In Praise of Callaloo

Callaloo is a quick growing, high yielding, heat tolerant cooking green.

Callaloo can mean two things: the first is a particular style of cooked greens dish that is popular in the Caribbean. You’ll find lots of recipes online. The other way the word is used is to refer to a specific plant: a particular variety of Amaranth grown for prolific growth of tender leaves.

I’ve harvested from these plants multiple times, and they just keep cranking out the leaves.

This particular plant is grown during the hot weather months. I like to grow it in the space where garlic was harvested in late June or July. Once the cold weather returns, Callaloo is all done and I can replant my garlic (I’ve never had an issue growing garlic in the same location every year).

The leaves can get awfully large, without losing quality.

Harvesting is easy. Once you’ve got a significant number of leaves a few weeks after sowing, come through and pick all the biggest ones, leaving the smallest to grow for the next picking.

This is what the plant looks like after I’ve harvested. I let the smallest leaves grow for the next picking.

One word of caution: this plant will self-sow, just like any other amaranth - if that bothers you, this may not be the crop for you. The good news is that it is easy to save your own seed.

This green is good for cooking in any way that you’d use a spinach, and is particularly good for stocking up on greens for the winter.

I purchased my initial stock of seed through Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

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Slugs Avoid Callaloo

The best part of growing this green, in my mind, is that I’ve never seen a pest on it. Contrast that with some kale plants that I set out at around the same time.

A big fat red slug really went to town on this Lacinato kale. So frustrating.

Chard is also finding its way into the slug diet. I have chard in another part of my garden where this isn’t a problem - maybe it is a different variety that the slug doesn’t like. Unsure.

I’m not sure what is going on with the slugs this year, but there seems to be an explosion of those huge fat red ones.

This one is really enjoying this Brussels Sprout plant, and chomping away on the developing sprout buds.

I recently planted out about a dozen fabulous looking butter head lettuce, and this is the best looking of the bunch at this time.

Normally, slugs seem to go somewhat dormant for me mid-summer, and I can pretend they don’t even exist during that time of year. But for some reason they came out in droves right around mid-summer. They don’t seem to be bothered by bright morning sunlight or dry conditions. On overcast days, they are out munching in the garden all day.

Before you make suggestions: I’ve tried them all (beer, bait, trapping, etc). The bread dough trick did work earlier in the year when I had a few seedlings to protect and the big red ones didn’t seem as active. But for some reason they are really hungry and will eat anything right now, no matter the size of the plant. Even climbing high into the tomato plants to tunnel through my developing San Marzano-type pastes.

My preference is to seek out plants that slugs avoid.

With any pest, some years are worse than others. I hope that this is just a fluke for this year and next year will be better.

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