Grow this flower on your balcony and it can shoot up one meter in a month, blooming with brilliant red flowers all over its branches, and it is especially delicious to eat

The heartleaf ice plant (Aptenia cordifolia) has fresh, emerald-green leaves and is covered with small rose-red flowers in spring, summer and autumn. It is grown both for its foliage and its flowers. Keep one pot on your balcony and it stays green all day long, filling the pot with blooms. It is a plant that suits balconies very well.

In recent years, many people have started eating the tender leaves of the heartleaf ice plant, calling it by the name and using it as chuanxinlian (Andrographis paniculata); it can be served as a cold dressed salad or cooked by dipping in hot pot. This plant grows very fast, reaching half a meter in a month. If you want to eat it, pinch off some tender shoots, and it will also send out many side shoots. Isn't that quite nice?

The heartleaf ice plant likes a warm, humid environment, and the potting soil needs to be kept slightly moist. Place it in a semi-shaded spot and it will grow like crazy, reaching several meters in length within a few months, hanging down trailing. Isn't that quite spectacular too?

Just pinch off a branch and stick it into a flower pot, and in four or five days it will take root and grow. This heartleaf ice plant is not picky about soil, and anyone can keep it alive; even a plant killer would find it hard to kill.

The routine pruning of the heartleaf ice plant is the same as pruning other flowers and plants: promptly cut off any yellow leaves, dry leaves and diseased leaves. In addition, to reduce the heartleaf ice plant getting sick or being plagued by insects, small shoots growing near the roots or along the soil surface should also be cut off, to improve ventilation and light penetration and leave the potting soil exposed.

Pruning the heartleaf ice plant is not so fussy, as it grows very fast. The more diligently you pinch off the growing tips, the more luxuriant the heartleaf ice plant becomes. Wherever you pinch, new branches sprout from there, and that is where more flowers appear. In some places people eat the heartleaf ice plant, eating those tender tips. After pinching off the tender tips and fertilizing appropriately, several more tender tips will emerge. The more you pinch, the more it fills the pot, and it is quite enjoyable too.