(by 9 people)
Grow unusual things in your garden
There are lots of things that you can grow in a kitchen garden. Many of them are well known and easy to find information on. Some are a bit more unusual, but experimenting with unusual edibles is fun and can be tasty!
What's growing today?
- The Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast
- Oca and Ulluco
- Jerusalem artichokes
- Book review: Growing Unusual Vegetables
- Saffron - Crocus sativus
- Feeling hot! Grow unusual peppers
- Places to visit: Ryton Organic Gardens, Warwickshire
- Mouse melons
- Pea shoots
- Book review: Plants for a future
- Places to visit: The RISC roof garden, Reading
- Welsh onions
- Achocha
- Unusual edibles websites
- Photos of unusual edibles
- Like my lens? Say hello!
- Heirloom seeds on eBay
The Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast
The Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast looks at growing edible plants (some unusual, some common) from an environmentally friendly perspective.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byOca and Ulluco
Colorful tubers the Incas used to eat
Oca tubers are one of the Lost Crops of the Incas and come in a range of colors. They are grown like potatoes (but they don't suffer from blight), although they benefit from a longer growing season.Oca has a lemony flavor and you can save a few tubers from your harvest each year to replant the following season.
Ulluco is an even more colorful tuber. Also available from Real Seeds, they're a very new and unusual crop outside of the Andes.Ulluco tubers sprout (like potatoes) early in the year, as you can see at Daughter of the Soil.
Jerusalem artichokes
Tasty tubers that are fantastically easy to grow
Jerusalem artichokes have been out of fashion, but are poised to make a comeback. They contain inulin, an indigiestible starch that makes them a very low calorie food. Inulin is also a prebiotic, helping to maintain healthy populations of bacteria in your gut.Jerusalem artichokes are so easy to grow that they can take over the garden. Like potatoes, if you don't dig up all the tubers the ones left behind will grow again next year. If you want a low-maintenance vegetable garden then they're definitely for you!
If you don't have a garden, or don't want to risk it being overrun with artichokes, then try growing Jerusalem artichokes in containers.
Book review: Growing Unusual Vegetables
One of my favorite gardening books is Growing Unusual Vegetables by Simon Hickmott.Simon walks you through how to grow over 90 different unusual edible plants, including details of their history and how you use them once they've grown.
You'll learn about unusual leafy vegetables, fruits and roots and even some grains, herbs and spices.
If you want a taster, check out this interview with Simon Hickmott which includes details on growing chickpeas, water chestnuts and sea kale and some suggestions of plants for an edible border.
Saffron - Crocus sativus
Grow the world's most expensive spice
Saffron is expensive because it is made from the stamens of Crocus sativus - and each plant only has 3 strands. There's no mechanical way to harvest saffron, so all the work is done by hand. Despite this, many cuisines from around the world use saffron as a staple spice.It is possible to grow your own if you can recreate Mediterranean growing conditions. Check out Simon Hickmott's 'Growing unusual vegetables' for detailed growing instructions, but two important points to note is that deep planting of the corms encourages flowering and that you need to make sure you have the right species of crocus as some species are poisonous.
Feeling hot! Grow unusual peppers
There's more to peppers than meets the eye
Peppers (both sweet capsicums and hot chillies) need a long, hot summer to thrive. For many people this means they're greenhouse plants, but if you have a sunny spot then you can succeed with a pepper outside in a good summer. Or they make decorative and fruitful houseplants.The great thing about peppers is that there are a huge numbers of varieties. Growing your own from seed means you can choose between large and small, bell and long, different colors and a whole spectrum of heat.
You may even be able to keep an indoor pepper alive through the winter - they're perennial plants in their natural habitat.
Most cultivated peppers are Capsicum annum, but for the more adventurous there are other species you could try. For more information, read my article The pepper plant and growing your own peppers on Helium.
Or just try sowing seeds from store-bought peppers.
Get read and get paid: write for Helium
Places to visit: Ryton Organic Gardens, Warwickshire
'A Great Day Out in the Heart of England'
Ryton Organic Gardens is the demonstration garden of Garden Organic, the UK's organic gardening charity.As well as proving that organic methods can give you a beautiful garden, Ryton is home to the Heritage Seed Library. You will find some of the heritage varieties growing in the Vegetable Inspirations garden, and if you're lucky you might be able to buy some heritage plants in the shop.
There's also the Cook's Garden, where everything is edible. As well as a traditional veg patch, there's also plenty of edible perennials here - roses and herbs are just the tip of the iceberg.
To hear more about Ryton Organic Gardens, listen to episode 24 of The Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast.
Subscribe to the Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast
Mouse melons
AKA Mexican sour gherkins
These little cukes were on my list of things to try - easy to grow, scrambling plants, they are disease and pest resistant and produce a bountiful harvest of tiny cucumbers that kids (big and small) will love.So far so good - the plants are flowering and starting to fruit, and they're tiny and so cute!
You Grow Girl grew them in 2007 and has some good photos. And they featured in MotherEarth News in 2005.
In the UK, seeds are available from Suttons Eden Project range. In the US, try SeedSavers.
Pea shoots
A very Chinese vegetable that's easy to grow at home
Pea shoots are the leafy tendrils of peas, grown to be used as a salad, or stir fry vegetable. Very popular in China, they haven't caught on as a commercial crop because they would be too expensive.But if you have spare pea seeds then they're easy to grow - just load up a shallow tray with compost and pea seeds. Keep them moist, wait a couple of weeks for them to grow their first leaves, then cut the shoots off above the first joint. The plants can be left to grow on for more harvests.
Pea shoots have a delicate flavor and should be eaten raw or just lightly cooked (stir fried or steamed).
You can even grow them in winter, if you have a sunny windowsill or frost-free greenhouse.
To hear more about growing peas and peashoots, listen to episode 21 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast.
Book review: Plants for a future
'Edible and Useful Plants for a Healthier World'
Plants for a Future, by Kern Fern, is an encyclopedia of edible and useful plants that grow in temperate climates.Ken Fern's aim is to draw attention to the wealth of plants which are useful, but not commercially grown and so virtually unknown.
Many of the plants in the book are perennials, and valuable additions to low maintenance gardens. There are ground cover plants, herbs, shrubs and trees and climbers.
Chapters include: pond gardens, edible lawns, wild habitats and an index of plants listed according to their use.
This is an absolutely fascinating book for the keen gardener.
Places to visit: The RISC roof garden, Reading
See unusual edibles in all their glory in this rooftop oasis
The RISC roof garden, in Reading, is only a few years old. All the plants grow in just 1 foot of soil. And yet there's trees reaching for the sky - a cherry and a medlar are just two - and much of the work in the garden is based around controlling over-exuberant plants.This is a forest garden, designed along permaculture principles. Plants are chosen to occupy different niches, so that no inch of space is wasted. Every vertical surface is covered with climbing plants.
Each plant is edible or otherwise useful. Many have multiple uses. They all come from temperate climates (a lot are from China and North America) and so grow well in this environment.
The Roof garden opens to the public several times a year. If you're too far away for a visit, you can find pictures and a list of the plant species on the RISC roof garden website.
To hear more about the RISC garden, listen to episode 13 of The Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast.
Subscribe to the Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast
Welsh onions
Welsh onions Allium fistulosum are perennial, clumping onions. You can grow them from seed, and once you have you need never be short of onions again.Welsh onions can be used like spring onions or leeks. They're so hardy that in most climates you can harvest them all year round.
Bees love their white flowers, which are attractive to humans as well.
To learn more about Welsh onions, listen to episode 20 of the Alternative Kitchen Garden podcast.
Achocha
A vegetable the Incas would have grown
Achocha (Cyclanthera pedata or Cyclanthera brachystachya) is a climbing plant that likes warm, rather than hot weather. It's not fussy about soil and is easy to grow - once it has established it can be quite rampant and makes a nice screen.Achocha flowers are tiny and pale green and you can easily miss them, but hoverflies love them and so achocha attracts these beneficial insects into your garden.
The flowers are followed by green fruits in the shape of a tear-drop. Picked young they can be eaten raw. Older fruits need to have the hard seeds removed (save them for next year!) before they can be cooked. Fruits can be used like green peppers.
Achocha plants are not frost hardy. Sow your seeds when you would plant your bean seeds and you won't go far wrong.
For more information, check out the article on growing achocha on my website.
Unusual edibles websites
Vote for your favorite Unusual Edibles website
Plants For A Future - 7000 useful plants
Plants For A Future is a resource centre for rare more...0 points
Seed Savers Exchange
Seed Savers Exchange is a nonprofit organization t more...0 points
Great Vegetable Seeds from The Real Seed Catalogue
Our latest collection of the very best vegetable s more...0 points
Mother Earth News - whole foods & cooking
Many articles on how to grow and use unusual veget more...0 points
JungleSeeds
JungleSeeds provides tropical seeds, exotic seeds more...0 points
Photos of unusual edibles
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Like my lens? Say hello!
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lhiller
Great lens. I love trying new things. The Welsh Onions sound interesting amd the artichokes. 5 stars for you thanks for an interesting read. Posted August 03, 2008 |
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clefty
Excellent lens. I'll add it as a favourite from my vegetable gardening page... Posted June 23, 2008 |
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Imogen_Crest
Fascinating! Posted March 17, 2008 |
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flicker
Good work! Those "mouse melon" cukes are cute! I grew some round yellow cukes this year. Yummy. Posted October 22, 2007 |
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marasco2001
Great lens! Thanks for sharing your tips and the unusual plants. The Mouse Melons really got my attention! I'll have to learn more about those little yummies! Posted August 29, 2007 |
Heirloom seeds on eBay
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