Black Nightshade

Quick facts

Full sun or part sun · medium water · well-drained soil · 18 in apart (12 to 24) · direct sow or transplant

Nothing is open today. Spring sowing opens 7 months, Apr 17 to May 29.

1. Direct sow Apr 17 – May 29 Opens in 208 days
   Best timeSpring
   About 7 days after to 7 weeks after your last frost (Apr 10 here)
   Sow into warm soil - above 65°F - two to four weeks after the last frost. It is a tender warm-season plant and gains nothing from an early start in cold ground.

Frost here: last around Apr 10 (Mar 27 to Apr 24 most years), first around Oct 25. Zone averages, your own yard may run a week or two either way.

Five stages, about 6 weeks from sowing to the first pull. Windows are typical; your zone and weather move them.

1. 1

   Germination in warm soil

   Day 0 to 12 from sowing

   • ProtectWait for warm soil - it will not start in the coldevery 2 days
     Sow a quarter inch deep once soil is reliably above 65°F, which is usually two to four weeks after your last frost. Cold ground gives slow, patchy germination. Indoors, start 4 to 6 weeks before setting out and keep the tray warm. Keep the surface evenly moist until seedlings appear.
   • WeedSow in a marked row so you can tell crop from volunteer
     Wild black nightshade volunteers in the same warm, rich beds, and once your sown plants are up you cannot tell them apart. Sow in a labelled row or block, and pull anything that comes up outside it. If you intend to eat this plant, that separation is the whole point - a named cultivated strain is what you meant to grow, and a chance volunteer is not.

   Watch for

   • Patchy germination in soil that is still cold
   • Volunteer seedlings appearing outside the sown row
2. 2

   Leafy growth (the cooked-greens stage)

   Day 14 to 60 from sowing

   • WaterSteady moisture keeps the leaves tenderweekly
     Water enough to keep the soil evenly damp. Plants that dry out go tough, bitter and straight to flowering, which cuts the leaf harvest short. An inch of water a week in dry spells is usually enough, and a mulch holds it.
   • InspectCheck what you have - plain green leaves, no mealy coating
     Leaves are alternate, oval and pointed, 1 to 3 inches, with wavy or shallowly toothed edges, thin and dull green, sometimes lightly hairy. There is NO white mealy or flour-dusted coating. That coating is the mark of lamb's quarters, the plant this one grows shoulder to shoulder with in the same beds. If a leaf looks dusted with flour, it is not this plant.
   • FertilizeFeed lightly - it is a leaf crop, not a fruit crop, at this stage
     A single dressing of balanced fertilizer or a mulch of compost when plants are 6 inches tall is plenty. It grows fast in rich, warm ground; heavy nitrogen just makes soft growth that aphids find first.

   Watch for

   • Any white mealy coating on the leaves (that is lamb's quarters, not this)
   • Aphids and flea beetles on soft new growth
   • Plants bolting to flower early after a dry spell
3. 3

   Small white star flowers

   From day 50 from sowing

   • InspectWhite stars with a yellow beak - the positive ID
     Flowers are small, white, five-pointed stars with a protruding cone of bright yellow anthers, carried in little drooping clusters of three to ten that come off the stem BETWEEN the leaf joints. They look like miniature tomato flowers, because they are close relatives. Lamb's quarters never produces a petalled flower at all - just green mealy seed spikes. This is the moment the two become impossible to confuse.
   • HarvestKeep picking leaves - flowering is not the end of the greens
     Pinching out flowering tips keeps the plant producing tender leaves for several more weeks. If you want the berries as well, leave some clusters on and take leaves from elsewhere on the plant.

   Watch for

   • Little drooping clusters of white star flowers with yellow centres
   • Flower clusters emerging between the leaf joints rather than at them
4. 4

   Green to black berries (green means toxic)

   From day 70 from sowing

   • ProtectGreen berries are the toxic ones - and they hang beside the ripe ones
     Berries start hard and green, then turn dull black over several weeks. The GREEN and part-coloured ones carry the highest glycoalkaloid load, and because a cluster ripens unevenly, every cluster holds some. This is the single fact that governs everything else about eating this plant: there is no stage at which you can strip a cluster into a bowl and trust the result.
   • ProtectDo not let children graze it - pick for them, or fence it off
     A small black berry at knee height is exactly what a child will try, and children cannot judge ripe from unripe. If you are growing this and there are children in the garden, either pick the berries yourself and hand them over, or grow it somewhere they do not roam. Tell any visiting adult what the plant is, too.

   Watch for

   • Green, part-coloured and black berries hanging in the same cluster
   • Children or pets with unsupervised access to fruiting plants
   • Birds stripping berries and seeding the plant across the garden
5. 5

   Picking: cooked leaves, and fully ripe berries only

   Day 40 to the first pull from sowing, picking to about day 125

   • HarvestLeaves: young tips, and always cookedweekly
     Take young leaves and growing tips from about 6 weeks on, cutting a few inches off each shoot rather than stripping a plant bare. Never eat them raw. Boil them and pour the water away - across East Africa and South India, where this is a staple green, one change of water is standard and two is common for a strong-tasting batch. Cooked, the flavour is mild and slightly bitter, like a firmer spinach.
   • HarvestBerries: dull black, soft, and picked one by one
     Pick only berries that are uniformly dull black all over and soft to a gentle squeeze - a berry with any green or olive shoulder goes back on the plant or in the bin. Pick individually rather than stripping a cluster, and go over the same plants every few days as more ripen. Ripe berries are mild and slightly tomato-like, and are usually cooked into jam or pie with sugar and lemon rather than eaten by the handful.
   • ThinCut plants down before the last berries drop
     One plant sets thousands of seeds and the seed bank stays alive in the soil for years. When you have finished picking, pull or cut the plants before the remaining berries fall, and bag the fruiting tops rather than composting them. Otherwise next season's bed comes up as a nightshade patch whether you wanted one or not.

   Watch for

   • Berries with any green shoulder left in the picking bowl
   • Fallen ripe berries seeding the bed for next year
   • Leaves going tough and bitter once plants are old

Harvest

• Leaves: young tips from about 6 weeks on - and only ever eaten cooked, with the boiling water discarded
• Berries: uniformly dull black all over and soft to a gentle squeeze, picked one at a time
• Any green or part-coloured berry is not ready and is the most toxic part of the plant

• Leaves: young tips, and always cooked · weekly
• Berries: dull black, soft, and picked one by one
• Cut plants down before the last berries drop

Per plant 8 to 80 ozPicking pick as they ripen

Watch out for

5 to know. 1 is high-risk: Green Berry & Raw Leaf Poisoning. 5 are active in September.

Good & bad neighbors

First rule: keep Lamb's Quarters apart. An identification conflict, not a growing one - and the reason this file matters.

Varieties · 4

You pick one when you add Black Nightshade to your garden. Its days to maturity set your harvest window.

• Eastern Black Nightshade (Solanum ptychanthum)

  Branching green annual with plain oval toothed leaves, drooping clusters of small white star flowers with yellow centres, and pea-sized berries ripening green to dull black.

  speciesnativewildweed

  The native black nightshade of eastern and central North America, and the plant that actually volunteers in American vegetable beds alongside lamb's quarters. Bushy annual to about 3 ft with plain green oval leaves, small white star flowers, and pea-sized berries ripening green to dull black. Glycoalkaloid content varies between populations, so a wild plant is not a food plant - know it in order to tell it from lamb's quarters, and grow a named strain if you want to eat one.

• European Black Nightshade (Solanum nigrum)

  Indistinguishable from eastern black nightshade in the garden; a bushy annual with white star flowers and clustered dull-black berries.

  speciesintroducedwildweed

  The Old World species, introduced and naturalized across North America and near-impossible to separate from the native eastern black nightshade in the field. This is the plant behind most of the European and Mediterranean food tradition - the Greek horta green and the Indian manathakkali - and equally the plant behind the European poisoning literature. Same rules apply: cooked leaves and fully ripe berries only.

• Garden Huckleberry (Solanum scabrum)

  Zones 3a to 10b

  Robust 2-3 ft plant with broad leaves and heavy clusters of large, glossy black berries.

  cultivatedberry-typelarge-fruitedseed-catalogue

  The cultivated berry nightshade sold in American seed catalogues since the nineteenth century - a stouter plant with larger, glossier black berries in bigger clusters, grown for pies, jam and preserves. Berries are bland raw and want sugar and lemon, or a sharper fruit alongside. In parts of West and Central Africa the same species is grown mainly for its leaves. This is what to plant if you want to eat this plant: a named strain, in a marked row.

• Wonderberry / Sunberry (Solanum retroflexum)

  Zones 3a to 10b

  Compact 1-2 ft plant fruiting early and heavily, with small dull-black berries in dense clusters.

  cultivatedberry-typeheirloomburbank

  Luther Burbank's 1909 introduction, and the subject of a long public row over whether it was a genuine new fruit or the common weed renamed. It is a real cultivated berry nightshade: a compact, quick, heavy-fruiting plant with small sweet-mild black berries used for jam and pie. Quicker to ripen than garden huckleberry, which makes it the better choice in a short season - and, like all of these, eaten only fully ripe and cooked.