Chop Suey Greens

One of the successes of my first season has been chop suey greens. It is an easy plant to grow from seed (mine was grown from an out-of-date seed packet bought for a few pence in Tewkesbury market). Chop Suey Greens has the added bonus of not being attractive to the garden's large population of slugs. The young leaves and stems of this lovely plant add a fragrant crunch to salads or can be steamed like spinach. Even the flowers can be eaten - the Japanese use the petals in their pickle kikumi. My son is experimenting with pickling and preserving, so I must remember to save some for him next year.

Of course once the flowers come out, the plant takes on a different purpose in the garden - one of decoration. It is also known as chrysanthemum greens and behaves very much as a relatively hardy chrysanthemum, surviving the recent frost to offer much-needed food to the local bees. I have been deadheading the flowers in an effort to keep it flowering as long as possible, but I mustn't be too zealous with the secateurs as the books tell me that it self seeds and I am hoping that it will pop up in the garden next year without any work on my part.