Saturday, September 13, 2014

Vining vegetable


Well?

Any guesses?


Hint: it takes off in warm weather.

8 comments:

  1. Malabar spinach -pretty and a really vigorous vine. Good companion for the Nicotiana, that plant that ate Cleveland. Not my favorite to eat tho - like okra it is a bit too gelatinous for me.

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    1. Yeah, that Nicotiana is sobering. I find myself rushing around cutting off the seed pods. Each one produces what looks like hundreds of minute seeds. It was a cheap fix to give me height, but this is a candidate for noxious invasive if ever I saw one.

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  2. Malabar spinach, I once grew it on a large wire topiary sphere and called it a spinach ball.

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  3. Basella...not really spinach though as it's name suggests, I think : )

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  4. Aw, you all know too much. It was so exotic to me. I have been very pleased with its performance in our wacky light conditions: shade shade shade SUN SUN shade shade shade. And with how it took off in warm weather after sulking in May.

    Yes, Basella alba. At first I did not appreciate the very juicy-sticky quality of the leaves, either, but now I like them best when a leaf is wrapped around a filling, in Vietnamese/Thai flavour bundle-style. They also make wonderful edible plates for raw foods - salads, ceviches, and I have been enjoying the very tender stems, too, sauteed quickly.

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  5. I thought it was some kind of spinach, but I didn't know what the name was....now I do.

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  6. That looks like jewel weed in the corner. I'd always been curious about what you had growing to the left of your door to the terrace. You'd given little hints from up above where you could see the oval tub, but I never could make out what was growing there. Comme d'habitude it is beautifully done.

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    1. I brought some jewelweed seedlings with me on the subway from Inwood, once, in spring. They are very sturdy plants and have lots of flowers, now. Bees love them and so do hummingbirds. Still waiting for hummingbirds :-) They attract seed eaters, too, which is interesting.

      (And thank you.)

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