A Late Summer Look at the Garden

On my lunch break today, I googled "weather 70546" (our zip code) and the following came up:

That is hot.  Really hot.  Fall is on the way.  That is what I stay focused on.  The animals are really struggling and the garden has gone into late summer dormancy due to the heat and lack of rainfall, except for our cowpeas. basil, and pumpkins which we've discussed in previous posts.

Today we'll look at a few items that are still battling on.  First thing is our okra.  A substandard germination rate from some seeds that we got at a seed exchange means that we haven't really harvested a bunch to eat yet, but they'll produce into December for us, so I'll withhold judgment.  The variety of okra is a new one for us. It is called Beck's Big Buck Snapping Okra.  Normally, we've always planted Clemson Spineless and Burgundy.  Beck's is indeed big.  They are fat okra - much fatter than Clemson spineless with more defined ridges.  They are called 'snapping' okra because when they are about 3 inches long, they are easily snapped off the stalk - unlike Clemson Spineless okra.

I've always thought that the okra flower is a beautiful one.  If it looks sort of like a hibiscus, that is because the okra and the hibiscus are related to one another. Hibiscus flowers can be used to make tea, so I was wondering if okra flowers are edible.  After searching I found that although okra flowers are lacking in taste, they can provide color to salads.  If it doesn't have taste, I'm not sure I'll add them to a salad and will likely let it develop into an okra pod.

An (edible) Okra Flower

I wish I would have put a penny against the okra pod, so that you can get an idea of the scale, but I didn't.  At first I was thinking that because it was called "Big" okra that it was going to get long and I allowed a couple of pods to get too big and they got 'woody' and inedible, but now I know when they are ready and have been harvesting accordingly.  Turns out Beck's Big Okra is a German heirloom variety that comes indirectly from Comal County, Texas (near San Antonio) and was smuggled out of Germany by a neighbor.

Plump Okra Pod

In a disappointing turn of events, our Black Beauty Eggplant grown from seed has been a big flop. When someone wears jeans, cowboy boots, cowboy hat, and a belt buckle trying to look the part, but aren't really "country," people describe them as being "All hat and no cattle."  That reminds me of our 2015 Eggplant crop.  Oh, they have grown tall and have had lots of foliage but have produced few flowers and not a single fruit up to this point.  Some research revealed that that can be caused by not enough sunlight, too much heat causing pollen to become sticky, or nutritional problems.  Who knows?

All hat - no cattle eggplant

Finally, our Malabar Spinach produces prolifically.  It has climbed all over the trellis and produced many leaves for eating.  Its purple vine and shiny flowers really catch your eye.

Malabar Spinach

They are currently flowering and producing the little fruits that will turn purple and contain the seeds - hundreds of which will fall to the ground and propagate for next year's crop.  Once you get this started, you don't need to save seeds to plant for next year as they come up on their own.  I wasted my time saving its seeds several years ago and now have a container full of Malabar spinach seeds that I'll never use.  Let me know if you'd like some and I can give you some.

Malabar spinach flowers and seeds

The leaves of the Malabar Spinach are shiny, fleshy, and pretty.  We snap them off and eat them as a lettuce substitute on sandwiches or in tacos and we've also steamed them.  Not bad eating at all.

Healthy leaves of the Malabar Spinach 

It is really not a spinach, although it tastes like it when cooked.  It is a perennial vine that originated in India and Bangladesh, so that solves the mystery of why it thrives in hot climates.  That ends the update of the late summer garden. Hopefully, we'll get rain soon and then we can start checking our seed inventory and begin thinking about the fall garden.  

Looking on the Bright Side

"A man of words and not of deeds,Is like a garden full of weeds." - Benjamin Franklin

That statement by old Benjamin is pretty convicting.  How many times do we say, "I'll pray for you," and then we forget?  How many times, although our words and intentions might be good, we just don't follow through with actions?  Sadly, I have to admit that I am guilty of that.  Sometimes my life is like a garden full of weeds.

A garden full of weeds is not a good thing - neither figurative weeds or literal ones. The day before yesterday, I was bending over in the garden pulling weeds, mainly nutsedge or coco-grass.  It's not a fun job, but one that must be done.  In a few days I'll show you a technique that I employ that helps make weeding a thing of the past, but the downside to that method is that your vegetable plants must be at least 4 or 5 inches tall.  Some of my yellow squash and zucchini aren't quite that tall yet, so there I was, pulling weeds and trying to make sure that I pulled them up by the roots.

I was throwing the weeds over the fence and a group of hens were gobbling down the tender young leaves of the weeds.  Hens look forward to my weeds.  They thing weeds are a good thing.  I was about to pull a particularly healthy 'weed,' but then I stopped when I realized what it was.  Do you know what type of plant this is in the photo that follows?

Sweet Potato

That is a young sweet potato plant!  Notice the thick, heart-shaped leaves.  This is definitely NOT a weed, but it comes up year after year in the garden.  Actually many of them do.  Years ago we composted the remains of a Beauregard Sweet Potato in the garden and each year offspring from that original plant comes up in the garden providing us with bushels of delicious sweet potatoes that we normally harvest in the September - October time frame.

This sweet potato plant (I think they are called 'slips'), and three others like it that I spotted in the garden will send out numerous vines that run along the ground.  In various locations, they'll send down roots.  Those roots will become the tubers, or sweet potatoes that we all enjoy.  Many times I lament the numerous weeds that grow up year after year, but looking on the bright side, there are other things that pop up in the garden on their own that aren't weeds - they're good things to eat.

Here are a couple of other examples I saw just today:

First we have this strange looking plant with thick leaves and a purplish-stem coming up by the bunches.  Know what it is?

Purple-colored stems

It is Malabar spinach.  I diligently worked to save lots of seed last year to replant this year.  Well, I really didn't need to.  The Malabar spinach re-seeded itself.  I stood in the garden and snapped off the tender leaves, snacking on them while I worked.

Tender young leaves of the Malabar spinach

 Here is one of two seedlings that has come up on its own so far.  The leaves of this herb will probably be very recognizable to you.  Know what it is?

It is the  Genovese Basil.  I have 12 basil plants that are about an inch tall that I am growing in seed pots that I started from basil seed that I saved from last year.  I have lots of basil seed saved.  We make quarts and quarts of basil pesto.  I should have known better than to plant the seeds, knowing that they come up volunteer every year.  But you cannot always be sure.  Normally cilantro comes up volunteer each winter, so I didn't plant any from seed.  To our dismay, none came up this year for the first time ever.  I'm assuming it was due to the fact that I had mulched so thick with hay, that it crowded out the cilantro.

If I'm looking at the glass half empty, I've got to say that the weeds that come up each year cause me a lot of work and frustration.  Looking on the bright side, we do have things that come up each year that we get to eat, that require no planting or tending to.  All you gotta do is harvest and eat.  I'm always up to that task.

Planting Malabar Spinach

Last year we planted a new crop in the garden.  Russ brought it home from the nursery that he worked at and we planted it and it flourished.  If you've been following the blog, you'll remember that in THIS POST we showed you how we saved the seeds from our very first crop of Malabar spinach.  I planted some seeds in some seed pots to later transplant into the garden.  I wasn't sure if the germination rate was going to be high so I put a number of seeds into each pot.

Malabar Spinach

Well, as the above picture illustrates, almost all of the seeds germinated and it was time to transplant them into the garden.  I'm planting them against a panel of concrete reinforcement fence so that it can trellis upward on the panel.

Malabar spinach is indigenous to Asia and Africa, so it does well in South Louisiana's tropical climate.  It will climb 30 feet in length and puts out heart-shaped leaves that have the texture of spinach that are good to eat. Below you can see the a few of the seedlings that I have transplanted into the garden soil.  they are healthy little plants that should do well.

Transplanted Malabar Squash seedlings

As I was planting them, I looked down and realized that I really didn't need to plant any seeds.  There were seedlings coming up volunteer (on their own) from seeds that had dropped off of last year's vines.  We have several plants that self propagate like that, including basil, cilantro, and sweet potatoes.  You can see the leaf below has a 'rubbery' texture like spinach does.  

"Volunteer" malabar spinach

There are several other names that this plant goes by, including Red Vine spinach.  If you look at the very first picture, you can see why.  The vines or stem of this plant is a reddish color that stands out.  It is also called a vine spinach and a climbing vine spinach, but it is not related to the spinach plant we're familiar with. It is a fast growing plant that will yield plenty of leaves for our consumption.

According to what I've read, it is a nutritious plant that provides lots of Vitamin A, Vitamin C, calcium, and iron.  It also provides lots of fiber and is has antioxidant properties.  It is frequently stir fried in Chinese and Vietnamese dishes and used in curries in Indian dishes.

I'll show you updates on the Malabar spinach as it grows and we harvest it.  Let me know if anyone would like some seeds as I'll be happy to share.

Saving Malabar Spinach Seeds

The other day we posted about the new item we tried in the garden that we really like - Malabar Spinach.  It is a tropical leaf vegetable that grows on a vine.  The leaves are sweet and taste similar to normal spinach.  It was the first year we planted this crop and we want to plant it in the future, so we'd like to save some seeds for next year.

Malabar Spinach leaf

Here are the blooms on the vine.  The blooms become a green berry that is attached to the vine.

Blooms and berries of the Malabar Spinach

The green berries soon ripen to a purple fruit.  When the berry is purple you know that it is ripened and ready to be picked.

Ripe Malabar Spinach berries.

These berries contain the seeds.  The berries have a cross on the underside that makes you believe that there might be four seeds in it, but there's only one.

If you bust the berry in your fingers, it is full of a purplish juice that is very sweet.

Sticky-sweet juice

To pull the seeds off the vine, I learned there's a little trick to it - you must twist it off.  If you pull it off without twisting, you risk breaking the vine which will ruin the other berries that may not be ripened yet.

Twisting off a ripened berry

In no time at all you'll have a handful of Malabar spinach berries and I'll show you how to save the seeds that are in them.

A handful of berries

Each berry contains a seed, but you must remove the fleshy part to expose the seed.  I'm sure you could dry them in the sun, but I was afraid of leaving them outside as I figured the birds would feast on them.  I put them in a sieve, ran water over them and rubbed the berries against the sieve with my fingers removing the fleshy parts of the berry, exposing the seed.

Rubbing the berries.

Notice the seeds below once the purple skin has been rubbed off.

I spread the seeds on a dishrag to allow them to dry overnight.

Drying the seeds

And here are a bunch of Malabar Seeds that I'll be able to plant next year.  Those small seeds will, if the Good Lord's willing, yield many leaves that will be gobbled up by the Sonnier household.

Seeds of Change

We'll store them in a moisture-free, dark location and pull them out in the Spring for planting.

Malabar Spinach

Russ worked at a nursery here in Jennings and really enjoyed working there.  He learned so much about plants.  One day he purchased a couple of plants that we had never heard of - Malabar Spinach.  Malabar spinach is a not related to regular spinach.  It is a plant native of India that has meaty leaves similar in texture and taste to regular spinach.

It is a vining plant that is not only edible, but a climbing ornamental as well.  We planted them in our garden and they have really thrived.  As you can see in the photo below, it has vined all the way to the top of the trellis that is 10 feet tall.

Vining Malabar Spinach

The leaves are a little smaller than the palm of your hand and are somewhat heart shaped.  We've harvested all the lower leaves that can be reached without a ladder.  From now on we'll have to get something to stand on to harvest.  You cook them exactly as you would regular spinach.  We've really enjoyed eating this new variety for our garden.

Vines 10 feet high and growing

After researching a bit on the Internet, I think the cultivar that Russ purchased for us is the 'Rubra' or red-stemmed variety.  Notice the pretty red vine below.  The photo also highlights the meaty, spinach-like leaves.

Red-stemmed Malabar spinach

The vines produce pretty pink flowers that eventually turn into purple seeds.

Malabar spinach flowers/seeds

I'm definitely going to try to save some of these seeds for next year.  This plant is a 'keeper' for us in our garden.  We like the way it grows vertically, the way it looks, and the way it tastes.  Malabar Spinach gets a two-thumbs up rating from our family!