My gardening
adventures, has always been a mixed bag of activities, a bag, that I like quite a lot and do like sharing here as well, and quite proudly. While I vie to make my
garden beautiful in terms visual beauty, my mother has been towards
functionality. While I get flowering plants and seeds, she's been trying
whatever eatables she could plant. A couple of weeks back, I posted about the
brinjals/aubergines/eggplants for which she asked me to get the saplings of, we
planted the plants and after a couple of months, we were able to harvest a good
produce from around half a dozen brinjal plants. The scarcity in rainfall did
have a serious impact on the produce, and the plants, were quite unable to
produce to their full potential. Since then we have harvested some really hot green
chillies as well, again from a couple of plants in some pots. I bought lotus
seeds, planted them and have got the plants now.
My mother, a
couple of months back, had bought some Malabar spinach as vegetable from the
market. She decided to have a few stems planted in one of the pots, to see if
it really becomes a plant, and to our luck, one of those stems did grow to
become a plant. Malabar spinach is a leafy plant, leaves and stems of which are
consumed as vegetable. The leaves of the plant are particularly thick and have
a typical gloss which makes the leaves quite showy in the green colour. I
decided to find some nutritional information from sources like Wikipedia, as I
normally do in posts featuring most of the edible plants, we grow. Here's some
information about the Malabar spinach.
Common Name:
Malabar Spinach, Poi/Pui, Indian Spinach, Ceylon Spinach
Botanical Name:
Basella Alba
Type of plant:
Vine, creeper.
Native of:
Known as a native of Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and New Guinea. It is
known to have been naturalized in a number of other countries, primarily
because it is used as a vegetable.
Sunlight: Loves full sunlight.
Colours:
Foliage - Light to dark green. Blooms - white to purplish.
Soil Conditions:
Isn't very fussy when it comes to soil conditions. But does best in fertile
soils with good amount of moisture and organic contents (humus).
Propagation:
Stem cuttings, seeds.
Varieties:
Apart from the green one featured here.
Minerals
|
|
Calcium, Ca
|
109 mg
|
Iron, Fe
|
1.2 mg
|
Magnesium, Mg
|
65 mg
|
Phosphorus, P
|
52 mg
|
Potassium, K
|
510 mg
|
Sodium, Na
|
24 mg
|
Zinc, Zn
|
0.43 mg
|
Copper, Cu
|
0.107 mg
|
Manganese, Mn
|
0.735 mg
|
Selenium, Se
|
0.8 µg
|
Vitamins
|
|
Vitamin C, total ascorbic acid
|
102 mg
|
Thiamin
|
0.05 mg
|
Riboflavin
|
0.155 mg
|
Niacin
|
0.5 mg
|
Pantothenic acid
|
0.053 mg
|
Vitamin B-6
|
0.24 mg
|
Folate, total
|
140 µg
|
Folic acid
|
0 µg
|
Folate, food
|
140 µg
|
Folate, DFE
|
140 µg
|
Vitamin B-12
|
0 µg
|
Vitamin A, RAE
|
400 µg
|
Retinol
|
0 µg
|
Vitamin A, IU
|
8000 IU
|
Vitamin D (D2 + D3)
|
0 µg
|
Vitamin D
|
0 IU
|
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The small plant that grew from the small stem that my mother planted |
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The small
plant started to grow bigger.
|
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The
growing malabar spinach vine. Notice the shine on the leaves.
|
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The growing malabar spinach vine. Here are the small buds that I noticed a few days back. |
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Here's small buds that I captured with my cellphone camera today, afternoon. |
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Here's small buds that I captured with my cellphone camera today, in the afternoon. |
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Here's small buds that I captured with my cellphone camera today, in the afternoon. |
In the
upcoming posts, I have a lot of options to share with you. My chrysanthemum
plants have started bearing buds, with all the plants now featuring small buds,
which, I think will give me blooms in the upcoming week or so. Then I am yet to
share the lotus plants which now have small round leaves typical to lotuses.
Then I'll be having this Malabar spinach vine blooming by the next week. I'll
be back with something from these in the upcoming week. Till then keep trying
and HAPPY GARDENING!
The post is very interesting...I am also very fond of gardening and love to plant different kinds of plants of flowers and fruits....thank u so much for sharing your thoughts.............
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