Bottom is sweet potato leaves, which isn’t that uncommon. Tasted very similar to spinach without the slimyness. In the middle is lolot pepper (piper sarmentosum). Peppery taste up front, gnarly aftertaste when raw, but added a decent spice when cooked. At the top is tamarind leaves. Kept the good sour taste of the fruit, but with less tamarindiness.
Will definitely eat sweet potato and tamarind leaves again. Might not eat the lolot, wasn’t as good.
Is anyone else eating some different or fun leaves off their plants? Or have unusual leafy greens?
I grow and eat a lot of purslane, new Zealand spinach, malabar spinach, I grow orach for early spring greens, sweet potato for summer greens.
lambs quarters are a weed here, some times I can catch them small enough to taste good.
marrow stem and hunger gap kale to fill in the gaps. this year I grew Celtuce, walking stick kale and have put in “Japanese spinach” and another, to test
I try cabbage every year and usually only get one good one out of dozens
spinach bolts fast here. only the shaded and slow bolting lettuce is ok. chard is bolting the week it comes up, but beet leaf chard does better! I get that all summer. nasturtium like these isn’t so uncommon but I love the leaves and the flowers for a topping on any greens dish for decoration
I do grow some collards but, they’re usually moth eaten.
I’ve eaten squash leaves too, mixed in to bulk up greens- and have tried/tasted young mulberry leaf.
I eat lots of weeds here. Also, some things like Curly mallow, leeks, earth chestnut and black salsify that I planted once and just keep eating. It’s pretty much an all you can eat buffet for free organic green leafies.
John S
PDX OR
I grow a mix of various leaf lettuces, some red, some green… in a hot bed starting late fall… continuing all winter and into the late spring May or early June.
I have found that to be the best time to grow them here … there are simply no pest, no bugs, aphids, no caterpillars.
Late May and June the bugs start up… and I stop growing greens for the year.
We normally have fresh greens from October thru May/June… including all the winter months.
My hot bed with incadescent christmas light frost protection… and the kind of harvests we get regularly.
I dont grow spinach anymore… used to and loved it mixed with leaf lettuce… but my wife has low kidney function… and spinach is high in oxilates… which can be hard on the kidneys.
I think my new favorite green is Jewels of Opar (Talinum paniculatum). It is sooooo buttery, either equilivent to or more buttery than butter lettuce. Good flavor, pretty succulent, and doesn’t go bitter while its flowering. They are also low in oxalates, unlike alot of the tropical spinaches (and spinach itself). Its biggest downside is that it spreads like crazy by seeds, but it is a native species here, so not too worried about it breaking containment. Just have to keep it away from my raised beds a little.
They make a great pair with the sour leaves of cranberry hibiscus.
Horseradish leaves are huge and tasty. MUCH more mild than the root. Leek greens are awesome. I don’t have to clean them and they keep coming back every year. I just cut them 1 inch above the soil. Hawthorn leaves are good to eat and heart medicine. I get it for free from the birds. Little leafed linden is a tree with mild tasting, edible leaves. They are a common street tree, so I grabbed some seeds off one and planted them. Now I have a couple of trees. I eat the leaves of Rose of Sharon, hibiscus syriacus. Marsh mallow is not a sickeningly sweet ball of sugar. It is a real plant and the leaves are edible. My favorite weed is probably sow thistle, but self heal is medicinal and I make a botanic medicine out of it. I call spiny sow thistle “poor man’s blowfish”, because you get the tingle of a $500 Japanese blow fish meal, without the risk of death. Purslane is high in Omega 3 fatty acids and probably grows somewhere in your neighborhood. Crunchy, tangy and delicious. Add it to your foods. It’s not that I’m cheap or nothin’. I just don’t want to pay a lot of money for something I can get for free.
John S
PDX OR
I’ll second young horseradish leaves. They are HUGE, and not that spicy (basically not at all when cooked).
But my number one favorite for cooked summer greens is celosia. It grows like crazy during the heat, suckers after heavy picking, and tastes delicious. Stem included (obviously pick the soft parts). Self sows and comes up on its own when it should.
Not that unusual for folks here, but i tried making spinach artichoke dip with sweet potato leaves over the weekend. My partner wanted to try it with some spinach this first time so technically I used about 4 parts sweet potato leaves to 1 part spinach, but it turned out good and I’m looking forward to trying it with no spinach before long now that my better half is more confident it will be comparable to the “traditional” recipe.
Probably not too unusual for a lot of folks, but having never had the chance to try sweet potato leaves before I’ve been happily impressed with them both on this dish as well as in the more “traditional” stir fry applications.
Even if my partner doesn’t find a sweet potato variety they enjoy, I dare say we’ll be growing them for summer greens from here on.
Ya’ll need to try water spinach and theres this type of spinach that is very crunchy called bloomsdale long. It also tastes like water spinach as well.
I have, in the past, eaten a lot of chickweed, in the spring.
Have grown Roselle, Hibiscus sabdariffa, for several years now (Thanks, cousinfloyd!), and the leaves are edible, with a tangy citrus flavor. The fleshy calyces can be made into a tasty jam, or dried to be steeped as a tangy tea.
A couple of years ago, I grew Roselle’s cousin, Cranberry hibiscus…ver ornamental, with purple foliage…and they were MONSTERS, reaching 10 ft in height before collapsing.
and theres this type of spinach that is very crunchy called bloomsdale long. It also tastes like water spinach as well.