Unusual Veggies

April 8th, 2010

Things tend to blur together when you’re poring over two dozen seed catalogs, but the photo of the fat, orange, warty, bloated cigar grabbed my eye.

“The pulp inside resembles lime green Jell-O,” the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalog description read. “The fruit has a sweet-sour, banana-lime-tropical taste. Good juiced and sweetened.”

Sold.

Sucker that I am for anything new and different (and especially weird), the jelly melon seeds are already in my seedling trays, being babied for next month’s garden planting.

This is one of the best parts about growing your own edibles.

You can stick with the usual red tomatoes and green cucumbers if you want, but you’ve also got the option to grow just about anything you can get your seedy little hands on.

Grocery-store produce sections are offering way more choices than even a decade ago, but it’s still only scratching the surface of the possibilities.

For a few bucks’ investment, it’s doable to grow the world’s arguably tastiest watermelon (a variety called ‘Ali Baba’ from Iraq), a burgundy-leafed radicchio from Italy or a potato-like South American staple called jicama.

All are in this year’s Baker Creek catalog – the king of wild-and-crazy edibles. (www.rareseeds.com, 417-924-8917)

Not all of the off-the-beaten-path stuff works out, of course. Some of it just doesn’t like our climate or soil or the way you look at it.

But a big part of the fun is trying… just to see what’ll happen… just to find out what that jelly melon tastes like… just to see if the potato flesh really is blue like the picture.

You’re more likely to find the real oddball offerings in seed packs as opposed to starter plants. Sniff around the garden-center seed racks, and if you’re not sufficiently mesmerized, there’s still time to order directly from the catalog companies. (See the accompanying list for good sources.)

Starter plants generally are varieties that are most familiar to most gardeners, although you might find somewhat curious offerings such as white-fleshed tomatoes or peppers that ripen a chocolate color.

• Kohlrabi is an easy-to-grow cole crop that looks like something from another planet. It produces tennis-ball-sized orbs that sit just above the ground and send out leaf stems all around. ‘Superschmelz’ is a good green one, but you’ll also find purple varieties.
• Cauliflower is no longer just white. ‘Cheddar’ is a type with orangish-yellow crowns, and ‘Graffiti’ sprouts in bright purple.
• Carrots can be had in white, red-orange (‘Atomic Red’) and yellow (‘Yellowstone’), but especially interesting are the new purple ones (‘Purple Haze,’ ‘Cosmic Purple’ and ‘Purple Dragon’).
• Parsnips and rutabagas are two old-fashioned root crops that are nutritious, cold-tolerant and long-keeping in storage. They’re best planted in summer to mature in fall.
• Onions are a common, trouble-free crop, but just as easy to grow are 1.) leeks (a milder relative that makes a super soup or crusty pie when paired with chicken), 2.) garlic (best planted in fall for summer harvest), and 3.) shallots (small oniony bulblets that are superb caramelized in stir-fries).
• Gold-fleshed potatoes really caught on a few years ago when restaurants and gardeners discovered ‘Yukon Gold.’ Besides numerous golden choices, check out ‘All Blue,’ a small-tuber type with netted flesh of bluish-purple and white, or a purple-fleshed, purple-skinned fingerling variety called ‘Purple Majesty’ sold by York County’s D. Landreth Seed Co. (www.landrethseeds.com or 800-654-2407).
• Landreth this year is offering a novel African-American Heritage Collection of heirloom seeds carried by slaves from Africa and the Caribbean. Among the choices are the ‘West India Burr Gherkin’ (a bumpy-skinned picking cucumber), the ‘Fish Pepper’ (a hot pepper originally used to season fish), and the ‘Georgia Rattlesnake’ watermelon (a large striped type dating to the 1830s).
• You could grow 10 different tomato varieties each year from now until Armageddon and never get to them all. ‘Black Krim,’ ‘Paul Robeson’ and ‘Cherokee Purple’ are particularly good dark-fleshed types, Burpee  this year has a cool new red-orange marbled variety called ‘Tye-Dye,’ (www.burpee.com, 800-888-1447)  and several catalogs have a variety of white-fruited tomatoes.
• Peppers are equally colorful, ranging from traditional red to orange, gold, purple and even chocolate and nearly black. My friend Floyd gave me an heirloom to try this year that has fruit supposedly shaped like a squash.
• ‘Bulls Blood’ is an old red-beet variety with deep-burgundy leaves so colorful you can grow them in flower pots. ‘Chioggia’ has red-striped flesh that makes cut-open beets look like a bullseye.
• Lettuces are available in all sorts of shapes and colors, but don’t end your salad-bowl collection there. Try other interesting greens such as orach, corn salad, arugula, mizuna and pak choi.
• Even the lowly radish can be more fun if you try ‘Red Meat’ or ‘Watermelon’ (both with rosy-pink flesh inside), a long, white, carrot-looking variety called ‘French Breakfast,’ or the black-skinned, white-fleshed ‘Spanish Winter’ (available from The Cook’s Garden, www.cooksgarden.com, 800-457-9703).

Experiment. Have fun. Maybe you’ll even confuse the groundhogs.

SIDEBAR

Sources for some of the less-common vegetable varieties:

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. www.rareseeds.com, 417-924-8917.

D. Landreth Seed Co. www.landrethseeds.com, 800-654-2407.

John Scheeper Kitchen Garden Seeds. www.kitchengardenseeds.com, 860-567-6086.

J.W. Jung Seed Co. www.jungseed.com, 800-247-5864.

Park Seed. www.parkseed.com, 800-845-3369.

Pinetree Garden Seeds. www.superseeds.com, 207-926-3400.

Renee’s Garden. www.reneesgarden.com, 888-880-7228.

Territorial Seed Co. www.territorialseed.com, 800-626-0866.

The Cook’s Garden. www.cooksgarden.com, 800-457-9703.

Thompson and Morgan. www.tmseeds.com, 800-274-7333.

Tomato Growers Supply Co. www.tomatogrowers.com, 888-478-7333.

Totally Tomatoes. www.totallytomato.com, 800-345-5977.