Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - [Livingontheland] 10 Vegetables You Probably Aren't Growing But Should Be

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] 10 Vegetables You Probably Aren't Growing But Should Be
  • Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:28:44 -0600



10 Vegetables You Probably Aren't Growing But Should Be
Lesser grown but totally delicious vegetables for your garden.

Colleen Vanderlinden
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/home-garden/vegetables-growing.html
By Colleen Vanderlinden
Harper Woods, MI, USA | Wed Sep 02 10:00:00 GMT 2009


Tomatoes, lettuce, and cabbage are pretty common in the average vegetable
garden. These crops are like old friends, dependable and well-worth the
effort. But every once in a while, it's nice to step outside of our comfort
zone. And what better way to do it than to try growing a delicious new
vegetable in your garden?

The veggies on this list will diversify your diet as well as extend your
growing season. Most are annual, but some are perennial -- and you'll want
them in your garden year after year. I'm sure some of you are already growing
at least a couple of these, but I hope you find something here that piques
your interest.
1. Kohlrabi

This under-appreciated vegetable is extremely versatile. It can be eaten raw
or cooked in stews and soups, or as a side dish all its own. It can also be
eaten fresh from the garden or stored indoors just as you would store
potatoes, in a cool, dry place, though they do shrivel a bit in storage.

Sow seeds directly in the garden after your last spring frost date. Give them
a spot in full sun with rich, well drained soil. It's a good idea to sow a
row every week or so, so that you have fresh kohlrabi until midsummer or so,
when the heat makes them less productive.
photo
Photo Credit: Stockbyte/Getty Images

2. Turnips

Turnips are wonderful in soup and broths, mashed like potatoes, or roasted
either alone or with other root vegetables. They have a mild flavor that goes
well with other vegetables. As a bonus, you can also harvest the greens,
which are very nutritious, to eat either raw or cooked.

Sow turnip seed directly in the garden in early spring or late summer. They
need full sun and light soil, preferably amended with compost. They also grow
well in containers.
3. Beets

Okay, you might already be growing beets, but so many people were served
disgusting canned beets as children that they develop a lifelong aversion to
them. Garden fresh beets are sweet, tender, and versatile. They can be sliced
into a salad, turned into soups, or roasted (my favorite way to eat them!)
Like turnips, you can also eat the delicious greens raw or cooked.

Beets grow well in full sun to part shade in soil that is loose and well
drained. Sow them all season long, doing several sowings throughout the
spring and summer. Beets are wonderful in containers. Look for 'Detroit Dark
Red,' 'Bull's Blood,' or 'Chiogga' beets - all are absolutely delicious.
photo
Photo Credit: Eising/Getty Imagess

4. Rutabagas

Rutabagas are related to turnips, and, in fact, just look like oversized,
yellowish turnips. They are great in soups and stews, roasted, or cooked and
mashed like potatoes.

Unlike turnips, however, rutabagas are sown in late spring to harvest in fall
and even into winter. You can store them in damp sand if you have to harvest
them before the ground freezes in your area. Give them full sun, light soil
that has been enriched with plenty of compost and manure, and keep them
well-watered throughout the summer.
5. Celeriac

Celeriac is a hard, round vegetable that is a relative of celery. It is
generally used as a flavoring, most often as a substitute for celery, but it
is also delicious as the star of the show, grated raw into a salad or sauteed
as a side dish.

What I love about celeriac is that you get all of the flavor of celery
without all of the work. Celery has to be blanched (the stems have to be
buried throughout the season to develop nice, light colored stalks and keep a
delicate flavor) and is rather prone to pests. But celeriac, which also has a
rather long growing season, is fairly pest and disease-free. Grow celeriac in
full sun to light shade in soil that has been enriched with manure or compost
(or both!) The only trick with celeriac is that it needs to be started
indoors under lights in late winter in most climates to have a long enough
season to mature. On the upside, however, it can usually be left in the
ground all winter and dug up as needed, especially if you give it a mulch of
fall leaves or hay.
6. Jerusalem Artichoke

Confession time: I'm not even growing this one yet. But I will be growing
them next year. This perennial vegetable, also known as sunchoke, is hardy to
zone 2 and produces tubers that can be used much like potatoes. I was
convinced to grow them after reading the book Perennial Vegetables by Eric
Toensmeier. Toensmeier says:

"Sunchokes produce enormous yields of tubers, as much as four times the yield
of potatoes. The tubers are crisp and sweet. ....They can be used as any root
crop....I particularly liked them mashed as potatoes or cooked in soups."

Unlike the rest of the veggies on this list, sunchokes grow from tubers,
which you can usually find through many garden and seed catalogs.
7. Malabar Spinach

If you like spinach, but hate the fact that it's so hard to grow in summer
due to its quickness to bolt, you need to grow malabar spinach. It needs to
be started indoors from seed because it despises cold weather, but it's worth
it if you love spinach and want an alternative for when the temperatures
soar. Just when regular spinach is bolting, malabar spinach starts to grow
like crazy.

Give malabar spinach full sun, warm weather, and moist soil. Allowing the
soil to dry out result in bitter-tasting spinach leaves.
8. Parsnips

This carrot relative is considered to be a winter vegetable because it
doesn't reach the height of its flavor until it's been touched by a few
frosts. In fact, you can leave parsnips in the ground all winter, harvesting
them until the ground freezes, and then resuming harvesting once the soil
thaws in spring.

Start parsnips by direct sowing seed in your garden in an area that gets full
sun and has well-drained soil that has been loosened to a depth of at least
eight to ten inches. Keep the parsnips well watered throughout the growing
season, and harvest after frost.
photo
Photo Credit: John Foxx/Getty Images

9. Scorzonera

Scorzonera is a root crop from which the entire plant, from the leaves and
flower buds down to the roots, is edible. You can harvest the roots after a
few frosts, because, much like parsnips, they taste best after being hit with
frost. But if you want an easy source of greens, keep the root in the ground
and harvest the lettuce-like tops for salads. If you leave the root in the
ground, scorzonera acts as a perennial vegetable (hardy to zone 4), providing
you with greens year after year.

Sow seed for scorzonera directly in the garden in an area that gets full sun
and has light, well drained soil. Scorzonera can pretty much be left to its
own devices after it has germinated. It requires very little care other than
weeding and the occasional watering during dry conditions.
10. Seakale

Seakale is one of those vegetables that provides a variety of harvests from
just one plant. The main crop seakale is grown for is its spring shoots,
which are blanched by placing a terracotta pot over the tops of them, then
harvested and used in the same way you would use asparagus. Later in the
season, the flower buds can be harvested and eaten like broccoli. And the
kale-like leaves can also be harvested throughout the season. Of course, like
asparagus, the plant doesn't really start producing until the third year, but
it is well worth the wait considering everything you get from seakale.

To grow seakale, give it a spot with full sun, rich, well-drained soil, and
plenty of room to grow. Feed it with seaweed fertilizer or fish emulsion
early in the season, and keep the area around the plant clear of weeds.

I hope you enjoyed this introduction to a few less-common vegetables you can
grow in your garden. Are you growing any of these (or another uncommon
vegetable I haven't mentioned)? Tell us about it!






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page