I am quite new to growing vegetables, but i have found a few "new" foods eating parts either not normally available or not normally edible in store bought veg. My first forays into gardening were actually inspired by the desire to cook with new and/or better veg. My new favourite roasted veg is fennel root! I love it! Please share your own discoveries as i am keen to try any new taste
Salsify. The roots are delicious roasted. Mine's flowering right now and it's very beautiful. I'll be growing scorzonera next season, which is the perennial version. Rocoto chillies. I've only got seedlings, but my mum's plants are great. Perennial in less than tropical climates, kind of 'viney', and trelliseable and really, really productive. The fruits are like a small, hot, fruity bell pepper.
i have salsify and scorzonera growing but they're still little - those chillies sound like they deserves a try
What about the florence fennel,if you cut just above the root they will re grow, giving you that amazing taste without having to replant every year. Check out the Kim chi websites,this tastes great with or without the amount of chilli koreans use and is a really good way of preserving your surplus veg. It gave me the idea of growing the chinese cabbage which I usually dont like and ginger. The chinese cabbages seem to be faster growing too.
Sweet potato, pumpkin and choko vines, you cut the last few inches off the vine, peel it, and throw it into a stirfry right before you serve it (only needs a very short cooking time - mmm...loverly grub!
Probably not suitable for the typical vegie bed but the best 'unusual' food plants I grew recently have been the Ha-ogen melon and the curry tree Murraya koenigii. The Ha-ogen was a big surprise as I'm not a great fan of rock melon... well, supermarket melons. I seem to be finding that all of those things I thought I disliked are either exhausted, poor flavour genes 'fresh' produce from a supermarket or something that came out of a tin when I was a kid. Ha-ogens are a compact vine growing to a diameter of roughly 2m. My plant produced 14 cannon ball sized fruit on this small structure. The fruit had the most amazingly refreshing and juicy tropical flavours! When turning ripe they go from a smooth, green appearance to a yellow striped ball which has a strong fragrance of mango, pineaplle and passionfruit. A fantastic melon and though I'd love to try heaps more heirloom melons i'd be happy if I could only ever grow that one again. Will plant two next time as my daughter (2 at the time) is a voracious fruit consumer and we barely got a look in! The curry tree is a great plant to have if you like your south east asian and indian dishes. Use it like bay leaf in stews, curries and dahls. A unique flavour that can't be reproduced by anything else. My plant starts looking sick in winter but seems to make a come back when it warms up. I've heard people grow them in Melbourne with careful site selection. A special mention to the Wapsipinicon Peach Tomato. Little fuzzy yellow flavour bombs. I've never had another tomato packed with so much sweetness and zing! Sadly last season the rain killed the few I'd planted. Not growing anything aside from herbs this season as we're getting ready to move so I'm going to put in at least 4 plants next season to make up for the withdrawals. They're not very prolific so a couple of Tigerillas will be needed to supplement (and they're no slouch in the flavour department either). For the first time I am planning to plant enough sauce and bottling tomatoes to last us for the year. I hear San Marzano is the very best onefor this. Would be happy to hear if anyone has tried this one or if they think there are others more worthy.
OT tomato talk...Try Treason, in the US, many people use opalka instead of San Marzano tomatoes for bottling, drying etc. Better tasting, more productive and healthier plants, they say. Not available here, but maybe in Oz... San Marzano is supposedly very prone to blossom end rot, but I have a couple of plants I'm putting in soon. They look pretty pathetic so my hopes aren't high. The Aunt Ruby's German green plants look amazing though. Jaune flamme has been very good in the past, but my all-time fav is black cherry.
Hi pippimac. Opalka? That one's new to me. I study the digger's club Australia lists for new (old ones i've never heard of) tomato varieties. Not sure if you're familiar with them (or can order from here). Another I've heard is good for sauce is Costoluto Genovese https://www.diggers.com.au/shop/product/S364/TOMATO COSTOLUTO GENOVESE.aspx and Amish Pastehttps://www.diggers.com.au/shop/product/S219/TOMATO AMISH PASTE.aspx Anyone know of any other seed saver clubs in Oz that have a good range of tomatoes?
or www.thelostseed.com.au/Seed-Packets(1049142).htm has anyone tried saltbush? either as a green or the berries?
do you know any old vegetable growers who save their own seed from year to year - maybe someone would share their own special tomato variety with you. maybe some old old italian variety? has anyone had much experience with growing native food trees other than the normal ones, my dad has a huge macadamia tree, i have lemon myrtle and native limes, but still looking for some regular bush tucker that i can grow in sydney, i have a baby native fig, coffee berry and some mountain currants on their way
Unfortunately the best person for this would have been my grandad but instead of tending his famous tomato patch over the last 8 years he's been pushing up daisies instead. He knew heaps of Italian and Greek migrants and used to swap seed with them. Wouldn't have a clue who they were. In terms of preservers, in addition to the few already mentioned I've read that Amish Paste are good for sauce and Speckled Roman is good for whole preserve. Principe Borghese is supposedly great for drying. Then i've heard it said "just bottle the bigger stuff you can't eat and dry the cherry tomatoes you can't eat." This sounds far too simple to me! Native fruit trees... My dad had a quandong for a while. Got a few fruit off it and apparently loved it! It suddenly keeled over and died much to his horror one day. The culprit? Neighbour killed his back lawn with roundup. Quandongs are a parasitic plant which grow off other plants roots. It had obviously grown into the buffalo grass 6metres away in next door's backyard
Burdock, It's exceptionally nutritious, grows wild in North America. Was used by North American Indians as a medicine and its an ingredient of "Essiac Tea" Cultivated in Japan and Taiwan. Can be pickled. Included in Sauerkraut or Kimchi. Roots are sometimes more than a meter deep so I guess you could call it a dynamic accumulator.