Talk about your unusual varieties....

[DawnSuiter]

I've been scouting high & low for interesting things, and am so excited to have a few "weird" things growing in my garden. They are strange to me, maybe not to you, and I don't know how any of them taste yet because they are totally foreign to me, but still I'm excited.

I've recently ordered the following:

Golden Beets

something just looks scrumptious about these!

Calliope Eggplant

they are just so beautiful I had to have them! I don't yet eat eggplant ... so I hope I can learn to like them

Red Rubin Basil

this is going everywhere, in every garden bed!!!

An Italian lettuce called Lattuga Rossa a Foglia Riccia da Tavolo

isn't that remarkable coloring???? I can't wait!

and a Malabar Spinach called Basella Rubra or Red Vine and it climbs and performs well through the summer heat!

look at how this thing will grow... imagine what can be done:

 

[hoodat]

Malabar spinach is great but don't try to compare it to regular spinach. The taste is quite different. It's actually a succulent so it likes heat and is drought tolerant although it does better with regular watering.
If overcooked it can get slimy like okra and can be used in place of okra to thicken gumbo.

 

[DawnSuiter]

Yes that is what I read about it. I don't eat cooked spinach, and it loses its lovely red coloring when cooked too

Well.. if it isn't edible.. it will be a great ornamental and I'm sure the geese will LOVE it.

 

[digitS']

Dawn, your choices are beautiful!

DW doesn't eat beets. I knew that she was prejudiced by food color and ordered a couple varieties of golden beets in recent years. For some reason, I couldn't get her to enjoy the golden beets either :/.

I liked 'em . I had very poor germination from Burpee Golden but had 2 good seasons with Touchstone Gold from Johnny's. Real purply beets like Bull's Blood don't grow very well for me .

Eggplants can certainly be colorful! However, even white eggplants are wonderful. I'm just about convinced myself that purple eggplants tend to be bitter while other colors, do not. Am I wrong about this?? I've only grown 1 "lavender" type and only 1 white over the years. However, I regularly grow AppleGreen and long green Asian types. And, still have some purples but I'm wondering if they should be jettisoned.

Dark Opal is just a pretty basil plant to have around. I've got so much basil, it hardly matters if it has great culinary use. The Thai basil has nice purple stems but you have to look close. I gotta work to make sure it doesn't develop purple flowers and bring its usefulness to a close.

I've been happy growing Johnny's "Wildfire Mix" that last few years. Lettuce certainly doesn't have to be iceberg-boring so I've got quite a few leaf varieties.

Putting a few Malabar spinach plants in my plastic tunnel about the 1st of May means that there's something green (I go for that color variety) and growing when I finally pull the cover off about the 1st of July. By that time, the Chinese cabbage has matured and most greens just cannot take the heat any longer. Time to find fresh greens in the shade.

Okay, what's unusual in my veggie garden . ? . . . . . . umm, well, does that AppleGreen eggplant count? . . . I'm looking forward to finding some room for edamame soybeans. You eat them, uh, green. You're talking about color, right? Green and, uh, more green . . . I gotta pole bean with some spots! Shoot! Even my favorite melon, Charentais, is kind of green on the outside.

digitS'

Wait! Some of my peppers have time to mature yellow, then red! They are the little Thai Hots and the Super Chili's. They grow upright on the plants and are, really, tiny. But, there's some color over there! Do we get to count the red and gold tomatoes ??

 

[hoodat]

The thin Oriental eggplant is less likely to be bitter than the fat European type. I've heard that putting borax around the plant helps keep them from getting bitter but haven't tried it.
That Thai pepper is a regular in my garden I have some I dried and crushed in a jelly jar over 5 years ago and it's as hot as the day I put it up. It also grinds up into a great chili powder. I have a little coffee grinder that's like a miniature blender that I use for powdering it.

 

[digitS']

Various purple Asians haven't come thru for me either, Hoodat.

AppleGreen is from the University of New Hampshire. It really is, almost round and looks like a big Granny Smith.

I can use it for eggplant parmigiana !

Steve

 

[DawnSuiter]

"they" said that this little cutie I picked is bitter free... I saw on the victory garden the other day the guy likes to cook with the white ones because they are less bitter...

 

[vfem]

Gorgeous choices... I have some crazy colored baby lettuce mixes in my front yard which are several colors, I'm also doing fennel and elephant garlic as my oddities!!!

 

[Kim_NC]

Great choices DawnSuiter! I'm also trying some Golden Beets this year. My first planting did not sprout, but the second planting did. They're about 4" tall now. Hope they grow nicely.

I always grow Purple Basil. It seeds easily and I like it's color in dishes. It's nice to have it to add color when so many other herbs are green.

I like those Calliope Eggplant. We're growing Lavender Touch and Ichaban this year.

I would have loved the long green eggplant, but could not find them as plants and it's getting late for seed.