Vol. XVI. No. 405. 



THE AGRICULTURAL NEWS 



349 



SALADS AND SPINACH. 



As regar.ls ordinary daily food, many people think that 

 all essentials are met if a certain amount of meat, fish, and 

 vegetables .such as potatoes, rice, corn, and such like, together 

 with bread, is provided for the daily consumption of the 

 household. This is really a grave mistake. There are con- 

 tained in fresh fruit and greens, substances— salts of various 

 kinds and the more recondite vitamines — which are essential 

 to bodily and mental health. Such articles of diet as salads 

 and spinach do not contain the protein or nitrogenous 

 contents which constitute the principal necessities of 

 nutritious food, yet without such articles the human body 

 could not be preserved in a really healthy condition. 



In the West Indies, as in all tropical countries, Europeans 

 and their descendants are prone to eat too much meat or too 

 much of starchy vegetables, without combining them with 

 the fruit or greens which are necessary everywhere, and 

 perhaps most necessary under the climatic conditions of the 

 tropics. Vet the materials for such requisite additions to 

 diet are at hand in abundance in the West Indies at least. 

 The object of this article is to show to West Indians that 

 thej' need never be without a salad or a dish of spinach. 



To begin with salads; we all know that we can grow 

 delicious lettuce from imported seed. Cure in the prepara- 

 tion of beds, and in keeping the seed sown from attacks of 

 ants, together with adequate watering in dry weather, will 

 result in crisp, tasty lettuce all the year round in these 

 islands. It is worth while remembering that lettuce will 

 produce with us good seed for several generations, only the 

 flowering stalks must be protected by gauze bags from 

 sparrows, who seem to take a special delight in lettuce seed. 



But there are indigenous plants capable of being made 

 into delicious salads by the addition of ordinary French 

 dressing of vingar, oil, salt, and a suggestion of sugar. 

 Throughout the smaller islands a plant (Portulacca oleracea) 

 known in many of them as 'pussly' — evidently a corruption 

 of the English purslane — is a very common weed in culti- 

 vated land. The leaves plucked from the stem and given 

 a French dressing make an excellent salad. The European 

 cress (Lepiditim sativum) is a delicious salad when eaten 

 young by itself, or in a mixture with other leaves, and we 

 have in the West Indies a member of the same genus 

 (Lepidium nnjiniacum) which, when treated in the same 

 way, is just as tasty. This common weed is known in many 

 of the islands as 'Pepper Grass'. The cosmopolitan weed 

 (Sonchus olet-acus). called in some of the West Indies 'Sow 

 Thistle' though too bitter if allowed to grow large, in its 

 young state with only six or eight leaves developed, makes an 

 excellent salad, and if blanched, by inverting a flower pot or 

 something similar over the growing plant for a few days, 

 it is really good. One more salad plant must be cata- 

 logued here. All along the sea coasts of these islands there 

 is found growing profusely the 'sea purslane'. Its thick 

 succulent leaves have a crisp break, and a salt flavour. 

 Leave out the salt in the French dressing, and Sesuvium 

 portulaotstrum makes a delicious salad. The early colonists 

 in Jamaica made use of this plant according to Sloane, who 

 writes of it in his history of .Jamaica, published in 1707, 

 'Tis pickled, and eat as English Sampier.' 



To come now to spinach; the writer of this article has 

 never seen the European or Americ^n spinach grown success- 

 fully in the West Indies, but he knows of excellent 

 substitutes. Perhaps the best is the East Indian Basella 

 alba, which is a trailing plant along the ground, or which can 

 be trained very well over a fence The leaves and young 

 shoots of this are delicious when cooked like European spinach. 

 Again however, we have a number of indigenous plants, which 

 are counted only as weeds, but which are really nice when 



cooked as spinach. In the first place there are several indi- 

 genous species of Amarantus, including Anuirantus niridis 

 as well as Amarantus spinosus, which is considered such 

 a noxious weed in Hawaii, the leaves of both of which make 

 excellent spinach. A. viridis is known in many of the West 

 Indian islands as 'Green Callalu,' In the Flora of Jamaica by 

 Fawcett and Rendle, which is now being published, it is 

 stated that not only do the leaves of A. paniculatus, a culti- 

 tivated garden species, known as Bleeding Hearts make good 

 spinach, but that the young stems are as good as asparagus. 

 It certainly is a very rapid grower. The best spinach, 

 however, of all the Amaranths is afforded by the young 

 plants of Cocks-Comb — the garden plant (Celosia cristata.) 

 Sow a bed thickly with the seed, and cut the plants when 

 about 4 to 5 inches high, and you will obtain spinach worth 

 eating. Another Amaranth the leaves of which make a good 

 spinach, is Eaxolas oleraceMS, which is called 'Lumbo,' in 

 the Virgin Islands. The genus Cle ime is widely spread 

 throughout the West Indies; one species (C. pentaphylla), 

 common in the Virgin Islands, and known there as 

 'Massambee', makes a good spinach, but another species 

 (C. pun gens), very much like the former, is most disgusting 

 in flavour and odour. Another not uncommon weed 'Papa- 

 lolo' in the Virgin Islands, 'Widi-widi' in Antigua — known 

 botanically as Oorchorus siliquosus, — make.s a very delicate 

 spinach. It is however rather difficult to prepare on account 

 of the smallness of the leaves, which have to be plucked from 

 the fibrous stalk. 



Then there are the leaves of the tannia or eddoe plants; 

 all of the species, to whichever genus they may belong — 

 Colocasia, Xanthosoma or others — afford excellent spinach 

 if used before they are ton old, the unopened leaf-buds 

 being especially delicious. 



There is one other spinach, left to be mentioned last, the 

 very poetry of spinach, and that is the male flowers of the 

 pumpkin or squash. Where there is a large pumpkin vine 

 dozens if not hundreds of male or staminate flowers open 

 every morning. They are of no use, once the female or 

 pistillate flowers have been pollinated. Pick them, and cook 

 them, and you will agree with the writer that you have 

 eaten the quintes.sence of .spinach. 



C.H.B. 



TOMATOES. 



In the issue of this Journal, No. 402, .September 22, 

 a short article appeared on the cultivation of tomatoes. 

 Since then we have been favoured by a well-known grower 

 of this fruit in Barbados with a few notes on the subject 

 which are of much interest. 



He says in reference to the degeneration in the size of 

 the fruit whe.i locally produced seed continues to be planted, 

 that he has successfully overcome this tenden^^y by planting 

 cuttings. He has grown in this way splendid fruit for thirty 

 years from the same original stock, so that his experience 

 in the matter is to be relied on. 



His advice is to put in cuttings in prepared beds in 

 September, and at intervals for some weeks afterwards, in 

 order to obtain a succes.sion of fruit. These cuttings ought to be 

 fruiting in the following December and January. If seeds 

 are planted at the same time as the cuttings, the seedlings 

 will produce fruit before the cuttings. 



He finds that successful production of the best kind 

 of tomatoes can only be achieved in the drier season of the 

 year. Plants grown during the wet season attain large pro- 

 portions without bearing; when they produce flowers these are 

 almost always shed soon after the withering of the petals, 

 and no fruit is matured. 



