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Molokhia wants full sun and as much heat as your garden can give it. Growth is slow and sulky below 68F (20C), steady from 77F (25C) upward, and fastest at 86 to 95F (30 to 35C), which is where most leafy greens have already given up. In a shaded or cool corner it will survive, stay short and never give you the volume of leaf that makes it worth growing.
It is frost-tender in the strictest sense. A single light frost blackens the whole plant, and even a run of nights below 50F (10C) stops it and yellows the lower leaves. Plan on it occupying the bed from the point the soil is warm until the first cold nights, and follow it with something hardy.
The plants grow upright, from two to six feet (60 to 180 cm) depending on how hard you cut them and how rich the soil is. Give them a position where that height will not shade the rest of the garden through the middle of the day.
Watering: steady rather than heavy
The leaf is the crop, so the aim is uninterrupted growth. Any check from drought shows up within days as smaller, thicker, tougher leaves and, worse, as a plant that starts trying to flower. Water deeply once or twice a week in ordinary heat and every second day in a run above 95F (35C), aiming for around an inch (25 mm) a week in total, more in containers.
Water at the base rather than over the top. The leaves are thin and the plants are picked constantly, so wet foliage overnight invites leaf spot and passes problems along your fingers as you harvest. Morning is the right time; the plant then has water available through the hours when it is transpiring hardest.
A two-inch (5 cm) mulch of straw or compost, laid once the plants are six inches (15 cm) tall and the soil is thoroughly warm, is the highest-value thing you can do for this crop. It halves the watering, keeps the surface roots cool and stops the soil crusting between cuts.
| Conditions | Watering | What you will see if you get it wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Warm, 77 to 86F (25 to 30C) | Deep soak once a week | Leaves stay large and soft |
| Hot, above 95F (35C) | Every second day, early morning | Wilting by afternoon, thickened leaves |
| Cool spell below 68F (20C) | Cut right back | Yellow lower leaves, stalled growth |
| Containers in full sun | Daily, sometimes twice | Drying out is the usual cause of early flowering |
| After a hard cut back | Water well once, then normally | Dry roots delay regrowth by a week |
Feeding for leaf, not for flower
You are removing leaf every week or two, and leaf is mostly nitrogen. A plant that is cut repeatedly and never fed becomes pale, short-jointed and small-leaved by midseason, and it flowers earlier than a fed plant. Work a couple of inches (5 cm) of compost into the bed before sowing, then feed lightly and often once cutting starts.
A balanced liquid feed or a nitrogen-leaning one every two to three weeks through the cutting season is the simplest approach. If you prefer dry fertilizer, side-dress a light band along the row after every second cut and water it in. Do not put on one large dose; this plant responds to a steady trickle, and heavy feeding produces soft growth that aphids find first.
Watch the color of the leaves that have just expanded rather than the old ones at the base. Pale new growth means feed. Yellowing only at the bottom of a plant that is still growing hard at the top is usually shading, or cold nights, not hunger.
Feed immediately after a cut, not immediately before. The plant is about to push a flush of new shoots and that is when it can use the nitrogen; feeding a full-grown plant you are about to cut down mostly feeds the compost pile.
Staking, spacing and airflow
Well-fed plants that are allowed to run get top-heavy, and a summer storm can lay a whole row flat. Regular cutting is the main defense, since it keeps the plants low and bushy. If you are growing them tall for seed or for shade, push a cane in beside each plant early and tie loosely at two heights.
Keep the stand slightly open. Densely crowded plants that never dry off after rain get leaf spot and give spider mites a sheltered run. If you thinned too generously and the plants have closed up, take out every other one and use it; there is no sentimentality needed with a crop this fast.
Keep weeds down for the first six weeks. After that the canopy closes and does the job for you. Hand-weed rather than hoeing deeply near the plants, because the feeding roots are shallow and directly under the mulch.
What to write down this season
This crop rewards a very short set of notes. Record the date of the first cut, the interval between cuts that the plants actually kept up with in your heat, and the date the first flower buds appeared. Flowering is triggered largely by shortening days, so that last date will be close to the same each year on your site, which lets you plan the end of the season instead of being surprised by it.
Also note where the row was. Root-knot nematodes build up on this crop in warm soils, so a sketch showing which bed carried it lets you move it around a three-year rotation without relying on memory.