It's great raw or cooked, in salads, on sandwiches or on pizza (like Subway), any way you would use regular spinach.

Oh yumm, sounds like I made a great choice! Thanks!

My seeds came today from Baker Creek so I plan on planting tomorrow. Raining today.

It loves the heat and will take full sun. It seeds like crazy all up the vine. It needs to be staked or trellised. Mine was very drought tolerant, but grew alot better if watered on a regular basis. Mine never made it to the house. I liked to eat it raw in the garden.

I know the reviews are all glowing up to this point, so I hate being a wet blanket... but I should mention the texture. It is thick-leaved, almost like a succulent; more similar to purslane in flavor & texture than it is to spinach. Somewhat slimy & mucilaginous when cooked. Personally, while the vines were beautiful enough to grow as an ornamental (I grew the red stemmed variety) I never took a liking to it. Zackey is right about it being a heat lover, though.

For heat-tolerant alternatives to spinach, I found New Zealand spinach (which is actually a close relative to spinach) and water spinach (an edible morning glory) to be more palatable. Egyptian spinach does well in extreme heat, but has a very mucilaginous texture when cooked... so like Malabar spinach, it might not appeal to everyone. And in all but the hottest climates, Swiss chard is also a good spinach substitute.

All of these spinach alternatives will produce tons of greens all year, which makes them more space efficient than true spinach.

Orach is another good spinach substitute for warmer weather, although as the plant matures, the leaves tend to get quite small, becoming more and more tedious to harvest.

Doing quick crops of baby spinach in semi-shade seems to be a good way to go in the summer months, sow it and then harvest in about 3 weeks. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Zeedman,
You don't care for it raw? I'm just wondering. I grow it every so often but I've never eaten it. I have both the green stem and the red stem getting ready to plant. Anyone else want to chime in on how this tastes fresh? I get the slimy part of it. I've read that before. I know Zackey said it never made it to the kitchen. Anyone else? Thanx!

More questions here. I've got some started in cups for the first time. Does anyone know if deer will eat it? I wanted to grow it in a large pot and let it climb over a short decorative fence in front of the building(full sun from noon on), but the deer forage right up to the building at night. I have a trellis in the fenced-in backyard, but it gets early sun until about 12:30, then shade all afternoon. Don't know if that's enough sun. I was also wondering if the berries cause a mess.

I opened the packet of seed and there seemed to be a lot of seed in there. So I direct sowed about half the packet. This way I have spare seed if for some reason they do not come up.

Guess what? They are comming up! Lots of little plants. Hurray!

I got seeds from there as well and planted mine about 3 weeks ago - so far have only seen 2 little green sprouts :(
I'm glad yours are coming up - my other spinaches are up in about 4 days so this is really strange to me that they're not coming up... I don't know what's going on :(
I was really excited for the malabar and even made a garden entrance trellas for them to climb up... guess we will see how it goes.

I think they like hot weather. We had afew days when it was hot and I think that got them going. Now it has turned cool again.

Oh good so all hope isn't lost. I guess I thought they'd do like the rest of my spinach and lettuces... makes sense, since they're from Asia... this week has been cool and so much rain - though I did get them in a week before all the rain started. Maybe the warmer weather next week will perk them up.

Good luck!

Boy they sure do grow slowely. Lots of plants and all still on that first set of leaves.

The little plants are doing well but not yet vining. Seem to grow very slowely.

I had 3 plants each in two containers about ten feet apart. Something has been eating one set to almost nothing, the other set has only a few sets of leaves, definitely not vining yet. I have sprayed Bt, put down Sluggo, and sprayed with Safer soap...I still can't catch what's eating the one set. I check at night and see nothing...I mean there's almost nothing to check, just little stubs, but something's trying to finish them off. I'm hoping the other plants will be ok...nothing has been munching them...they're just taking their time growing.

Well, well, well. I caught the culprit. The sun's going down and I went out to roll up the shade on the door and thought I'd give my little stumps a look. I saw the soil move next to the larger stem and found a big fat cutworm coming out for the night. Maybe there was not enough foliage when I last sprayed the Bt or maybe there were just more of them, but this one got tossed into the parking lot for the birds. I scraped around in the soil but didn't find any others. I hope that's it for this container and maybe the plants will re-sprout. Dang, there's a lot of pests this year!

Oh, I just noticed flowers on my Malabar Spinach. I didn't think it was supposed to flower. Should I pinch off the flowers? The plants are finially vining nicely.

I've been waiting for vining and flowering. I had intended to use it as an ornamental if I didn't like the taste. My plants are up to a about a foot tall and one is finally starting to vine out but no sign of flowers yet. I can't believe how slow they've grown since they're supposed to like heat. The one that the cutworms took down to the nubbin is growing the best now. The stems on all of them are really thick and the leaves are larger than I thought they would be. They are very gummy tasting. I haven't tried cooking them yet, hoping that might improve taste/texture. I wonder if the leaves could be dried/dehydrated and powdered for a thickener.
This is the one that's starting to vine. I added a few basil plants to the space where the cutworms took out 2 plants.
{{gwi:57770}}

Oh, mine is much taller than that and vining nicely.

{{gwi:57772}}
Here it is today. Lots of bloom buds that never seem to open.

Mine still aren't much taller and the stems are not red like yours(which I think is attractive). I won't be growing it again in any case. Grows too slow for an ornamental and I don't like the taste at all...reminds me of the musty earthy taste of beets which I also don't like. Oh well, it was worth a try.

noinwiZ3/4 thanks for the taste test as many who have not grown these plants have no idea what to expect. As for me I kind of like the musty taste as I love Swiss-chard.