Egyptian Spinach

Note from the Author: This plant has never been covered on the blog before.

 

 

Notice the seed pod in the middle of the picture, this is about as big as they get.

The tiny yellow flowers are pretty, but not present enough to bother with. The pollinators still dig them.

Note the shape of the leaves.

This plant which was not grown optimally is lanky and loose but it's foliage is no less edible.

 

 

Common Name: Egyptian Spinach

 

Other Common Names: Molokhiya, Jute Mallow, Jew’s Mallow, Mallow Leaves, Nalita Jute, Tossa Jute, Mloukheyeh, West African Sorrel

 

Botanical Family: Malvaceae (The Hibiscus Family)

 

Botanical Latin Name: Corchorus olitorius

 

Description & Habitat:  It is unlikely that you will find this plant in the wilds of North Carolina as it is an introduced species. However it is possible you will find it in yards, old farms and in places where Jute was cultivated for the purposes of making rope. Egyptian Spinach is generally grown as a annual and on average the plant can grow to about five feet tall unless intentionally grown for the purposes of making fiber for ropes at which it can be up to thirteen feet tall. The leaves of this plant are borne in an alternate arrangement and are roughly elliptical in shape with a serrated margin and small thin spurs facing inward towards the stem. The flowers of this plant are tiny and yellow and seem to open sometime in the morning. Seed pods look a bit like a tiny okra pod but they only get an inch or three long and may curve at the tip. Overall this plant essentially looks like a weed despite its numerous useful traits.

 

Special Toxicity Note:  This plant has no toxicity

 

When & What to Harvest: The leaves and young seed pods are edible. Generally the leaves are what you want as they can be used fresh or dried as a tea or a soup thickener. The seeds even when mature are also edible though small.

 

Related Plants: White Jute (C. calsularis), is the other plant that supplies the fibers to make Jute Twine.

 

Recipe:  Normally I post one of my recipes here but I found one that looks so good that I’m sharing a link

https://harmonyvalleyfarm.com/recipes/stewed-egyptian-spinach-with-north-african-spices/

 

 

Additional Information: (If applicable)

https://www.kikkoman.com/en/cookbook/glossary/moroheiya.html

 

Where to get Seed or Bare Root Plants:

https://www.southernexposure.com/products/molokhiya-egyptian-spinach/

 

With all that garden goodness covered this is the part of the blog where I have to advertise for the Fayetteville City Market. Now I know you readers probably don’t much like advertisements, but my booth at the City Market helps to cover the costs of running the test garden and literally maintains the Research & Development budget that is used to bring you the information that has made up the backbone of this blog.  In addition to being able to process card payments we now take CashApp payments so your payment options for my product have tripled. With that said; if you want to get some GMO-free, Organic fruit, herbs, flowers and perennials, come on down to the Fayetteville City Market on 325 Maxwell Street in downtown Fayetteville between the hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm on Saturdays. Even in bad weather the market goes on though you might have to look for me under the ‘arches’ of the Transportation Museum’s front entryway.

 

 

Fresh Produce:

Figs, Magnolia

Peppers, Banana Drop Hybrid

 

Summer Vegetables:

Nightshade Greens, Gbognome

Nightshade Greens, West African Njama

 

Autumn Vegetables:

Collards ‘Green Glaze’

 

Herbs:

Chives

Egyptian Onions

 

Flowers:

Flowering Tobacco

 

Plants Coming Soon:

TBA

 

How to stay in Contact with Us!

All you need to keep up with all our activities is to have a Nextdoor account and to look for the ‘Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville’ group and ask to join! You don’t have to live in Fayetteville to join us! Feel free to ask all your garden questions of our knowledgeable membership and post your cool garden pictures.

 

Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville

 

Also please take a gander at the YouTube version of this blog:

The Videos: Look Here

>Newest videos (1): Japanese Aralia

 

Meetings are still going on! Our next (unofficial) meeting is August 30^th at the Fayetteville City Market at 325 Franklin Street between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm.

Jewels of Opar

Note from the Author: I have never covered this plant before…

 

 

A good look at the ovate foliage and it's color. There are variegated versions of this plant.

Note the orange seed pod on the right.

A close up of the flowers and new seed pods.

The entire plant as seen in the test garden. It has overtaken the intended Zataar plant that is supposed to be there

 

Common Name: Jewels of Opar

 

Other Common Names: Flame Flower

 

Botanical Family: Talinaceae (The Talinum Family)

 

Botanical Latin Name: Talinum paniculatum

 

Description & Habitat: In the urban environment this plant may be found growing under the cover of shrub hedgerows and along roadsides or appearing in lawns or old garden beds. The leaves of Jewels of Opar are roughly ovate in shape and are borne in alternate arrangement on the plant. The foliage is also widely considered to be succulent or semi-succulent and has a rich medium green color with a pronounced central midrib. The flowers are tiny pink and bear five petals. The seed capsules of this plant can be orange, red, gold, brown or gray in color. This plant has a long bright orange colored taproot that can reach several feet across a hard surface to find soil. Plants may be up to five feet tall and have a three-foot spread and this plant is a hardy perennial in zone 8b.

 

Special Toxicity Note:  According to at least one credible source this plant may contain a small amount of Oxalic Acid in its foliage. This source goes on to state it gives a sour or tangy taste however most other sources indicate the flavor of this plants foliage is mild. It is unknown if this is just a trait of a specific population of plants or a normal thing.

 

When & What to Harvest: The foliage can be harvested as a leaf green and the flower stalks cut for fresh floral arrangements or dried in dried arrangements due to the brightly colored seed pods.

 

Related Plants: None are of note.

 

Recipe:  Since the foliage of this plant is used like spinach it can be concluded that it can be substituted in any spinach recipe.

 

Additional Information: (If applicable)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talinum_paniculatum

 

 

Where to get Seed or Bare Root Plants:

https://www.southernexposure.com/products/jewels-of-opar-fame-flower/

 

With all that garden goodness covered this is the part of the blog where I have to advertise for the Fayetteville City Market. Now I know you readers probably don’t much like advertisements, but my booth at the City Market helps to cover the costs of running the test garden and literally maintains the Research & Development budget that is used to bring you the information that has made up the backbone of this blog.  In addition to being able to process card payments we now take CashApp payments so your payment options for my product have tripled. With that said; if you want to get some GMO-free, Organic fruit, herbs, flowers and perennials, come on down to the Fayetteville City Market on 325 Maxwell Street in downtown Fayetteville between the hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm on Saturdays. Even in bad weather the market goes on though you might have to look for me under the ‘arches’ of the Transportation Museum’s front entryway.

 

 

Fresh Produce:

Blueberries, Rabbiteye

Figs, Magnolia

Peppers, Banana Drop Hybrid

 

Summer Vegetables:

Nightshade Greens, Gbognome

Nightshade Greens, West African Njama

Okra, Baby Bubba

Okra, Iraqi Bamia

Pepper, Ghost

Pepper, Serrano

Pepper, Hungarian Wax Banana

Pepper, Bull’s Horn

Pepper, Mad Hatter

Pepper, Purple Bell

Potato, Adirondack (Purple skin with blue-purple flesh)

Spinach, Egyptian

 

Herbs:

Basil, Holy

Basil, Sweet Genovese

Chives

Yarrow, Parker’s Gold

 

 

Flowers:

Flowering Tobacco

Hibiscus, Luna Red

Marigolds

 

Plants Coming Soon:

Green-Fruit Nightshade Greens

Rainbow Quinoa

 

How to stay in Contact with Us!

All you need to keep up with all our activities is to have a Nextdoor account and to look for the ‘Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville’ group and ask to join! You don’t have to live in Fayetteville to join us! Feel free to ask all your garden questions of our knowledgeable membership and post your cool garden pictures.

 

Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville

 

Also please take a gander at the YouTube version of this blog:

The Videos: Look Here

>Newest videos (1): Milk Thistle

 

Meetings are still going on! Our next (unofficial) meeting is July 12^th at the Fayetteville City Market at 325 Franklin Street between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm.

This herb's gonna Rocket 2 U

 Welcome back to the Lost In the Farmer’s Market Blog. At the current time we have a long-running series that covers useful, edible and medicinal ‘weeds’ that you can commonly find in the southeastern states of the United States. While our survey area is just within Cumberland County North Carolina it’ is possible you can find some of these forage plants in other places. This series was begun to give folks a detailed look into the resources they might not have known were right there in their lawn. Given that the world situation is not that great and there are already shortages of critical grains and fertilizers forage foods may be the most useful answer on a local level. LITFM will keep this series going as long as we keep finding wild resources to photograph and write about. If you have any questions or comments about our articles please leave a comment either here or on our YouTube Channel (The link is at the end of the article). Thank you for reading, and remember just one thing, you can’t eat lawn grass.

 

 

The cultivated type of this plant is identical to it's wild form, as there clearly was no need to mess with perfection.

 

Common Name: Creasy Greens

 

Other Common Names: Upland Cress, Land Cress, Early Wintercress, Scurvy Cress, American Cress, Bank Cress, Black Wood Cress, Belle Isle Cress, Bermuda Cress, Early Yellow Rocket.

 

Botanical Family: Brassicaceae (The Cabbage Family)

 

Botanical Latin Name: Barbarea verna

 

Season to Harvest: Creasy Greens can be harvested from the seedling stage as microgreens in autumn through to late spring.

 

Habitat: Creasy Greens can be found in fields, wet meadows, ditches, on the roadside, it is very common and very wide spread. This is of course assuming it is found naturally and is not found where someone once introduced it and it prospered in its given location.

 

Parts to Harvest: The entire plant is edible and quite nutritious. Mainly you want to harvest some of the leaves so that you have something to come back to and harvest later.

 

Poisonous Lookalikes: No poisonous lookalikes are known.

 

Related Edible Species: Wintercress (Barbarea vulgaris)

 

Description: While this plant is actually native to Southern Europe it is a biennial in that you can sow its seeds in late summer and have the plants persist until the real heat of late spring in the next year begins. Creasy greens are a moderately compact plant with spoon shaped leaves that have little lobed tabs along the side. They are rosette forming so they are kind of dense and bunchy but harvesting with a pair of scissors is the best way to get some greens without killing your plant.  In late spring or early summer when temperatures stay above 65 degrees at peak heat these plants may try to flower, you can snip this off to try and force another leaf harvest or let it grow to get more seed and feed the pollinators. The flowers look a bit like all other Cabbage family flowers and may be white or yellow.

 

How to Harvest: On larger plants that are full of leaves you can use a pair of scissors to give them a ‘haircut’ and then fertilize with nitrogen based fertilizer to ensure that they bounce back. Other than this you can harvest individual large leaves at your leisure as the leaves never become woody or fibrous.

 

Recipe: Aside from adding the washed leaves to salads to add some delightful flavor and a vitamin dense green to your forage salad, I like to cook these greens with pasta. Normally to do this I will start a broth, add the chopped greens and then add the pasta and serve it as a sort of pasta based soup. You can use these greens steamed or added at the last phase of cooking in with a meat to increase nutritional value.

 

 

 

With all that garden goodness covered this is the part of the blog where I have to advertise for the Fayetteville City Market. Now I know you readers probably don’t much like advertisements, but by booth at the City Market helps to cover the costs of running the test garden and literally maintains the Research & Development budget that is used to bring you the information that has made up the backbone of this blog.  In addition to being able to process card payments we now take CashApp payments so your payment options for my product have tripled. With that said, if you want to get some GMO-free, Organic fruit, herbs, flowers and perennials, come on down to the Fayetteville City Market on 325 Maxwell Street in downtown Fayetteville between the Hours of 9:00 am and 1:00 pm on Saturdays. Even in bad weather the market goes on though you might have to look for me under the ‘arches’ of the Transportation Museum’s front entryway.

 

 

For those of you wondering what plants are going to be at the market this weekend here is the list.

 

Fresh Produce:

Peppers, Lemon Drop

Peppers, Fayetteville Inferno

Peppers, Sweet Heat & Purple Bell

Garlic Bulbs

 

 

Garden Stuff: ($3.00)

Broccoli - Destiny

Brussel Sprouts - Redarling

Cabbage – Early Jersey Wakefield

Cauliflower – Snow Crown

Cauliflower – Flame Star

Cauliflower – Veronica

Celery - Tango

Cilantro – Vietnamese

Collards – Green Glaze

Cuban Oregano – Cervesa & Lime

Hoan Ngoc

Mizuna Mustard – Miz America

Mustard – Japanese Red Giant

Pak Choi – Rose’

Sage – Pineapple

 

 

Coming Soon:

Soup Kits (October)

 

 

How to stay in Contact with Us!

 

Our group’s online presence has migrated to Nextdoor.com. All you need to keep up with all our activities is to have a Nextdoor account and to look for the ‘Sustainable Neighbors of Fayetteville’ group and ask to join! You don’t have to live in Fayetteville to join us! Feel free to ask all your garden questions of our knowledgeable membership and post your cool garden pictures.

 

Go to our Nextdoor Page!

 

Also please take a gander at the Youtube version of this blog:

 

The Videos: LITFM Garden Shorts

>Newest videos (1): - A Big Hoax, Citronella Geranium

 

Meetings still going on! We now meet at LeClairs General Store on the First and Third Thursday of every month. Our next meeting is on October 6th between 5:30pm and 7:00pm. We are in the back room so come on in and join us for a fun garden chat.

 

Btw the song reference in this post is Rocket 2 U by The Jets, go check that one out.