Whats your favorite vegetable?

[pepperhead212]

Welcome to the forum!

That's impossible to pick, though not a day goes by that I don't have peppers in some form on something! Garlic and onions come close, however.

[TomatoNut95]

Welcome who to the forum?

Mine is tomatoes, peppers and okra. I love onion but I can't grow it, it always rots. Fresh lettuce is also nice.

[pepperhead212]

Someone had posted this question as a first post - were they deleted, because they were a known spam, or did they delete themselves? That was weird.

[TomatoNut95]

Oh you mean that johnsmith person.... Their thread about asking how to rid flies from their compost bin is gone to, I don't know why somebody thought they were a scammer.

[Gary350]

Our favorite vegetables are, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, beans, peppers, onions, garlic.

[Vanisle_BC]

Favorite vegetables? Roast potatoes with garden peas, asparagus and a side order of grass-fed Filet Mignon in a mushroom/onion sauce

[digitS']

These have to rate fairly high. (Certainly they had better for the winter 2020-21!) It was a very good year for winter squash and the photo of Buttercups & Kabochas doesn't include some that were given away, and the little pie pumpkins and a homegrown hybrid already at home. We are having a very late Fall frost this year. I hope that adds to a loooong storage life.

I said something over on the Covid thread about cooking pumpkin pies since I was a kid. I can't turn all these into pie but they sure are easy to microwave.

It was also a good year for green beans and baby beets but too late to post a picture. They are a couple of favorites. Sweet corn has to be another. And, I enjoy growing lots of tomatoes for all kinds of eating! I suppose that I can say that we eat a lot of onions, altho they can't exactly be called a favorite - well, maybe .

Steve

[applestar]

CARROTS!

Woman finds long-lost diamond ring on carrot in garden - BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40956139

[ElizabethA]

My favorite veggies to grow are peas, cucumbers, dill, tomatoes, rosemary, and mint! There are so many more, but these are the top veggies!

[ElizabethA]

Hey I want to start a new thread and I am a forum newbie and I need help with this! Please advise! Thanks in advance!

[ElizabethA]

I like this one! See if you can guess what it is!
It grows by the beach in the Pacific Northwest from Spring to Fall.

[ElizabethA]

Oh woops! The picture never made it on that last post! I'll paste it in here!

[imafan26]

My favorite vegetables to eat are onions (they are not worth growing. I don't grow them well), asparagus, mushrooms (it is a vegetable?), corn (well, this is actually a cereal), and bok choi.

My favorite ones to grow are peppers, Asian vegetables (choi, beans, Japanese cucumbers, komatsuna) Asparagus, green onions, and kale pretty much are perennial as are some of the peppers so they take care of themselves. I like growing corn in summer, but it takes up all of the main garden space.

[Vanisle_BC]

@ElizabethA ; What is that beach plant and how do you eat it? Looks familiar but I know nothing about it.

[told2b]

Poor Man’s Asparagus???

[TomatoNut95]

Asparagus popped into my head, as I've heard asparagus was quite salt tolerant enough to be grown by the beach.

[told2b]

Mash Samphire is another name for Poor Man’s Asparagus.
Still don't know if this is correct mystery plant.

[ElizabethA]

You are correct! It is sea asparagus! It has many names like samphire is also correct! It's also called pickleweed!

[ElizabethA]

Here's another one! Hint: it grows in fairly moist and often grassy areas that are partly sunny. Very good in salads!

[TomatoNut95]

Water cress?

[ElizabethA]

Good guess, but it's not water cress. It is Miners Lettuce! There is another type of Miners Lettuce ive tried before called Siberian miners lettuce. I'll attach a pic of that Siberian Miners Lettuce next! I love wild growing veggies!

[TomatoNut95]

Is it in the lettuce family, or maybe cress family? Purslane family? What time of year do you grow it?

[ElizabethA]

I do believe that winter purslane is another name for miners lettuce. I have harvested it year around, but it's at its peak from spring thru fall.

[ElizabethA]

This is a fun one to guess I think! What plant does this flower belong to?

[TomatoNut95]

This is fun! Artichoke!

[ElizabethA]

You are correct! I love those flowers - so pretty!

[TomatoNut95]

I've actually never grown artichoke, so it took me a while to figure it out!

@ElizabethA, have you ever grown watercress? I recently purchased some peppercress seed and could use some tips on it.

[ElizabethA]

I have not. However I want to learn more about the multiple cresses out there hopefully next year! They look so yummy! I have seen them in the wild growing by streams.

[digitS']

Hey! This gardener in a semi-arid, northern garden once grew watercress. Honestly .

The neighbor had a 4" irrigation valve that leaked. Whenever it was "off" it leaked a little water down the pipe that ran about 6' from one side of the garden. In one low area, probably 100' from the valve, it would form a pool above some of the rockiest ground a gardener should ever have to deal with. I talked to the neighbor about running a pvc pipe a little under the surface, over into my garden.

I then dug out a good 8" of soil in an area about 3' by 8'. Some watercress from the supermarket was planted into MY pool. Water trickling off down the pvc pipe pretty much drained the pool on the neighbor's property and nearly filled my pool. The watercress was as happy as could be and grew well!

I've been there 15 years. Never again has the neighbor tolerated a leaky irrigation valve ... I think that I embarrassed him.

Steve

[ElizabethA]

That's awesome! What a good idea!

[TomatoNut95]

I received my Baker Creek seeds today, am getting more anxious to plant my 2021 stuff!
According to my peppercress packet, it sounds like a cool weather loving green like lettuce. Says plant in spring and fall. Rats. I was hoping to use it as a green throughout the summer.

[applestar]

Not many “greens through the summer” — maybe Swiss chard (I have hard time with them however), Egyptian spinach, ... I like Nasturtium leaves, too. Imafan might have some more ideas.

[imafan26]

Watercress we grow is different from the garden cress found elsewhere. Ours is bigger, about 18 inches tall and is not as bitter as the ones grown on the mainland. The Sumida farm is the largest watercress farm on Oahu. It is between the 2 parts of the Pearl Ridge Mall. The mall tried to buy the farm when they were building the mall, but the family would not sell.

The farm is still family operated. The farm has an artesian well and the loi are flooded. Watercress, pretty much needs clean running water. It is actually in the nasturtium family. It grows well during the cool season, but it is not a warm season crop. It turns very bitter in the heat. It is prone to cercospora disease. The farm had problems with caterpillars and they use water to interrupt their breeding cycle.

Watercress is grown successfully hydroponically. You can start it from cuttings from the grocery store.

People living near clean streams do grow water cress along the banks successfully.

https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/VC-7.pdf
https://www.hawaiimagazine.com/content/ ... -big-story


Nice pumpkins. I just cooked my kabocha last night. It is a tough squash to cut, thank goodness, I don't have to peel it. I made simmered kabocha with pork.
I sauteed 2 boneless pork loin chops cut into thin strips
2 tablespoons vegetable or cannola oil. You can use avocado or coconut oil but not olive oil. You want a neutral flavor
I added 2 packets of katsuo dashi (bonito)
2 cups of water
1 thumb sized piece of peeled and smashed ginger
3 tablespoons of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of fish sauce
4 packets of splenda ( it should be sugar, but I rarely eat real sugar)
2 tablespoons sake
2 tablespoons mirin
3 tablespoons, dried ebi (baby shrimp), chopped
1 small kabocha pumpkin. washed, cut in half (the hardest part), seeded and cut into 1 inch pieces. The skin is left on only the stem and blossom ends which are hard are removed.
Heat oil. Add pork slices and saute until lightly browned.
Add pumpkin in a single layer on top of the meat and water. Bring to a boil and then lower heat to a simmer. Cook for 20 minutes until pumpkin is tender.
Add the seasonings and simmer another 8-10 minutes with a drop lid. If you don't have a drop lid (It looks like a steam rackl) you can use a piece of foil or parchment paper cut to fit the pot and punctured with steam holes directly on top of pumpkin. There is not a lot of water in the pot, so check to make sure you don't run out of water while steaming.

I use low sodium soy sauce, the dashi has salt and msg. Salt can be added to taste. There are so many salty ingredients it is actually salty to me as it is. I use fish sauce in place of salt because it adds umami. Dashi can be made with bonito flakes instead, but it is less work to use dashi.

[digitS']

My chard tends to just sit there and look at me during summer heat. I can harvest the leaves but the plants make little growth. The summer green that makes the best growth for me is amaranth.

I tried a green amaranth variety that grew as tiny plants in my garden. The red veined variety weren't very large either and rather bitter. Perhaps it was an environmental problem but it would take a good number of plants to grow more than a few servings.

A friend had some amaranth seed that she has been growing. I'm convinced that they came from an ornamental red variety. Amaranth seedlings have made almost no growth during cool, spring weather. This variety grows to a good size during the summer heat and tastes just fine! BTW - the plants self-seed in a serious way. It's probably best to have a "mother plant" in an out of the way location so that some seed may be harvested where volunteers will not be a serious problem.

Steve

[Gary350]

Peas are probably our #1 favorite vegetable but I can't grow them. We were buying can peas 6 cans each time but now we buy them by the case. I tried many times in the past 43 years to grow peas in TN, we seldom get enough peas for 1 meal from a 25 ft row. I tried successive planting every month Aug to April that does not work either. Our spring weather is too short, April 30° to 50°, June 70° to 95°. If we had 3 bushel baskets of pea pods that would be a nightmare to remove peas from pods & only get about 1 gallons of peas. I never get more than 5 peas per pod & lucky to get 1 or 3 peas per pod. Plants have 0 to 4 pods per plant.

[ElizabethA]

I love growing peas! They seem to love it here in the Pacific Northwest! I have many volunteers that come up every year from the previous season!

[digitS']

ElizabethA, I have the idea that you are on the "wet-side" of the Cascades. Here in the "wild west" interior, there are a great deal drier conditions. Still! We have a Pacific NW spring and peas do very well during those weeks. The Palouse region is called the "The Pea & Lentil Capital of the World" and there is good reason for that - even if they are talking about dry peas.

I can plant (snow) peas during the hottest month of summer and they will grow altho not produce all that well. Sometimes, frost will come a little too early and I am left with harvesting tendrils rather than pods. Usually, we have both pods and tendrils.

Gary, what do you think about sowing pea seed very late in the growing season. I've tried growing Alaska (& Austrian Field) peas sown in the Fall. It didn't really work because the freezing conditions must have killed about half of the seedlings - below zero F is to be expected during the coldest nights of Winter.

Steve

[applestar]

FWIW — You might remember last year I was really binge-watching this Japanese YouTuber. He originally worked in ministry of agriculture, and after retiring, started a blueberry farm and has a teaching position at an agricultural university and a co-op.

This is a video from last November (11/5/19) when he was planting green pea seedlings started in small pots —- looks like about 3 inch? — 3 to a pot. He is planting them 20cm apart under a narrow arch-tunnel covered with what looks like — this blue mesh — commercial wind break mesh (in the US I have found them advertised for athletic fields, too). There is a later video of a different market farmer posting video for progress on his pot-started snap peas and broad beans on 11/25/19.

— so the common technique for them is starting the seeds in containers and transplanting well-started Plants —

I’m not sure without watching more videos whether he will later cover the tunnel with Greenhouse plastic, but the area he lives in is similar in seasonal climate to TN or GA. He doesn’t talk in his videos but a caption at the end said “Looking forward to the spring harvest!” And his “spring” videos are labeled as such starting around mid-February (which in my area is still Winter....)



- in the opening slide-show, he shows current progress of garlic in the ground (the way the greens are growing are indicative of his climate NOT being same as mine — somewhere further south with less freezing), daikon growing in potting mix/fertilizer bags, pot-started broad beans and snap peas which he is apparently not planting yet, etc.

...watched the video again — in caption, he mentioned that in addition to the wind-break mesh on the north side, the arch is under where the massive bird-proof netting, which during the summer season covers the ENTIRE blueberry planting area Is GATHERED against the wind-break mesh covered border fencing framework and secured during the off-season. So he doesn’t think any additional frost-proofing would be necessary.

...BTW this model — covering the ENTIRE blueberry orchard by surrounding with wind-break mesh fencing and covering high overhead with bird-proof netting on wire cable support — is something I’m trying to adapt in obviously much smaller scale for my own garden...

[TomatoNut95]

I love growing peas! They seem to love it here in the Pacific Northwest! I have many volunteers that come up every year from the previous season!

Peas are something my family has grown for years. What type of peas do you like? My folks always grew purple hulls and cream peas. This year I grew Holstein and Hog Brain cowpeas and I was satisfied with both.

[Gary350]

ElizabethA, I have tried several types of peas, Alaska Snow Peas have done best so far. First frost is about Nov 1 to 7. One year I plants peas Aug 1, Aug 15, Aug 30. Some of the plants had 1 or 2 pods & some had 6 to 8 pods. Some pods has 0 to 2 peas & some had 4 to 7 peas. We barely had enough peas for 1 meal. After first frost we had freezing rain ice killed the plants. Fall planting seems to work better than spring but crop is very small for the space it takes up. Too much work for 1 meal. Back then there was no internet, I don't remember what my garden books said about planting & fertilizer.