacrificing the flavor and texture that make homegrown greens incomparable to commercial produce.”