Gardening - Red Spinach

Red spinach, also known as spleen amaranth has taken over most of our pot. Every Spring season they sprout everywhere - until now. And we love it. It means free, organic red spinach whenever we want it.

Mom harvesting red spinach for lunch.

Known as kalunay in the Philippines, and my mom being Ilocana, she loves the vegetable and I learned to love it as well. I can only give one word - a healthy eat

A good supply of kalunay right from our small garden.

Red spinach is a self sowing plant so there's always new ones popping in the garden - in any pots.

Young kalunay plants. Photo taken few years ago.

Red spinach are reddish in color when they are young. One reason why they probably got the name red spinach. The reddish color disappears once the plant matures.

Very young plants.

Those young plants came from these teenie tiny seeds. Each black seed is as tiny as the end of a pen.

Red spinach seeds.

Red spinach isn't only healthy - it provides fiber, vitamins and minerals, calcium amongst other health benefits. And my favorite is that it is an expectorant and I'm consuming the plant for the reason. Red spinach tastes good as well. It is good in stews, sauteed sardines or with other sauteed vegetables.

Freshly picked kalunay.

Kalunay orred spinach on nilaga or Filipino beef stew.

And with that, I will be ending my blog post with a flowering red spinach.

These green flowers aren't like your usual flowers. Once matured, a red spinach flower will turn brown with a lot of tiny seeds inside that self sows.