Organic sweet potato leaf

Yummy! Another in the 'From market to garden' series - sweet potato leaf is one of my favourite greens, and it never seems to be in the market. It's normally stir fried with garlic, and maybe some lard (sinfully delicious), and the leaves are thicker and smoother than other greens, and not bitter.

Anyway, WW got some sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) and planted them.

It grows fast! It took about a week to get to this stage


but then, three days later it shot up!


There was another one (not photographed) that was in the kitchen - where there's plenty of light but not much direct sun, it grew considerably slower.

And today she planted it in the ground. It's classified as a vine, so I'm not sure if that means we have to watch out for it growing all over the fence?


Look at those leaves... thick and purplish. I'm not sure when to cut them off though, they are quite bushy and soon there'll be enough for a dish, I think...

Here are some recipes online:
Piggy's Cooking Journal (this one looks more like what you usually get in Malaysia)
Mental Masala

Growing organic okra

Okra, also known as lady finger or bhindi is officially called Abelmoschus esculentus. The name 'okra' comes from West Africa, as someone told me when I worked in Nigeria, and it's popular for thickening the stew that goes with garri.
Anyway, we planted some and found that they grew easily. In the full sun with not a lot of care or attention needed. The only problem is that each plant does not produce a lot of fruits at a time, and they are relatively large.
The flowers appear at the interstice, with the first one at about 20-40 cm off the ground. The plant keeps growing, so you have to harvest them as it grows, to avoid them becoming too hard. In the end, the plants grew to about 1.5-2m, over a cycle of about three months.

They are very tasty when cooked straight from the plant :p

Information on okra from Purdue University.