One of My favorite perennial vegetables is the all-round, productive and long-lived spinach cousin Good King-Henry (Blitum bonus-henricus).
The species is already well-adapted to my garden and one population has been growing with minimal care (around 15 min weeding every spring) for around 5-6 years. I basically don’t have to garden and can just harvest. This is the gold standard for low-maintenance gardening.
My goals are:
Improved taste. Leaves and shoots have to be cooked and are otherwise too strong-tasting, bitter. There can sometimes be a soapy after-taste, I’d like to get rid of. Otherwise good, confident mineral-rich spinach-flavor. The largest genetic difference are in the vegetative parts (compared to generative parts like flowers and seed), so there is potential here.
Larger flower stalks. Flower stalks are one of the better crops on this plant at the flower bud stage (brocolli-ish), but still relatively small.
The seeds can be used as a quinoa substitute, are pretty easy to harvest, but could be even more productive.
Possibly more seedy, so it also self-seeds in the garden
Possibly inter-generic crosses (same tribus as Spinacia and many Chenopodium species are closely related too, e.g. Chenopodium quinoa for seed, Chenopodium album for raw leaves or color variations)
Balkan has the largest genetic diversity of this species and the native range extends into the Caucasus and Eastern Mediterranean. I will look for seed from especially this place. @Soeren has mentioned old monasteries as a source of improved genetics too.
Carol Deppe has done some breeding attempts on this species and many of her thoughts inform my approach.
I will just use this thread as a way to document my project and as a placeholder for thoughts and questions along the way. If anyone else is working on this plant, I’d love to hear and exchange of course!
Interesting Malte, I’ve tried for quite some years now, out of interest to grow it and only this year managed to squeeze out some survivors, They reluctantly grow in the hoophouse, i keep them away from snails. Could just be that it doesn’t like my poor granite soils, i remember reading somewhere that it prefers limey clay soils.
Do snails attack yours in spring? Or is it one of those plants that because of their big perennial rootsystem easily outgrow even the worst attacks?
I cannot say that I am working on this plant, but years ago I have planted it, lured by permaculture stories on how excellent it is. Unfortunately, its taste turned out to be discouraging but about a decade later this plant still grows in my garden, self seeding. If you want some seeds, I can try to collect them this year.
By the way, since my plants grow in dry, very sandy soil, they look like a poor cousins of the plant on your photo Less lush and even way less green.
My soil is limey clay, so that follows well what you’ve heard @Hugo. I find that humid soil is much better too and that it is not very drought tolerant. My soil tends to be very humid, so it is very well-adapted to my growing conditions. Leaves on the plant are pretty large and it easily outgrows grazing from the large slug population here. Growing-wise, it’s super easy for me here.
@WojciechG - how did you you prepare this plant: Which part did you eat, when and how did you cook it? (You have to cook it, irregardless of the permaculture milieu advice to eat it raw, I can’t understand why anyone would want to do that).
Then it’s probably a matter of what I’m talking about here - improving flavor. I do find it very useful already as you would use cooking spinach in dishes. But I always pair it with strong flavors (and fat, salt, acid). It would be nice to have a variety that could be used with less strong flavors.
All such leafy crops, with spinach being the most popular, we steam with garlic, salt, pepper, a little of sour cream and sometimes lemon juice. Kids add ketchup
I’m very interested in this crop. It was slow to establish but each little colony in my garden (Z5 NY) has been getting stronger every year. I love to sautee the flowering stems when premature as you would with broccolini. Yes, garlic and lemon juice! I don’t love the leaves. I have also collected the dry seeds to cook like quinoa but haven’t gotten around to it yet. Will report. Happy to swap seeds in the interest of improving leaf taste.
Less lush and even way less green.