A modest tribute to leafy things
We should focus for a moment on leafy vegetables. Tomatoes and peppers are glamorous, colorful and photo-worthy, but fair is fair and leafy things sustain our salads and grow well in spring. Gardeners eager for the results of their early spring labors are rewarded first by radishes and leafy things.
Lettuce is important in the salad world. Lettuce prefers cooler weather, so gardeners plant seeds as soon as frosts go away, such as now. There are hundreds of seeds in typical packets, so I do not hesitate to spread the seeds fairly thickly in a bed and harvest the crowded young sprouts for salads. Eventually you’ll get heads six-to-ten inches apart in your lettuce patch. This strategy requires a gardener’s regular attention and time.
I have grown tasty lettuce in a big pot in a sunny window during the winter, and you might be able to shelter plants inside during summer in the same way. Some varieties claim to handle hot weather better, and good luck trying it. Heat is heat even in the shade.
Open-pollinated and heirloom lettuce plants allowed to mature through their entire lifecycle will grow tall and gangly and eventually produce seeds easily collected for next year. Seeds from hybrid varieties are not reliable.
There are three main types of spinach but many varieties, and they are also cool weather plants. Similar to lettuce, a strategy would be to plant a few seeds every two weeks until two to three weeks before the forecast calls for hotter weather. I plant Amsterdam Prickly Seeded spinach under a redbud tree… sounds poetic, and maybe I should plant poetically more often.
Malabar spinach is not in the same family as grocery store spinach. Basella alba (in case you like italics) is a viny plant that will overtop your seven-foot trellis. My experience is with the red variety, which has reddish-purple vines and green heart-shaped leaves. A row of Malabar will fill whatever trellis space you provide with edible leaves similar to spinach leaves. The vines are ambitious, the leaves are succulent, and young leaves blend well in salads. Also prepare them like spinach and other greens. When steamed, they do not wilt as much as spinach.
Some cultures rub juice from the leaves on sores to make them all better.
Science, believe it or not, maintains Malabar spinach is packed with alphabets, periodics and antioxidants, plus it’s helpful in your digestive system. It is native to southeast Asia, so it grows well in hot weather, and when seasons begin to change it flowers and produces cute little shiny dark purple berries. They will reseed in various places in the garden if you’re into that sort of thing, and the berries can be made into a dye… probably purple.
Also purplish is amaranth, another warm-season leafy plant. Its stalks can grow seven feet tall, and it’s famous for its tassels full of seeds. It is among the highest of all plants in its protein profile. Steam the young leaves. I also dehydrate leaves and sprinkle them onto dishes – adds color.
Amaranth is most famous for seeds. For one thing, they will pop like popcorn in a hot skillet. Even more important was amaranth’s value as sustenance for the Aztec civilization before Europeans came. As part of worship, folks just like us would make small edible statues of their god using grains, amaranth and honey, and then share them.
Amaranth seeds are skilled and determined, so amaranth seedlings will sprout up here and there in your garden year after year.
Red mustard is another colorful early spring leafy plant, as are dozens of other Asian brassicas. Plantain leaves are edible. Young dock leaves are edible and nutritious as well, and soon we’ll get purslane. You can mark the seasons by which leafy plants are doing well.