How to grow malabar spinach

Malabar spinach is a fast-climbing tropical vine grown as a heat-season substitute for true spinach, offering thick, glossy, semi-succulent leaves through the stretch of summer when cool-season greens have long since bolted. It needs a sturdy trellis or fence to climb, easily covering six feet of support in a season, and it earns a spot in beds where gardeners want greens on the table straight through the hottest weeks rather than a gap between spring and fall lettuce crops. The leaves cook down like true spinach but carry a milder, slightly peppery flavor and a mucilaginous texture that also works to thicken soups.

The hardest part of growing Malabar spinach well is respecting how much heat it actually needs to get going. University of Wisconsin-Madison Extension notes the vine stalls when night temperatures run below 60 degrees Fahrenheit and grows quickly only once conditions turn genuinely hot. A second-year gardener who treats it like other leafy greens and sets transplants out alongside spinach and lettuce in cool spring soil ends up with a vine that sits stunted for weeks; by the time nights warm enough for it to actually climb, half the growing season is gone, and the trellis never fills in before the days shorten again in fall.