Curly Mallow (Malva verticillata 'Crispa')

Curly Mallow is a beautiful, vigorous and highly productive edible plant with large, rounded green leaves and wonderfully curled, ruffled edges. Cultivated as a leafy vegetable in Asia for centuries, this unusual mallow deserves a place in more vegetable gardens! Its abundant foliage provides delicious greens throughout the growing season, while its distinctive leaves make it an attractive ornamental plant as well.

The young, tender leaves have a mild, pleasant flavour and can be enjoyed raw in salads or sandwiches. Larger leaves are excellent cooked like spinach, added to soups, stews and stir-fries, or steamed as a nutritious green vegetable. Like other edible mallows, the leaves contain natural mucilage, which can help thicken soups and sauces, much like okra.

At Willows Green, we also grow Common Mallow, Marshmallow, Hollyhock and Okra, all members of the mallow family (Malvaceae). Interestingly, both the leaves and flowers of all five plants are edible! Their young leaves can be enjoyed raw or cooked, while their flowers make beautiful edible additions to salads and other dishes. Curly Mallow is particularly well suited to producing abundant leafy greens for the kitchen. If they're not already available in our seed catalogue, we'll soon be adding seeds for three different varieties of Okra, as well as Common Mallow!

Curly Mallow is generally grown as an annual and can become quite large, sometimes reaching 1.5–2 metres or more in fertile soil. Its small, pale pink to whitish flowers attract insects, and the plant can readily self-seed when allowed to mature. Regular harvesting of the outer leaves encourages continued production of tender new foliage. At Willows Green, after we let the plants produce and dry their seeds, we cut the stems back to about 50 cm in early fall, and they produce a new, full flush of tender leaves!

Grow in full sun to partial shade in fertile, well-drained soil enriched with compost. Once established, Curly Mallow tolerates some dry conditions, although consistent moisture encourages lush leaf production. Give plants plenty of room to develop.

Start seeds indoors 4–6 weeks before the last spring frost, or direct sow outdoors after the danger of frost has passed. Sow approximately 5 mm deep and keep moist until germination. Lightly rubbing the seeds between two pieces of fine sandpaper before sowing can improve germination. Space plants approximately 50–60 cm apart. Allow some seeds to mature for natural self-seeding.

At least 50 seeds per packet.