EDIBLEharvt
Growing And Using Malabar Spinach By Charlotte Benedetto
Spinach. Sweet pea. Gunnera. ‘Avon’ spinach. Black-seeded Simpson. Boston lettuce. Bells of Ireland . . . These are the cool, aloof, early-season heartbreakers of the Washington, DC, garden. Bolted, wilted, fried, gone—killed; killed always by the inexorable heat. Spinach lovers may gather delicate feathers of flavor until the Fourth of July in Bar Harbor or Albany—but not in Washington, DC. For local gardeners, spinach, like legislation, must be exquisitely and properly timed—even hybrids like arrowhead spinach—or it will just break a lotta hearts. Cool, early varieties like ‘Avon’ required cold frames, feats of engineering, and often prayer, to get through first the punishing frosts and then the baking April afternoons. But now we can say to heck with “regular” spinach: A new challenger has appeared. Vivid in color, vining in habit, vigorous in temperament and flavor—this summer, let a 14
WASHINGTON GARDENER
MAY 2022
heat-loving, humidity-loving, water-loving Malabar spinach (Basella alba) muscle into your garden. When I was a girl in Fairfax County’s experimental “World Civilization” college prep program, I received a list of “African” agricultural contributions, probably an early attempt to inject diversity into the history curriculum. A worksheet listed a series of inventions and plants as having originated from the African continent (about as informational as saying a plant or machine originates from “Earth”). Supposedly, yam, okra, peanut, and something called “Malabar spinach” were brought over from Africa, although the mechanism of this “bringing over” was not explained. Malabar spinach, it was implied, of course, came to the USA with captured African people. How could this have happened? Moreover, how could it come to be called Malabar? More likely, individuals from the Javanese diaspora
of the early 19th century introduced Malabar spinach through the Javanese habit of sailing with the Dutch.
An Unfamiliar Edible
Similar to okra, putting in a pin on the origin of Basella alba is tough, but Malabar spinach has naturalized throughout most of Africa and some of North and South America; many consider it as an endemic (and, some might say an invasive) edible. Gourmet chefs have been trying to get us to eat unlikely greens and amaranths for years— quinoa has long been mainstream, and some of us have always enjoyed chard and beets, yet lamb’s quarters, goosefoot, pigweed, and other greens have never really caught fire. Mild, yet peppery, juicy and succulent, but without the “grainy” texture of many greens, Malabar spinach might crack the unique-greens market soon, thanks to its ease in growing, mild flavor, good
