How to grow African nightshade

Make a small, sheltered nursery bed of fine, crumbly soil, raised a little so water drains away. A bed about a stride wide (1 m) is easy to reach across without treading on the seedlings.

The seed is dust-fine, so mix a pinch of seed into a tin of dry sand or fine dry soil first. The sand carries the seed and lets you scatter it thinly and evenly — sown on its own it lands in clumps.

Scatter the sand-and-seed mix thinly over the moist bed, then barely cover it — no deeper than a fingernail (about 0.5 cm). Fine seed buried deep never reaches the light.

Water gently with a fine rose or a soft sprinkle — a hard splash washes the seed into heaps. Keep the bed evenly moist, never soaked, until the seedlings show, which takes about 5 to 21 days.

Once they crowd each other, thin out or prick out the weaker seedlings so the ones you keep stand about a finger-joint apart (3–5 cm) and grow sturdy, not thin and leggy.

Watch for damping-off: seedlings that suddenly flop over with a thin, dark, water-soaked pinch at the soil line, dying in spreading patches. It comes from sowing too thick, too wet, or too shaded — so sow thin, ease off the water, and give them light and air.

About two weeks before you transplant, choose a well-drained spot that did not grow tomato, potato, pepper, eggplant or nightshade last season — a rest of two to three seasons from those crops starves out the shared wilt and blight.

Dig the bed deep and break it to a fine, crumbly tilth, so the fine roots spread easily and rain soaks in instead of pooling.

Work in plenty of well-rotted manure or compost — dark, crumbly and sweet-smelling, never fresh and strawy. About two good handfuls (a kilo or so) forked into every square pace (1 m × 1 m) of bed is a generous rate for a leaf crop.

On heavy or wet ground, raise the bed into ridges or a mound so the roots never sit in water — waterlogged nightshade rots and wilts.

Let the finished bed settle for a week or two before transplanting, so the manure is well mixed in and won't scorch the young roots.

Buy stocky, dark-green seedlings 4 to 6 true leaves, thick as a matchstick — not tall, thin or pale ones.

Check each one for wilting, blighted spots, or curled leaves — reject the whole batch if many look sick, since bacterial wilt has no cure once it's in your bed.

Buy from a nursery that raises seedlings well away from tomato, potato, pepper or eggplant plots — those crops carry the same wilt and blight.

Transplant them within a day or two of buying, keeping them shaded and watered until you do.

Transplant when the seedlings have 4 to 6 true leaves — usually about 3 to 4 weeks after you sowed the nursery — and are as thick as a matchstick.

Do it in the cool of late afternoon or on a dull day, never in hot sun. Water the nursery well an hour before lifting, so each seedling comes up with a ball of soil on its roots instead of bare and torn.

Space them two hand-spans apart between rows (about 40 cm) and one hand-span apart along the row (about 20 cm) — close enough to shade the ground, open enough for air to move through and keep blight down.

In each planting hole mix in a good handful of well-rotted manure and the phosphorus fertiliser your recommendation gives, then cover it with a little soil so the tender roots never touch the fertiliser directly.

Set the seedling at the same depth it grew in the nursery, firm the soil gently so no air pockets remain, and water it in straight away to settle the roots.

Keep the bed moist but never waterlogged for the first two weeks — this is the make-or-break window while the roots take hold.

Water every 2 to 3 days through the first two weeks, and more often in hot, windy weather or on sandy soil that dries fast.

Water in the cool of morning or evening, at the base of the plants, so less is lost to the sun.

Aim for soil that is moist like a wrung-out cloth, not soaked. Push a finger in and water when the top few centimetres feel dry.

Where you can, keep water off the standing leaves in the evening — leaves that stay wet overnight invite blight.

Walk the bed twice a week, from a couple of days after transplanting, and look closely at plants all over the bed — not just the edge by the path.

Bacterial wilt (no cure — the big danger): look for a plant that suddenly flops in the heat while its leaves are still green, not yellow. To be sure, cut the stem near the ground and stand it in a glass of clean water — milky threads ooze out within minutes.

If you find wilt, pull the whole plant with its soil and carry it right away (never onto the compost), and do not move wet soil or tools from that spot into the rest of the bed. No spray cures it — pulling sick plants fast is the only defence.

Cutworms: look for young transplants cut clean through at ground level overnight and toppled. Scratch the soil around the stump to find the fat, greasy, grey caterpillar curled like a 'C', and squash it.

Damping-off: look for seedlings that flop with a thin, dark, water-soaked pinch at the soil line, dying in spreading patches — a sign the bed is too wet. Ease off the water and improve the drainage.

Act on the first sick plants you see. One plant pulled today can save the whole bed.

Give the first feed of nitrogen about two weeks after transplanting, once the plants are growing away, and feed again after each big leaf harvest to power the next flush.

Side-dress the nitrogen — the amount your recommendation gives — in a band a hand-width (about 10 cm) to the side of the plants, not on top of them, then cover it or water it in so it doesn't gas off and go to waste.

No bought fertiliser? Well-rotted manure, or a manure 'tea' (a sack of manure steeped in a drum of water for a few days, then poured around the roots) feeds the leaf too.

Leave a few days between feeding nitrogen and cutting leaf to eat or sell — freshly fed leaf stores up nitrate (a substance that builds up when a plant is force-fed), so let it settle first.

Keep fertiliser off the wet leaves (it sticks and scorches them), away from food, water and children, and wash your hands afterwards.

Weed every 2 to 3 weeks from about two weeks after transplanting, while the weeds are still small and easy to pull.

Hoe shallowly, or pull by hand near the plants — the roots run shallow and wide, and deep hoeing cuts them.

After weeding, lay a mulch of dry grass or leaves between the plants — it holds moisture, keeps the soil cool for the shallow roots, and stops new weeds coming up.

Keep the mulch a hand-width (about 10 cm) back from the stems so damp material doesn't sit against them and start rot.

Walk the bed twice a week and turn over leaves to check the undersides, where most pests hide, on plants right across the bed.

Aphids: clusters of tiny soft green, grey or black insects on the soft shoot tips and under leaves, with sticky 'honeydew' (a shiny, sticky coating they leave behind) and curled young leaves. Whitefly: tiny white flies that puff up in a little cloud when you shake a plant. Both suck sap and spread virus.

Red spider mite (worst in hot, dry spells): leaves turn pale and dusty with fine pale speckling (stippling), then bronze, with faint webbing underneath. Look for moving specks no bigger than dust.

Beetles: tiny flea beetles that hop away leave the leaves peppered with round 'shot-hole' pinpricks; epilachna (hadda) beetles and their spiny larvae scrape leaves to a lacy, dry skeleton.

Blight (in wet, humid weather): early blight shows brown spots with rings inside them, like a target, on the older lower leaves; late blight shows dark, greasy, water-soaked patches that spread fast and rot the leaf, with a whitish mould underneath in cool, damp weather.

Act on the first colonies or spreading spots — squash or wash off small pest patches, pick off the first blighted leaves, and open the matching pest or disease guide before it takes the bed.

Take the first harvest from about 10 days to three weeks after transplanting, once the plants are bushy and leafy.

Harvest one of two ways: pick or snap off the tender top shoots (about a hand-length, 10–15 cm), or uproot whole young plants where you sowed thick and want to thin the stand.

Test for tenderness: a ready tip is soft and snaps off cleanly between your fingers. If the stem is stringy and just bends instead of snapping, it has grown too old and tough.

When you cut tips, leave at least a hand-width (10 cm) of leafy stem standing, with some leaves on it, so the plant has the strength to push a fresh flush.

Pinch off any flower buds as you go — once the plant flowers it slows leaf-making and the leaves turn bitter, so removing flowers keeps it in tender leaf for longer.

Harvest in the cool of the morning, keep the leaf shaded, and get it to the pot or market the same day — nightshade leaf wilts and loses its value within a day.

If the tips are already stringy and won't snap → the plant has over-grown or bolted: cut it back harder to force new soft shoots, feed nitrogen and water well, and use the older leaves cooked (still good, just tougher).

Come back and cut fresh tender tips every 1 to 2 weeks, right through the plant's life — the more regularly you cut (without stripping it bare), the more it branches and gives.

Each time, leave at least a hand-width (10 cm) of leafy stem so the plant can regrow, and take only the soft tips about a hand-length (10–15 cm) long.

Feed nitrogen and water well after each cut — this is what powers the next flush. A dose of manure tea or side-dressed nitrogen after every big harvest keeps it coming.

Keep pinching off flowers. A plant left to flower and fruit stops making tender leaf — unless you have chosen it to save seed from.

Keep scouting and weeding between cuts — an ageing, repeatedly-cut crop tires and is easier for pests and blight to overrun.

When leaves stay small and tough even after feeding, and the plant is mostly flowering, the leaf run is over — let your best plants set seed and pull the rest.

From about two months after transplanting, choose a few of your best, healthiest, most leafy plants — never one that showed any wilt or blight — and stop harvesting them, so they can flower and fruit.

Wait until the berries are fully ripe: soft and deep purple-black, never green. Unripe green berries make poor seed and can be poisonous, so never eat them.

Squeeze or lightly mash the ripe berries in a little water and let them sit a day or two to ferment, then wash the pulp away — the good, heavy seed sinks and the pulp and empty seed float off.

Dry the clean seed in the shade, not in hot direct sun, spread thin on a cloth or paper until it is bone dry.

Store the dry seed in a clean, airtight tin or bottle, somewhere cool and dark, labelled with the crop and the date. Kept dry, it stays good to plant for years.