I've been wanting to try this for awhile, but I've moved into town with a very small gardening area. Does it ever appear at farmers markets, so I can try before I find some area to plant it?

I believe you'll find it at Asian or Indian grocery stores. Maybe at Farmers Markets, though I suspect you won't see it at those until mid-summer. The stuff climbs like crazy, so it need not take up a lot of bed space. I do mine on a big trellis. In fact, it ends up invading nearby shrubs, climbing through those.

I’ve been curious about this crop. Is it a good substitute for regular spinach in taste and texture? Or maybe it’s good enough to grow on its own merit even if it’s not similar to spinach.

I live in a very rural area, and I’m sure I could never locate any to sample before just trying to grow it myself. I garden in hot and dry Kansas so any “normal” greens are pretty much out of the question except spring and fall.

Malabar spinach is a green. It tastes a little like chard, in that some people say it has a slightly citrussy and peppery taste. I don't cook it, and just use it for salads, but those who do cook it say that, when cooked, it tastes like spinach. Botanically, it is NOT a spinach. The leaves are a bit thicker than spinach. I'd compare the thickness to collard or kale. The words "fleshy" or "mucilaginous" are sometimes used to describe the leaves. Those are not very appetizing words, and I think those descriptors are kind of a stretch.

What really makes this stuff a standout is how it LOVES the heat. Vicious heat. In fact, that's when it starts to grow fast. Although I can, with effort - shade and lots of water, nurse Swiss Chard though the summer, Malabar Spinach needs no help. It is said that you need to keep it well watered, but all my other plants wilt before this does. Also, as I said, you plant it ONCE. It's a perennial (not at all frost tolerant), but it drops it's own seeds in the fall and it always comes back as a volunteer. Pretty much a zero-effort plant. For me, it grows like crazy. Four plants will completely cover a 6x6 trellis. Our summer salads are half Malabar Spinach, and the two of us don't even come close to using 10% of the leaves on that trellis.

Malabar spinach berries, when ripe, are regularly used as a fabric dye. They have no taste, and even if they did, would leave your mouth deep purple. Fall cleanup involves purple hands.

At the very end of the summer when the berries start to mature, my leaves get brown spots and small holes on them. Never managed to figure out why. A fungal infection, perhaps?

I decided to dig up my 4 year old plant a few weeks ago (it’s autumn now here) and probably not going to grow it again. Though I will no doubt be pulling up the volunteers for a few years.

I liked munching on the leaves while I gardened sometimes but beyond that I’m not really a fan of it. I will say that if you have the climate for it, it is absolutely much easier and more prolific than any of the classic greens you can grow.

That's interesting about Malabar Spinach as a perennial. At the end of the season, when your berries mature, are your leaves still in good condition? As I said, I have some problems with the leaves at the end of the season.

Yeah it gets that here too - around start of winter usually. They start getting purple spots and a lot of them eventually brown up and fall off. I guess either it’s concentrating on the berries or it doesn’t like the cold/shortening days. The creepers also die back and the rest just stops doing anything until spring.

That's good to know. I was assuming it was maybe a fungal infection or something. But it always did it every year at the same time. The fact that the good foliage returns in the spring means that it isn't a disease. Making all those berries must be a stressor for the plant.

I decided to begin culling it from my garden last year. It's just not something we like much, darn it.

Love the Malabar spinach. It thrives in the heat and give us green leaves when lettuce and regular spinach are done for the season. Yes, the seeds are not easy to come by. I used to buy the stems from the Asian markets and just push the naked stem in the soil and they would regrow. How wonderful is that.