Last Saturday, my colleagues and I kicked start 2010′s first of a series of guided tours of selected theme gardens in HortPark. This first tour was conducted in HortPark’s ‘Kampong Daze’ or otherwise also known as the ‘Fruit and Vegetable Garden’. The name of this theme garden is self-explanatory and the guided tour served to showcase to visitors a range of perennial leafy vegetables that can be grown in here in Singapore. I was surprised by the turn-out and a rough estimate would put the number of participants to around fifty.
Most of us are familiar with leafy vegetables such as Chinese cabbage, Chinese kale and Chinese spinach. These are common edible leafy greens that need to be re-grown once they have been harvested. Once they reach the right size, these vegetables are usually pulled out from the ground and brought to the cooking pot. But do you know that there is a group of perennial, ‘cut-and-come-again’ leafy vegetable plants? These plants produce leaves that can be harvested over a longer period of time, without the need to quickly re-grow them. Some species of plants have a longer useful lives than others. For example, the horseradish tree will continue to grow and leaves can be harvested continuously whereas the wild cosmos and Indian lettuce plant need to be regrown once they have started to flower or set seed. One can delay flowering by regularly harvesting the leaves and cutting off the flower stalks once they appear.
In this tour, we also shared with our visitors how some of these plants are cooked and tips on how to grow them. I would like to thank all who came to support this guided tour and I hope it was a fruitful trip for all. At the time of writing of this post, we have the following plants growing in HortPark’s ‘Kampong Daze’ theme garden and we will be adding more in the future:
1. Jew’s Mallow (Corchorus olitorius)
2. Water Clover (Marsilea crenata)
3. Wild Pepper (Piper sarmentosum)
4. Ulam Raja or Wild Cosmos (Cosmos caudatus)
5. Green Sessile Joyweed (Alternanthera sessilis)
6. Ceylon Spinach (Basella alba)
7. Roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa)
8. Waterleaf (Talinum triangulare)
9. Okinawan Spinach (Gynura bicolor)
10. Scrambling Gynura (Gynura procumbens)
11. Sawtooth Coriander (Ergynium foetidum)
12. Indian Lettuce (Lactuca indica)
13. False Roselle (Hibiscus acetosella)
14. White Mugwort (Artemisia lactiflora)
15. Sweet Leaf (Sauropus androgynous)
16. Rice Paddy Herb (Limnophila aromatica)
17. Water Celery (Oenanthe javanica)
18. Water Sensitive Plant (Neptunia oleracea)
19. Cassava (Manihot esculenta)
20. Spot Flower (Spilanthes paniculata)
21. Horseradish Tree (Moringa oleifera)
22. Chinese Chives (Allium tuberosum)
23. Water Spinach (Ipomoea aquatica)
24. Lasia (Lasia spinosa)
25. Sweet Potato (Ipomoea batatas)
