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Written by : Lachelle Schexnayder |
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what's up guys Pete here with green dreams I'm in the food forest and I want to talk to you about another perennial vegetable this perennial vegetable I'm holding on tonight is called longevity spinach and it's mostly found in the tropics it's a panacea basically in Southeast Asia I've heard this plant is touted to have a million different medicinal properties so we're talking anti-inflammatory antioxidant antiviral great for diabetes it regulates a healthy blood sugar it's rumored to be anti-cancer this plant is a powerhouse grows like a weed makes a beautiful little ground cover I found it does really well in dappled light propagates very easily and just like I had said before with all perennial vegetables so we just had this a couple of nights ago in our dinner I'll actually just kind of come out and harvest those young tips and that's what we'll cook and saute so I'll go over that whole packs and harvest those tips within a few days those tips will be back again now they're kind of on the strong side they're definitely filled with minerals and nutrients unless isn't a a plain tasting green to say the least the whole the whole leaf I mean all these old leaves can be eaten you can actually saute the stem and probably cook them up like an asparagus so every part of the plant is useful makes an unbelievable ground cover grows really well down here - never been watered never been fertilized made it through the winter longevity spinach everybody should grow it
Thanks for your comment Ali Macmillan, have a nice day.
- Lachelle Schexnayder, Staff Member
welcome to gardening with heidi today we're going to cover the longevity spinach or chinese spinach it's very interesting there's spinach's from many different countries that we didn't even know about you just think you go to the store and you get one kind of spinach well there's spinaches and perennial green these are perennial greens that can last in your yard in zone 9b 1011 so down here in southwest florida this is a great addition to your yard a lot of people put it in their landscape i however have mine in my pot so come on in and take a look at this wonderful plant just a few pro tips on the longevity spinach plant it does like a little bit of it does like some sun so full sun to part shade it'll do well also it has some amazing health benefits it's been known to help fight cancer assist in heart disease prevention it can decrease your heart rate so if you do have low blood blood pressure you might want to check with your doctor or look into this plan a little bit you don't want to take that if you have a low low blood pressure it also protects your immune system so hey we need that right now with covid um you want to have a plant that's actually going to increase your um you know your immune system and it helps protect your organs and your tissues it is completely edible and you can just hand pick leaves off put them directly in a salad you can make a tea or an herbal infusion around it you can put it in your soups you can cook with it it's just a wonderful plant and it's super easy to grow it is super easy to propagate so what i'm going to show you here is this set of plants right here were cuttings that i took from this so once it gets a little long like this you know you can just cut it and stick it in a pot so we have three stages here this this plant is for me let's see this is probably about six months old and then these i transplanted the tips off of these that were getting long i just stuck them in the pots and it's this one's doing really nice and it's really nice and full and this one i just cut the other day and you can see they're already starting to sprout so how you do that is you can come in and let's say we want to let's say we want to take this one right here it's kind of hanging off like this so what i'm going to do is i'm going to look at the plant i can see this hat this is where the one of the nodes is pushing out a leaf and same with here so what i'm going to do is i'm going to cut at a 45 degree angle right above that what that's going to do is it's going to allow the energy from the plant to just push into those two and have some nice full greenery now i can use this and start some new plants so if you want to come on in i want to show you where the roots are going to come off of this plant now you can see where there were these little nodes are where roots and leave structure would come out if it's in the soil you're going to get a root if it's out of the soil you're going to get a leaf so we already cut right there at the end so having that 45 degree angle is good you don't want to touch it with your finger i'm going to go up two nodes because i'm going to need a root node so i'm going to cut right at 45 degree right there i'm going to do a root and possibly a root and then possibly a leaf so i'm going to cut right here at a 45. can you see that let me do it right here okay when you cut it like that now you want to make sure you grab the stock and you don't touch where you just cut you don't want your oils to go into the plant and you want to make sure you're putting it in the soil the same way it was naturally growing you don't want to put it in upside down so you could just take this and put it in a new pot i can take this and fill it in over here i'm just going to stick it in where the mother plant was just to fill out this pot a little bit i don't need to start another plant and you can keep going up the line so here again we got a node and another node so i'm going to just cut like that stick it in again you're going to want to make sure you get that right direction but longevity spinach is really nice it's a very durable leaf and it tastes really good it does have a little bit of a um furry leaf a little bit not terrible less than a peach um it has great flavor it's a little bit mucillining or mucil i don't know whatever i like it it's got a crunch and if you add it into your store-bought salad it just gives it a little bit more texture remember if you're going to harvest this for your salad you know look at the bottom of the leaves you want to make sure there aren't any eggs or you know worms or bugs on this but this plant really i don't take care i don't manage it it just goes so this is a fantastic edible plant to put in your backyard garden especially in southwest florida if you live in cape coral and you want a cutting leave a comment i could potentially give you one so if you if you see this and you're in my community leave me a comment i'd love to see it so if you like what you're seeing and you have this in your yard or you want this in your yard please leave a comment and let me know what you think about this plant and it so it's just a great plant to integrate into your diet i highly recommend it so make sure you get one of these in your florida garden or zone 10 11 and incorporate this into your diet for a healthy lifestyle keep gardening foreign
Thanks executatX your participation is very much appreciated
- Lachelle Schexnayder
About the author
I've studied information economics at Oak Hills Christian College in Bemidji and I am an expert in magazine. I usually feel discontent. My previous job was publications editor I held this position for 10 years, I love talking about wargaming and writing. Huge fan of Greta Thunberg I practice uneven parallel bars and collect militaria.
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