This is a volunteer plant that popped up in my community garden plot that belonged to someone else last year. I let it keep growing at first because I thought it looked like the broccoli or cauliflower plants that she had in there last year, and then once they stopped looking like that, they were just too big for me to feel right ripping them up. It is about 1+1/2 - 2 feet tall, the biggest leaves are probably 2 or 3 times the size of my hand. The stem is square-ish, it looks like 4 tubes squished together. Probably about an inch across. Nobody has called me yet and demanded I pull them up, so at the very least if they are weeds, they aren't common ones. I'm hoping they're food of some kind, but nobody I've asked knows what they are so far. If anyone could help, it would be greatly appreciated. I've tried using search methods, but don't really know enough about plants to get anywhere with them.
Beet? Spinach? Or some other related plant like a Chenopodium - certainly in that family (and therefore, edible).
It's almost definitely not a beet, at least not a normal one. I've grown them before and this isn't like them in terms of how the leaves grow. I suppose it could be a huge spinach. The leaves are fairly solid, not like an average lettuce which I thought spinach would be like, but it could be. We could take a little bit of a leaf next time we're there and test it out :)
OMG! Sundrop! That's got to be it! Thanks! I don't think it has a pinkish tinge to the stems, but it looks practically exactly like the pictures I've found searching that. I guess we'll harvest some tomorrow and see how we like it :)
