Tropical Edible Gardens

I know it is the dry season, and we are all conditioned to be planting tomatoes, zucchini, cucumber, basil, lettuce and pumpkin now, along with all the other Mediterranean or European foods, but have you thought about making your annual veggie patch a little more year-round?

Veggie Patch Harvest

We are all aware that the world is becoming more challenging on a few fronts, particularly the cost of living, and we also have a general trend towards more ‘sustainable’ life choices, but sometimes the first one dictates our ability to do the second. If you have an interest in ‘home grown’ and the general look of the edible greens in the supermarket sometimes makes your stomach turn, you could benefit from a patch of perennial greens, rather than the more labour intense annual garden.

It's not ‘maintenance free’ but can certainly be more time-poor people friendly, and definitely gives you an alternative if you are not the daily check of the garden type of human (that would be me too by the way). First things first, we will have some definitions to help everyone out, a perennial is a plant that lives for more than two years, so they wont cark it at the end of the dry season like your zucchini or tomatoes (at least for most people that is how that one works). Some of the plants we are going to discuss here are actually annuals, but will ‘self-renew’, either in the form of dropped seeds or seasonal dormancy. There are also ground cover type plants, that may die after a year or so, but will have formed new plants, so you wont notice the original plants death. ‘Edible Green’ just refers to something we can eat the leaves of, which leads us onto a quick housekeeping note, please remember that you should be mindful of children and those with food sensitivities when trying new foods, and be aware that allergic reactions are possible with even the most innocuous things. No one is immune to the sudden development of an allergy or intolerance, so don’t rule out the obvious if someone is responding differently to a new food!

So let’s start with a simple list of perennial greens and herbs –

Brazilian Spinach Alternanthera sissoo

Jewels of Opar Talinium paniculata variegata

Cassava Manihot esculent (must be cooked)

Okinawa Spinach Gynura bicolour

Longevity Spinach Gynura procumbens

Saw Tooth Coriander Eryngium foetidum

Beefsteak Plant Iresine celosia (more medicinal than everyday eating but still good to have)

La Lot Piper sarmentosum

Malabar or Ceylon Spinach Basella alba or rubra

Mint Mentha sp

Aibika Abelmoschus Manihot

Sweet Potato Ipomoea batatas (must be cooked)

Sweet Leaf Sauropus androgynus

5 in 1 Herb / Mexican Mint / Cuban Oregano Coleus amboinicus, syn Plectranthus amboinicus

Now here’s the caveat, which should come as no surprise to any of you, some leaves taste absolutely amazing, and some taste like absolute garbage! We are all a little different on that front, my partner loves Baby Spinach, and I think it is awful, great cooked in pasta or something, but I have no idea why you would put something so bleurgh in a salad (I have learnt to live with it), so it is a great idea to try these things and see how you like them before you commit to planting. You will probably also find some of these plants in your garden already, and there are so many more that you could have that I haven't listed here. For the nervous among us, there are some great knowledge bases around once you start looking, Tisha Tejaya's 'Pocketbook guide to the markets', Dr Leonie Norrington's 'Tropical Food Gardens' Book, crap loads of references on the NTG website (just be patient when you are searching it's a little maze like), your local community garden, and social media are all good starting points, as well as your local nursery. Try to remember a lot of these plants grow in a lot of different places, so there will be many names to think about and some recipes will be easier to find with different regional names. It is good to remember the Darwin population is somewhat transient, and many of us came from somewhere else fairly recently, so even when the knowledge is there, it could be in a different language. Look outside the box and you may be surprised at what you find.

And here are some surprises, these are things that people either forget are edible, or assume the ‘ornamental’ versions are not food -

Ginger –

All gingers are edible, with different parts being preferable on different varieties. Many of us are familiar with Galangal root, but did you know the leaf can be used to wrap and flavour meats, particularly fish? The young shoots can also be added to soups or curry for extra flavour, and young leaves can be stir-fried or sauteed. Torch Ginger flowers are picked before they open, sliced and added to salads for a tangy crunch, while Kaempferia and Scaphochlamys leaves are great salad greens. The small flowers on Beehive, Costus and Alpinia can be eaten raw or added as an edible garnish to any meal. Basically every part is edible, and you can decide which part of which one is most worth the time it takes to harvest!

Portulaca or Purslane –

You know those pretty little succulent looking weeds with the brightly coloured flowers? Yeah whole thing is edible, so stop ripping it out or ignoring it, and start harvesting. If it’s growing somewhere you don’t want it to, eat it instead. The younger stems and leaves go straight in the salad, while the tougher older growth needs a light stir fry or use it like spinach to make pies or pasta.

Taro or Colocasia –

We have fallen into the habit of calling all the ‘Elephant Ears’ Alocasia, but there are three different species, Alocasia, Colocasia and Xanthosoma. Now the leaves of pretty much all of these plants are edible, but they must be cooked or you could end up with an impressive rash and/or stomach ache. The reason for this is a high level of Calcium Oxalate, and the basic needle like structure of it, which is changed through appropriate cooking.  For those that are familiar with the edible nature of the tuber on this group of plants, cooking to remove the oxalates applies to that part of the plant as well.

Hibiscus –

Good old Hibiscus, that shrub in every second garden in Darwin is edible as well as tough as nails and kinda pretty. Harvest the leaves when you prune and add the younger ones to your salad that night, and the tougher ones to the freezer and/or cook them up in your next meal. The flowers are also edible and can make for a slightly tangy colourful addition to any dish.

This is not an exhaustive list, it really is just scratching the surface of what we can grow and the ways in which we can use these plants, but if you can’t find something that works for you in this list, then set yourself up a little raised bed in filtered sun. Visit a nursery and buy a packet of rocket, a packet of lettuce (looseleaf types are better), some silverbeet or some sort of spinach, and set up a little irrigation to make sure the soil is kept moist. Sprinkle a few of each type of seed around the area, don’t be fussy about perfection or forming rows, we are working to the KISS principle here (keep it simple stupid), and repeat in 2-4 weeks. This will give you a low care, somewhat self-renewing patch of green where you can let the occasional plant go to seed, and just harvest as you need it. If you keep the soil moist, (not soggy, just damp) and apply fertiliser on a regular basis, you can take one thing off the shopping list, and there will be no more slimy bags of green stuff in the bottom of the fridge.  If you aren’t feeling confident about a fertiliser regime, aim for ‘weekly, weakly’, small doses as regularly as possible are always better than inconsistent over feeding. Starving all day and then powering through a pizza might feel good at first, but it doesn’t make for good long-term nutrition and the same goes for your plants.

It doesn't have to be overly complicated, and you don’t need to turn the entire back yard into a veggie patch or become a market gardener overnight. Keep it simple, and aim for one success at a time, a ground cover that keeps the weeds down and you can eat when you are short of green stuff in the fridge is a winner, no matter which way you look at it. And just remember the ultimate mindset for success with an edible garden is -

‘If you want something to feed you, you must feed it’