Great post, @mariannewest! Sorry I missed it initially!
I was happy to see tree collards and amaranth on your list, not to mention nettles and sweet potato greens. And Lacinato kale has been one of my favorites for ages.
You mentioned having trouble keeping moringa alive; one key with moringa is to water it fairly sparingly in the beginning. It prefers to be on the drier side. A lot of people drown them.
Another green you may want to try, if you haven't already, is chaya, which is extremely easy to grow from cuttings, and should do very well for you.
It is also ridiculously nutritious, blowing most other leafy greens out of the water by comparison, and is hugely productive. As in every homeless shelter and soup kitchen should have a chaya hedge kind of productive.
I just wrote a long post about it a couple of days ago, and included a link to an even longer article I wrote some years back, which have a lot of information should you be interested.
You should be able to find cuttings easily, but if you have any issue, let me know. Maybe we can trade chaya cuttings for tree collards. ;-)
Finally, my favorite thing to do with the water in which I've cooked vegetables is to use it as soup base. I cook a lot of soups, which is a specialty of mine, and this is a great way to up the nutritional value in a hurry.
I hope all is well in your world! Steem on!
Thank you so much!! Isn't chaya the green you have to cook or it is not good for you? I think I have grown it but we do a lot of green smoothies and I don't trust my husband with picking things if I have anything out there that might not be good in a smoothie. I think it also takes a lot of water.
And believe me - overwatering is not my problem - the opposite is :(
Actually, chaya is a succulent in the euphorbia family, so it does not take a lot of water, though it is tolerant of brief periods of flooding once it is established. In my experience, it thrives on neglect, which is the kind of plant I like the most.
In fact, cuttings need to be cured for three or four days prior to planting, to keep them from rotting, and it is best treated more or less as you would treat a cactus, until it has started putting out leaves. And chaya handles drought extremely well, making it valuable in arid areas, including sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.
And yes, it has to be cooked prior to being eaten, but for smoothies you could blanch the young leaves for a minute in boiling water and then toss them in your smoothies with no issues.
Older, mature leaves need to be cooked or longer, say 10 to 20 minutes, depending on what you are using them for, but their nutritional profile makes it more than worthwhile. And the water you cook them in can be drunk as a tea, safely, as boiling deactivates the toxins in the leaves, and leaves behind a multitude of nutrients. Or you can use it for soup, and either way, it is very tasty.
Chaya is considered highly medicinal in Mexico and Central America, and is used for everything from regulating blood sugar to detoxifying the liver and kidneys to strengthening the heart and lungs.
And it makes for a gorgeous specimen plant, with the large deep green maple-shaped leaves, and the masses of small white flowers standing straight up from the top of the plant. It is a butterfly magnet, but it is not invasive, as it rarely if ever sets viable seeds. It is nearly always propagated by cuttings.