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Best fake spinach for FL summer

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Julie:
Great website spencer!  Thank you!
Thanks to everyone who replied.  Will try a few cultivars this summer still feeling very overwhelmed.  I have sweet potatoes growing and the leaf tasted OK to me I will try it in cooking.

Pokeweed:
How do you tell which varieties of taro are for greens and which are for the tubers? I bought some small tubers at the grocery store a couple of years ago and have a bunch of plants now. I assume these are not for greens based on how they were sold, but how would I know without risking a thousand needles in my throat? Thanks, D

spencerw:
as long as you have taro (colocasia esculenta) they all can be cooked, it just varies by cook time. the bun-long Chinese taro is known here in hawaii as one of the most favorable with the shortest cook times. can be fully edible in 20 minutes of boiling. about two months ago i was desiring leaves. i went out to some of my plants and harvested a large pot full of leaves. we cooked them for 4 hours and it still had some slight itch. we cooked it another two hours the second day and still had some light itch. nothing horrible, but enough to notice. ive decided not to eat that one anymore. most of the small sized taro corms sold in stores/farmers markets here is the bun-long variety.
if youre up on your botany you can figure out what variety you have. but being on the mainland im not sure what other cultivars you have. we can narrow things down pretty quickly here in hawaii by assuming most are local varieties plus only a few commercial non-hawaiian cultivars. heres the best site ive found for information.
http://bentut.github.io/kupunakalo/index.php/kalo_varieties/detail/bun-long/index.html
id prefer to collect a specimen from a known cultivator and be sure about variety rather than messing around with unknown varieties. but ive yet to come across for sure known edible leaf varieties. ive found other taro relatives for short cook times, but for some reason taro is a hard one for me to find. even here in the apex of ancient taro cultivation

Pokeweed:
Thanks Spencer. That's a lot of good info. Is there any nutrition left after such a long cook time? I tend to think the ones I have are just for tubers. I'll probably just use them that way, but watch for other varieties. D

spencerw:
thats a good question! my body knows it wants to be eating taro greens. once you smell the leaves cooking you just want to consume them. so im assuming the nutrients are still in there!

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