Broad Bean (Red)
Broad Bean (Tops)
Butternut Squash
Field Bean
Garlic Chives
Hamburg Parsley
Hyssop
Jersey Kale
Kohl Rabi
Leaf Beet/Swiss Chard
Mangetout peas
Potato 'Anya'
Radish Pods
Red Sprouts
Salsify
Sea Kale
Source of unusual and
cheap seeds
Soya 'Ustie'
Tomatillo
Tomato Gardeners Delight
Turnips
Winter Radish
Broad Bean (Tops) A lot of gardening books tell you to chop the tops off of broad beans when the pods start to set because it deters blackfly. Rather fewer tell you that those tops are nice gently steamed.
Broad Bean (Red) Look out for a variety called "Red Epicure". The mature beans are a dark red - earlier they are yellow. I found the flavour reasonable - and 2003 wasn't a very good year for broad beans so I'm trying again. Later: I've now grown them every year up to 2006 and find the flavour generally very good. Note: This variety has white flowers. I've seen a book suggesting it's got red flowers. That appears to be a different variety.
Field Bean is a primitive form of broad bean. It's supposed to be for use as a green manure or for cattle food but think of it and treat it like an early, small, prolific extremely hardy broad bean. The plants are as tall as most broad beans but quite narrow. I have over wintered them alongside "cultivated" varieties of broad bean and they shrug off frost that knocks the others down.
Hamburg Parsley looks like an ordinary flat leaved parsley on top (and that's what the leaves taste like) but underneath, there's an edible root a bit like a small parsnip. It tolerates shade and itself shades out weeds very effectively. Yield (of roots) is quite small. In fact, weight for weight, there's more leaves!
Garlic Chives were labelled in Tesco as simply "chives" but the leaves on my sample were flat not round and the flower white not purple so I think I've got Alium Tuberosum. It's got a mild garlic flavour which survives cooking. Rather more convenient than garlic cloves.
Hyssop is
one of the less well know herbs with a strong savoury taste. It grows into
a nice small bush with pale green leaves and blue flowers (although other
colours are available)
Leaf Beet/Swiss Chard is something you won't see at the supermarket because it has a very short shelf life. It's similar in taste and cooking to spinach but it's much easier to grow and it looks good too. If the weather isn't too bad, you can crop it for 9 months of the year on the "cut and come again" principle. I had most success with the variety 'Luculus', 29p from Lidl but you can also get red and multi-coloured varieties too. My planting of 'Rhubarb Chard' bolted.
Mangetout
Peas are a special type of pea where
you don't bother to remove the peas from the pod - you eat them pod and
all. Supermarkets sell them in expensive packs flown in from some exotic
country. The good news is that they are easier to grow than ordinary
garden peas, take less effort in the kitchen and are very tasty. It's quite
easy to find the variety Oregon Sugar Pod in shops but for something stunning,
get Carouby de Mausagne or "Yusaya". In less than 3 months, you'll have
plants over 6 feet tall with fragrant two-tone mauve flowers starting to
crop. Next year (2007) I plan to try growing these over an improvised pergola.
Why? They seem to have the staying power to grow to well over 8 feet cropping
as they go.
Soya 'Ustie' This soya bean claims to be suitable for UK growing. I had a lot of trouble getting them to germinate but I now (July 2006) have two small plants with some small hairy pods. I never got round to harvesting any green pods so I'm letting the pods/beans dry for storage. I may get about a cup full from two plants. The plants are better looking than most of the normal beans.
Radish Pods are an interesting alternative to the more usual roots. I failed to get my hands on one of the varieties bred for the purpose so I let an ordinary variety run to seed. The pods are quite similar to the roots in taste but they're green, pointed and only about 1" (2.5cm) long. This year, I've got some seeds for the "Munchen Bier" variety. I'm told the pods are bigger and that the plant can grow to 6' (183cm). Update: I had 3 tries in several places over the summer and they all failed, In 2 cases, it was black rot. In the other, something uprooted the plant overnight. Finally (2006) some success with "Rat-tailed radish" from Chiltern seeds
Winter Radish is a lot bigger then your normal radish. I sowed Mino Early in early July and by early September they were 1' (30cm) long and 2" (5cm) diameter! The plants were much tidier looking above ground than most radishes. Pleasant enough radish to eat and pretty convenient for the larger family - just one root to clean and slice. 2004 update: Impressed with the variety "China Rose". Not as big as some but a warm, sweet flavour
Red Sprouts seemed like an interesting idea so I tried variety Rubine. The good news was that the caterpillars and white fly left them alone and attached the more conventional brassicas. The bad news is that I got about 15 very tiny sprouts from 2 plants.
Sea Kale
is
a name applied to two quite different plants. I'm talking about Crambe
Maritima not the variety of leaf beet. It grows wild on some parts
of the UK coast. It's also quite different to ordinary kale. It's quite
ornamental, you can eat the flowers and the forced (IE grown in the dark)
shoots in early spring. The usual advice is not to force it until the second
winter because it tires out the plant too much.
 |
Blanched Sea Kale ready for harvest (left). The bucket in the background
was placed over the shoots in March to keep the sunlight out. Harvesting
is simply a matter of cutting the plant down to ground level and replacing
the bucket. Each cut yeilds about 4 servings and three cuts can be made
during April to May. After the final cut in late May, leave the bucket
off.
In July and August, check the leaves at least every week for caterpillar eggs. Squash any you find. In Autumn, the leaves and stems die down unlike may other cabbages. I'n trying one plant in a pot which I shall put in a dark cupboard indoors around January and hope to get an early crop. (This worked but the crop was very small) Cooking/eating: Similar in texture and flavour to caulifilower. Most cauliflower recipies should work. |
Tomato Gardeners Delight isn't particularly rare but I grew it in the open alongside some other varieties and it was just full of solid tomato flavour. A tomato from that golden age, long ago, when tomatoes were real tomatoes.
Jersey Kale
is a very tall growing non-curly kale.
The record is around 18' (over 5m). On the island of Jersey, they make
walking sticks out of the stems. Mine grew to 7' (215cm). When it goes
to seed, there's lots of tiny yellow flowers with masses of tiny flying
insects. If you want to amaze your neighbours, it would be a good choice
- it amazed mine! The young leaves from mid-Winter onwards are nice steamed
as are the flower buds - a bit like sprouting broccoli. You can get several
meals a week off of just one plant. I don't use leaves bigger than about
4" (10cm)
Source of unusual and cheap seeds: In late February, visit Lidl (it's one of those german supermarkets a bit like Aldi). The last couple of years, they've had a rack of seeds - many of the vegetable varieties are just not the usual ones. Prices in 2003 were as low as 29p a packet.
Salsify is a root vegetable sometimes called the "vegetable oyster" and there is something fishy about the taste. I had a bit too much fresh compost in my soil so they forked a bit. Sow the seed 6" (15cm) apart in April and carefully dig them up in the winter.
Butternut Squash are vastly superior to the traditional marrow. The sweet orange flesh is delicious roasted. So I bought one at Tesco, ate it and planted a seed scooped out of the middle. It's already bigger than a courgette planted at the same time. Looking forward to harvesting it this autumn. I have it in a nice warm spot near a 10' (250cm) wall and I'm hoping the plant and fruit will be huge! Update Nov 04: After the rotten summer we had, no fruit survived and the plant stopped at about 5' (1.5m). I also tried a squash called Cobnut and I got one fruit weighing about 130g. Later another appeared and both tasted quite a bit better than shop-bought butternut.
If you think that turnips are bland and boring maybe you've been buying them at the same supermarket as I used to. Home grown turnips can be very very different. The trick is to grow "early" turnips in spring and harvest them small - about golf ball size. You don't need to peel them and cooking is optional. The taste is strong - you might not like it but at least you will know what a real turnip tastes like. Suggested variety "Purple Top Milan". Actually "maincrop" turnips are not bad either - just don't let them get too big. Update Nov 04: I sowed some Purple Top Milan 2nd week of August and they've cropped nicely during October and November. This year (2006) I'm trying "Oasis" from Thomson and Morgan - claimed to taste like Melon!
Main points:
* Take up VERY little ground space (see below)
* More attractive than many kitchen garden plants
* A bit tricky to start
* Low maintenance
* Useful ingredient rather than a star at your
table
Tomatillo has SOME similarities with Tomato such
as origin, hardiness, family, etc. However, a dinner guest is more likely
to mistake it for a tiny green pepper. The plant is better looking than
tomato. See the web for lots of stuff.
The plants end up like miniature spreading trees covered with yellow flowers, lime-green leaves and green "chinese lanterns". I'm tempted to grow them in a flower border next year. They're nice, not stunning.
Near the ground is a straight green trunk a couple of inches thick and little branched for about a foot. This should mean you could underplant it with another crop. They cast much less shade than tomatoes and their preferred soil has little nitrogen. However, they are a variable plant and some people find they sprawl.
Tomatillo is usually harvested green and cooked. The best time is when the "lantern" starts yellowing and splits to reveal the fruit. If you let the fruit mature to yellow, it's sweeter, doesn't need cooking but has almost certainly split. However, in the UK, it's more likely you'll do a green harvest when frost threatens. The fruit keeps for weeks in a cool place.
Some seed catalogues mention a cultivar name but Chiltern don't bother and that's where I got mine. It seems to be a green rather than a purple variety.
You MUST plant more than one if you want fruit.
Germination was erratic:
- In pots in dull but heated room 21/02/03 - failed
- In pots in a cool, light room 11/04/03 - success
- Direct in soil, 19/04/03 - failed.
I'm going to try lifting the roots and keeping them somewhere cool over the winter in the hopes of a head start next year. (It didn't work but I may have kept them too dry)
More cooking notes Use it green in stews, sauces or slice it as a pizza topping (Excellent). The "official" use for it is in Salsa - there's recipes on the web
Plans for 2005 include "Black Russian" (turned
out wonderful) and Tigerella tomatoes, Cucumber "Crystal Lemon" (Spherical)
(Turned out to have excellent intesnse cucumber flavour, also 2006, found
Burpless Tasty Green to be a fair name)
| Location, soil, etc. I live in Cheltenham, UK. The soil is light, sandy, alkaline and dries out very quickly. The site is fairly sunny and sheltered by a large wall on the east side. In mid-winter, there's hardly any direct sun at all. |
| What I do when not gardening |
