Any success growing fall/winter vegetables

[emorata]

Anyone have success growing colder weather plants in puna like, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, bok choi, spinach, snow peas?

[JerryCarr]

I have grown everything on your list except broccoli here in HPP with better results in the cooler months of October through April. I had an especially hard time with the snow peas and lettuce in the warmer months. (I may not have chosen the best variety of lettuce, though.) There is a tropical vining spinach called Malabar spinach which seems to do well all year, almost to the point of being invasive.

Cheers,
Jerry

[emorata]

thanks for the update on winter gardening in puna...is malabar more of a bitter taste or similar taste to spinach? Do you also grow alot of the root veggies, carrots, beets, potatoes, yams?

[JerryCarr]

Sweet potatoes, carrots, and turnips have done fine for me year round. Just make sure your soil is deep enough and not too rocky. We built low rock walls on top of the pahoehoe lava filled in with trucked in soil. We also have made a lot of soil by composting household vegetative waste, weeds, and cleared undergrowth and then mixing the compost with cinders.

Malabar spinach tastes pretty mucy like regular spinach, but it has a thicker leaf, so the texture is different.

Cheers,
Jerry



Edited by - JerryCarr on 07/17/2007 12:55:35

[allensylves]

Malabar is mucilaginous, like okra, when I grew it. If I remember right it also has an 'earthy' taste like beets and chard that I do not find appealing.
As a cooked vegetable, young sweet potato leaves or kang kong (Chinese water spinach) are most similar to spinach. They are great stir fried.
But these are all warmer weather crops on the mainland that will grow year around in Puna.

Allen
Baton Rouge, LA & HPP

[emorata]

Yes, my mother always used Kang Kong in her stir fries and stews and side dishes....funny i never knew they were the tops of the sweet potatoes....they are like spinach with a little bitter aftertaste but not intense.....i'll have to start growing these, i am assuming it would be the same for the white sweet potato, purple or the yellow ones...anyone know?

noel

[allensylves]

Yes, the leaves of sweet potatoes can be used just like kang kong (which is actually a separate, but similar, species). I am using leaves of white sweet potatoes now and have used leaves of yellow ones before. I have never noticed a bitter aftertaste with any of them, so it may be another thing where individuals differ in their sensitivity to a specific taste/chemical.

Allen
Baton Rouge, LA & HPP

[emorata]

sorry allen, i missread your response, i understood from your email that kang kong and the tops of the sweet potatos were from the same plant, but from what you are saying they are different plants species. i've not tried cooking with sweet potato so i'll have to try that one of these days.

thanks for clarifying this.

noel