Harvesting Molokhia: Which Parts Are Edible and How to Cut for Regrowth

What you eat, and what you never eat

Be clear about this before the first picking, because it is the one piece of knowledge this crop actually demands. The edible parts of jute mallow are the young leaves and the soft shoot tips, including the tender stem at the very top of a shoot that snaps cleanly with your fingers. Everything else is not food. The seeds contain cardiac glycosides and are toxic, the pods that hold them are toxic, and the mature stems are woody, fibrous and not eaten.

The practical test is the snap. If the top of a shoot breaks cleanly between finger and thumb, it is tender enough to eat. If it bends, strings or needs a knife, it is stem, and it goes on the compost pile. Applied every time you pick, that single test keeps the harvest right without any thinking.

Because flowers turn into pods, keeping flowers pinched off through late summer is part of harvesting rather than a separate job. Once a plant is carrying developing pods among the leaves, stop picking from it. It is not worth sorting pods out of a basket of greens in a kitchen.

Strip leaves off the stems as you come in from the garden rather than in the kitchen, and put the stems straight on the compost pile. The greens that reach the sink are then leaves only, which removes any chance of confusion.

First picking and the cutting rhythm

The first real harvest comes six to eight weeks from sowing in good heat, once the plant is a foot (30 cm) or more tall and has branched. Start early rather than waiting for a big plant. Cutting is what makes it bush out, and a stand picked from the beginning yields far more over a season than one left to grow tall first.

In peak heat a well-fed plant will be ready to cut again every ten to fourteen days. As the nights cool the interval stretches to three weeks and then stops. The plant sets the pace; you are simply keeping up with it.

There are two ways to pick and both work. Take individual shoot tips two or three times a week for daily cooking, or cut the whole plant back hard every couple of weeks when you want a full batch at once. Most people end up doing both: tip-picking as needed, then one hard cut when a large quantity is wanted.

Cutting back hard without losing the plant

The hard cut is what makes this crop unusual among leafy greens. A plant taken down to six or eight inches (15 to 20 cm) in hot weather will be back in full leaf in two to three weeks, and it can take that treatment four or five times in a season.

1. Cut above a leaf joint, low but not bare Cut the stems back to six to eight inches (15 to 20 cm) above the soil, just above a joint that still carries leaves. Leaving a few leaves behind matters. A stem cut back to bare wood regrows slowly or not at all, because the buds there have hardened.
2. Use clean pruners on anything thick Shoot tips snap with your fingers. Stems thicker than a pencil should be cut with pruners, because tearing strips a length of bark down the stem and opens a wound that rots in humid weather.
3. Water and feed straight after Water the row well and give a nitrogen-leaning liquid feed within a day of a hard cut. The plant is about to push a whole flush of shoots, and that is the only moment when a feed makes a visible difference.
4. Stagger the row Cut half the plants hard one week and the other half a fortnight later. You then always have one block in full leaf rather than a row that is uniformly bare for a fortnight after every harvest.
5. Note the first and last cut Write down the date of the first cut, the dates of each hard cut back, and the date the plants stopped being worth picking. Those figures tell you how many cuts your season really supports and therefore how many plants you need next year.

The mucilage, and what to do with the crop

Cooked, these leaves are very mucilaginous. Chopped fine and simmered they turn a broth thick and distinctly slippery, closer to okra than to spinach, and that texture is the whole point of the dish this plant is famous for rather than a fault to be fixed. Anyone growing it for the first time should cook a small batch early in the season to find out how they feel about it before they have a full row producing.

The texture is controllable. Chopping the leaves finely and simmering them maximizes it; a fast, dry, high-heat stir-fry of whole young leaves for two or three minutes keeps it to a minimum. Long slow cooking in a lot of liquid gives the most slippery result, which is exactly what some cooks are after and exactly what puts others off.

The leaves are mild and slightly earthy with none of the metallic edge of true spinach, and they hold up to garlic, chilli and long simmering better than most greens. They are not usually eaten raw in quantity.

Pick in the morning while the leaves are turgid. Leaves cut in mid-afternoon heat wilt within the hour and never fully recover, however cold you get them.