The real thing is tough to cultivate here. But plenty of easy-to-grow plants provide us with tasty leaves for a salad or stir-fry.
By JOHN A. STARNES JR.
Published July 29, 2006
[Photo: John A. Starnes Jr.]
Surinam spinach is related to the garden flower purslane. It makes a lovely 2-foot-tall border for a landscape bed, where it is easy to snip off a harvest for dinner.
True spinach Spinacia oleracea can be frustrating to grow here in Florida. It's a cool-season crop that can suddenly bolt into flower in a winter heat wave. The short plants get gritty with sand. And you have to grow a lot of it to get a decent harvest. Grow it in summer? Forget it!
But the summer months make effortless the culture of several tasty, heat-loving plants that add color and visual texture to even a formal landscape.
Imagine a summer salad brimming with crisp, organically grown, nutritious leaves, or a stir-fry or casserole loaded with colorful nutritious "spinach" that grows like a weed topped with lovely edible flowers. No kidding!
My favorite is Surinam spinach (Talinum triangulare). Its bright green, slightly tangy, crunchy leaves and stems grow better the hotter and muggier it gets. Related to the garden flower purslane, it makes a lovely 2-foot-tall border for a landscape bed, where it is easy to snip off a harvest for dinner. Try it raw in salads or tossed in at the end of a stir-fry. I love the bright green color it adds to an omelet. You may have seen it at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota, or in the gardens of Thai neighbors.
Surinam spinach roots very easily from stems just stuck into the ground, and it casts seeds that come up a few months later. I like to top salads with the crunchy pink blooms that cover it perpetually.
Malabar spinach (Basella alba) loves to climb up a fence or trellis, where it can show off its lovely green or maroon leaves and black, berrylike seeds. Its taste and texture are oh-so-close to table spinach. It is easy to grow from seed, and it roots from cuttings too. It could not be happier in our summers if given full sun and good, fertile soil.
Good sources of seeds for the greens mentioned here are Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds in Missouri (www.rareseeds.com, (417) 924-8917) and Evergreen Y.H. Enterprises in California (www.evergreenseeds.com, (714) 637-5769).
Ordinary sweet potatoes (Ipomea batatas) and the white-fleshed Asian and Hispanic types (boniato) produce lots of tender leaves all summer and fall.
When cooked for about 8 minutes with sea salt and butter, they'd pass any blindfold test against regular, hard-to-grow spinach. The leaves have more vitamin A and none of spinach's oxalic acid, which some people avoid because it inhibits calcium absorption.
I grow an especially vigorous Asian white sweet potato given me years ago by my Filipino neighbor Margie. Friends love it, and it makes a lovely, dense, aggressive ground cover for choking weeds. One piece of stem stuck into damp soil roots quickly for a permanent source of summer "spinach" and tender sweet potatoes each fall and winter. Or just buy and plant any type of sweet potato in full sun and rich soil each spring and summer.
Several species of amaranth have long been grown as spinach substitutes under names like Tampala and Chinese spinach. Some have lovely burgundy leaves that turn green when cooked.
They add colorful, graceful flower spikes to a landscape.
For me, they are too tough raw, but I add the leaves to many cooked dishes. They reseed freely, so you need buy the seeds just once.
I got mine in the seed display at the Oceanic Market in downtown Tampa, a wonderful Chinese market. The narrow plants get about 4 feet tall and look lovely in a flower garden.
No "spinach" in a summer Florida garden or landscape? No way!
John A. Starnes Jr., born in Key West, is an avid organic gardener and rosarian who studies, collects, cultivates and hybridizes roses for Florida. He can be reached at johnastarnes@msn.com
