This plant here is called tree spinach. It is one of the fastest growing and tallest crops that you can grow in your garden. And it means it’s one of the most productive ones. And it has a different name as well, which I’ll reveal a little later on. It has a slight slight secret that you don’t know at first. But tree spinach is amazing and so that’s why I’m making this video about it. Now, as I mentioned, tree spinach is edible. And there are two main ways that you can eat it. Either raw or cooked. When you cook it, cook it down like you would for normal spinach. And it has this really nice asparagus flavor to it. So, it’s a very pleasant flavor. Um, eating it raw is also delicious. You can eat the leaves, you can eat the whole tips, add it into salads. It adds a little bit of color because, as you can see, you have these beautiful magenta tips which look stunning. Now, in terms of raw flavor compared to normal spinach, I think it tastes a little bit more mineraly and it is related to spinach. It’s within the same genus family thing, but it isn’t closely related to spinach. It is within the amaranth family. So, the amaranth family for everyone else. And I asked Chat GPT if this is more nutritionally dense than spinach because it it tastes so with that mineral-y flavor and apparently it is. So I’ll put the chart up so you can see it. And yeah, another reason why to grow it because it is nice and nutritious as well. This isn’t technically a spinach, but is it a tree? Well, obviously not, but it does have, as you can see here, this branching like habit. So the tree just kind of explains the gigantic nature of it and the way that if you do let it grow, it will continue to branch out. And it works really well as a tree, as a structure. But if you do have some open area in the garden, you might want to consider staking it because if there’s some heavy wind, sadly, it will knock it over. So if you are after the height of which it can grow to 2 and a half meters tall or eight foot tall then just consider giving it a stake and no it is not a tree but it’s kind of like a temporary tree. Now, at the start of the video, I mentioned that this plant has another name, okay? Giant spinach or tree spinach. But it is also known as the glitter spinach because if you go up closely and you peer into the top and the base of the leaves, especially when it is sunny, it it shines like it’s got lots of micro bits of glitter. So, you’ve kind of got plastic free glitter growing in your garden. and uh and it looks stunning, especially when you’ve got that sunlight and it really just makes it light up. Um yeah, glitter spinach. So, if you got kids, you could be like, “Hey kids, I want to grow some glitter spinach.” And that might be a way of trying to get them into gardening cuz I think all kids should grow their own and they might as well grow their own edible glitter. Now, those of you who are permaculture gardeners or are trying to grow resilient gardens, so you have more perennials, like here I’ve got ochre growing up around these runner beans. I’ve got ders here. Tree spinach is fantastic because unlike regular spinach, we all know what it’s like. We grow normal spinach and it gets a little bit too hot and dry and it panics and bolts and goes to seed. Well, the amazing thing about tree spinach is that it thrives even when it is really dry and hot. It doesn’t kind of bolt from under seed. It just keeps on growing. So, in terms of having a resilient plant over summer months, this is fantastic. And there’s another core benefit of glitter spinach, which is it isn’t fussy really about soil types. It will grow in the poorest quality soil, which is another major benefit because sometimes when you plant normal spinach in quite poor quality soil, it’s kind of like I’m not very happy. I want to be somewhere else. But glitter spinach, it’s just grateful to grow anywhere and it will grow anywhere. I haven’t planted a single glitter spinach this year because all this is a self-seeded glitter spinach. All of the other ones are. Um, and I will show you why it is sometimes a little bit of a problem because it is so prolific. But it means that once you grow it once, you’ll never have to buy the seeds again. And dealing with it is quite simple. It’s easy to pull out or to hoe off. But just I just noticed as I was speaking, I’ve got a weed here. And this weed looks very similar to this crop. And this weed here is known as goosefoot or lamb’s quarters. Now lamb’s quarter is very much very closely related to glitter spinach. Some botonists think that perhaps tree spinach is more of a domestication or cultivar of this gooseoot. But like goosefoot or like tree spinach both give you edible leaves. So whilst this might be a weed, it is an edible weed that you might want to consider leaving in your garden. And as you can see, it also has a bit of height, but lamb’s quarter, it will never out compete the scope and size of tree spinach. Now, one thing to be aware of, if you do grow this plant, you’re not really going to get rid of it. And that can be a great thing because I get loads of food to eat, but it can also be a bad thing because it might mean that you need to do a little bit more weeding. But here I’ve got celery or cilerak actually growing and this if I don’t deal with this tree spinach, it is going to take over. But you can just quite easily go and pull it up. Even with the size of it, it is very easy to go through and weed. And as I mentioned earlier with permaculture, what is actually a great benefit of it is that you you can weed it and then chop and drop and use it as a mulch around the other plants that are growing. If these got like really tall and I was like, “Okay, there may be a little bit of a beast and out competing the plants growing nearby.” The way I would chop and drop it is get something out some shears and start at the top and just work down so it falls down on the ground and then I will edit its placement around the other plants. So again, it’s providing another function and before this is actually the second batch of selfsewn tree spinach because before I planted the carak there was a ground cover of tree spinach. So, it’s actually protecting the ground, adding that fertility. We then cleared it, planted the cilerak, but there’s still more seeds in the seed soil bank. And uh yeah, it can take over, but I mean, it’s pretty. So, I’d rather that take over than other things. Now, if you want to sew some glitter spinach, all you need to do is find a place, throw down some seeds, break it in, and that’s it. But for all of the selfsewn seedlings like this one, it’s really easy to move about. You just dig it up with as much of the roots as possible and find the spot where you want to plant it and then you place it in. And then the next thing to do is to give it a really good water and it is going to be overly dramatic. It’s going to flop over and you’re going to think, “No, it’s not going to make it.” But then within a day or two, it will come back up and it will keep on growing. Because of this plant, during the growing season, I don’t really bother with growing spinach. I will right at the start and I’ll grow spinach to overwinter in the poly tunnel, but really glitter spinach takes over because I do like a bit of efficiency. And this just grows itself and it’s maybe time for you to consider growing it. But again, just be warned, it will spread. For some people, that’s a good thing. For other people, that’s a bad thing. And whilst you’re deciding whether it’s good or bad, watch this video.