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  • From: Angus MacLeod <afionnmc@yahoo.ca>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] 10 Vegetables You Probably Aren't Growing But Should Be
  • Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2009 18:26:05 -0700 (PDT)

Yes, I've been growing the first four for years as well as parsnips, but my extreme thanks for the others. There are so many possibilities our ancestors either didn't plant or didn't pass down to us. Information like this is invaluable.

some of my favorites:
Joi choi = grows like bok choi, but I prefer the flavour.
horn o' plenty squash = a summer squash that's very tasty raw, can be cooked
rhubarb = perhaps an acquired taste, but a very early perennial crop
radish = very early and the bugs and slugs seem to prefer it's leaves to almost anything else
fennel = all of the plant can be eaten, and the tiny sprigs can be dried and used as a spice, requires very little space

I have good luck with all of these in zone 5.

-Aonghas

--- On Fri, 9/18/09, Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net> wrote:

From: Tradingpost <tradingpost@lobo.net>
Subject: [Livingontheland] 10 Vegetables You Probably Aren't Growing But Should Be
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Received: Friday, September 18, 2009, 1:28 PM



    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.
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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.
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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!


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