You Wont Believe What These Funny Vegetables Are Doing
And if you have an adventurous streak, there are a wide array of unusual varieties available to you, provided you have the right growing conditions.
Whether it’s annuals for my garden patch or trees for my orchard, there’s a question I always ask myself before I consider adding a new fruit or vegetable: how easy is this to find at the supermarket?
If the produce is easily obtainable in my local community, it may not be worth its real estate in my edible landscape.
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That’s why I’ll probably never plant a ‘Granny Smith’ apple tree, even though I love this tart apple cultivar, since Granny Smiths are readily available at my local supermarkets.
And that is the same question I asked when cultivating this list of 17 of some of the most unusual fruits and vegetables you can grow in your backyard.
While you may find a few of these available for purchase if you have a really great farmers market in your area, most of us will only lay eyes on these in person the day that we grow them ourselves. Ready for a sneak peek?
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But before your sense of adventure makes you yell out, “One of each, please!” make sure to double check the growing conditions required for each of these, to save yourself from disappointment.
Have you ever thought to yourself, “Gee, I wish there was a type of cucumber that was really long, burpless, a good keeper, and could stand up to blistering heat”?
Perhaps you never made that particular wish, but I’m going to bet you’ll agree it’s a great idea. The answer (to the wish you never made) is here – Armenian cucumbers.
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Armenian cucumbers are pale green and ribbed, with thin skin and few seeds. Also known as serpent cucumbers or yard long cucumbers, these wonders can grow to be three feet in length.
If turning your bumper crop into pickles sounds like a brilliant plan and you need a recipe for lacto-fermented dill pickles, you’ll find one at our sister site, Foodal.
The vines of these plants can reach six to eight feet in length – you can let them sprawl if you have the room or train them to grow on a trellis.
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The cucumbers of untrellised plants will develop some amusing twists and turns as they grow, while trellised plants will produce straight cucumbers.
This time our selection takes the form of a melon that is unabashedly sweet and comes in a surprising shape, specifically, a
How about slipping from this ‘Banana’ into a whole article about different melon cultivars? We’ve got you covered, with 33 melon varieties to discover.
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Have you ever thought of growing a giant pumpkin in your backyard? Maybe it’s the right moment to entertain the fanciful idea of adding a behemoth to your pumpkin patch.
Hey, you only live once. Do you really want to look back at your life later and regret that giant pumpkin you never grew?
Existential questions aside, ‘Big Max’ has big potential. It might even have you pondering ideas of entering your homegrown pumpkin in a competition at a local fair.
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Just don’t expect Guinness World Records to come banging on your door – while ‘Big Max’ pumpkins can weigh up to 200 pounds, the current record holder for heaviest pumpkin in the world weighed in at over 2, 600 pounds.
Of course, if taking ‘Big Max’ to the state fair isn’t high on your list of priorities, you can always keep it at home and use it as an oversized jack-o’-lantern.
That has light orange skin and contains thick walls of very moist, tasty, yellowish orange flesh – so it could also be transformed into soup or pumpkin pie filling.
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The vines of these annual plants can reach 10 to 15 feet long, so make sure to give them plenty of room – and as with growing more modest sized pumpkins, make sure to grow them in full sun.
And if you are aiming for pumpkin notoriety, grow just one pumpkin per vine to ensure that all the plant’s resources go into that single pumpkin.
You can find organic ‘Big Max’ pumpkin seeds available for purchase in packs of four grams, enough to sow five mounds, at Botanical Interests.
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And by the way, the trick to growing giant pumpkins isn’t only in selecting the right variety, there are many other steps involved to ensure vegetable glory.
If your garden plan includes growing beets but you’re looking for something a little different, you may wish to consider ‘Chioggia, ’ an heirloom beet variety from Italy that boasts beautiful red and white rings inside its red skin.
This heirloom cultivar takes its name from Chioggia, a town located within the metropolitan boundaries of the renowned city of Venice, a location rich with history and known for its colorful glasswork and masks.
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With ‘Chioggia, ’ we can add colorful veggies to the region’s fame – as well as the beet, this Italian town also gives its name to a variety of radicchio and a pumpkin cultivar.
When you slice one of these red-skinned beets in half horizontally, you’ll find concentric rings alternating in bright reddish pink and white, giving these roots a candy-striped or bull’s-eye appearance.
These beets have a delicate flavor and thin skin, and are very sweet when planted in rich soil amended with compost or manure.
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This cool season vegetable has pale green leaves that grow to about ten inches tall, and should be planted in full sun. These beets will be ready to harvest in 55 days on average.
The red pigments in these beets can bleed when boiled, so if you want them to retain their gorgeous stripes, steam them lightly.
When you grow your own carrots at home, you get to choose from some fantastic cultivars. And if you want to add a bit of excitement to your carrot patch, one that you may wish to include is ‘Cosmic Purple.’
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‘Cosmic Purple’ has gorgeous amethyst-colored skin with an orange interior and an orange to yellow core. These carrots grow to be six to seven inches long with tapered ends, and are sweet and somewhat spicy.
Like other purple veggies, purple carrots are high in anthocyanins, and as such may offer an advantage to your health over the standard orange varieties – provided you don’t sacrifice their purple skins to your vegetable peeler.
‘Cosmic Purple’ should be sown in your garden as a cool season vegetable. You’ll be ready to harvest your carrot crop in 70 days.
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If growing giant pumpkins like ‘Big Max’ isn’t your thing, maybe planting a teeny tiny cucumber from seed will hold more allure.
Cucamelons are one- to two-inch-long cucurbits that look like miniscule watermelons, but have a fresh, cucumber-like taste. These tiny fruits are also called “mouse melons” and “Mexican sour gherkins.”
And these little veggies look very much like tiny watermelons, with their pale green skin and darker green markings. Inside the tiny fruit, you’ll find white flesh. But there’s no need to peel tiny mouse melons – the entire fruit is edible.
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The vines of these plants can grow to be between five and 10 feet long – but be patient, these annual vines are slow to get going.
If you’re one of those health-conscious souls who likes to include a scoop of goji berries in your breakfast cereal or morning smoothie, you may not have realized you can grow your own.
Goji berries, also known as wolfberries, aren’t hard to grow, as long as you live in USDA Hardiness Zones 2 to 7.
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These shrubs can serve as a hedge or border and work well on slopes. The plants can easily reach 12 feet tall if they are not pruned. And to make berry harvesting easier, they can also be trellised.
Fruit will appear on two-year-old plants. When harvest time arrives, be aware that these small red berries tend to taste better after you dry them.
If you like the idea of growing fruit in your backyard but don’t want to wait for a shrub or tree to get settled in, try ground cherries, the boon of impatient gardeners.
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Ground cherries are annual plants, related to tomatoes and tomatillos, that bring their fruit to maturity in a single growing season. Like tomatillos, each fruit grows within a delicate, lantern-shaped husk.
These small nightshade plants produce delicious fruits that are about a half an inch across, and golden colored. Ground cherries have a fruity, tropical flavor that is somewhat reminiscent of pineapple.
Speaking of pineapple, that is the name of one of the tastiest ground cherry cultivars. The fruits of ‘Pineapple’ ground cherries are tart and sweet, providing a burst of flavor in a small package.
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‘Pineapple’ plants grow to be 18 inches tall, can spread to 24 inches wide, and will produce ripe fruit that’s ready to enjoy 75 days after transplanting.
While I plant lots of edible annuals in my garden every year, I’m always looking for edible perennials to include in my landscape as well. So I was ecstatic when I learned about
Unlike the kiwifruit that you buy at the supermarket which can only be grown in USDA Hardiness Zones 8 and 9, hardy kiwi can be grown successfully in Zones 3 to 8,
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