try microgreens, like @Grey_Devil said.
radish, broccoli, red clover and some others will grow on a chia dude, so long as you keep it very wet. then you can “shave” john and have probably enough spicy spouts to enliven a salad or a sandwich.
i have done this. do not expect more than that one sando or salad.
many years ago, when mum was working with a certain glass artist up in seattle, i gave her a “Chia-huly” pet. she did the chias for a grin, but it also made tasty, but few, spicy radiah sprouts. enough for hammy on sourdough.
The tiniest patio tomato. I planted it in a much bigger container than it needs, apparently, because it hasn’t grown more than an inch since I bought it a month ago. Fruit are the size of small cherry tomatoes, not much flavor though.
“Egyptian walking onions” according to the person who gave them away on my local Buy Nothing group. I planted them in a container because of the “walking” part sounding like they might take over. They don’t seem to be the best culinary onion—much tougher tops than green onions, much smaller bulbs than regular onions—so I’m don’t know if I’m missing something about them other than that they are very low maintenance.
(Volunteer tomato growing in the middle too)
i love the “oddball” plants.
i still peruse seed catalogs for the most interesting things that might survive the near-tropical climate of the keys, and we have had some hits, some absolute misses and strange volunteers…
this season, i had a volunteer vine that sprouted out of a container that has been home to a desert rose for over a decade. this plant, looking just like an odd squash vine, just popped up and then grew rapidly and voraciously(!) up and clung to the branches of one plumeria tree. now that it is blooming, i see what it is - a “snake bean” from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds! it is not a bean at all, rather a gourd family, squash-like plant that bears long, twisty, fleshy fruits. last year, we planted these seeds, but an iguana absolutely destroyed those vines before we ever even saw any fruit.
this year, this volunteer has established itself in that container and the iggies have been ( ) discouraged.
this is the blossom of the snake bean vine:
ever since a young’un, my mum, mostly, and papi, would allow us kids to pick seeds from wierd-o seed catalogs like one would find in The Whole Earth Catalog, or Mother Earth News, and we tried some interesting varietals in our 2 acre garden.
anyone here ever tried salsify? ever even heard of it? it is a root crop that resembles a white carrot - not as big as a parsnip - but is called.“the vegetable oyster” or “oyster root”. we grew this on the farm where i grew up in texass, and it was good!
walking onions. ain’t that some shit? do tell us more!
hmmm… what is this wonderful bowl of fruit that just landed at my front door?
tomatoes? plums?
nope…
my lovely neighbors have a very large tree that bears these beautiful acerola cherries! (aka Barbados cherry).
very plum-like with tart, edible skin, sweet, fleshy insides around a medium stone/pit/seed. also one of the highest natural source of vitamin C of any fruit.
wasn’t expecting this treasure, but we do exchange our tree fruit during their season. i trade bananas, peppers and starfruit for their cherries and another neighbor for eggs from his chickens (not street chicken eggs).
life is good in the islands.
sometimes life is very good!
I love sea grapes, we had a row of them on my block growing up. Really great flavor, a hack we discovered as kids was to lay them on the hot sidewalk for a couple of minutes to warm them and they would become even sweeter and juicer when you ate them.
If i lived somewhere more tropical i would def plant some, not sure a tree would do well here in central TX. Some day~
yes!
i do have a quinep tree and seagrapes!
the quinep has yet to bear fruit, but i get them from the farmers market sometimes. the birds usually beat us to the sea grapes. the few we do get are very tasty! we also have a mamey sapote tree. common in Cuba and DR, they are like ice cream, custard or pudding in texture and so floral tasting, amazing fruit!
it’s great to be able to grow all these tropical goodies. i miss the papaya, though. there was a tree just over the back fence when we moved here. they were delicious. neighbor cut it down when he built his house behind us.
that is a happy vanda, good eye!
the roots are over a meter long and it has been growing outdoors for close to five years.
it is a nice visualization of the landscaping and plantings we have done over time, since this entire property was leveled - but for the plumeria and some palm trees - when we tore down the old place and built what we have now, from scratch 7 years ago.
We had a plumeria house plant, but it died not long after blooming, which really saddened us. It has amazing flowers with such wonderful scent, as you mentioned. Just delightful.
Love that passionflower-esque bean flower upthread, too! WOW!
Our backyard is currently fucked. I don’t see my rose, which we’ve had since the mid-80s. D stopped one of our contractor’s workmen from cutting it down, but the other guy may have gone after it, and for no good reason. They were supposed to get rid of the weed and mulberry trees, and cut down the bindweed- and grape-bound big shrubs, but they also hacked the unaffected reblooming lilac on the other side of the yard all to fuck (which somehow survived the onslaught and is blooming!), but left the GD mulberries in front of it.
Now where the lawn should be, it’s a mass of awful weeds, including the bindweed, burdock, and the trumpet vine who just up and took over. Friends don’t let friends plant trumpet vines, unless they’ll be properly cut back every single year.
I will not type about it again, not until we can get stuff straightened out.
We don’t want to use roundup for many reasons, including the local wildlife and stray cats. Need an alternative that will get rid of the weeds, but not the good bugs and certainly not the animals.
) discouraged.
lime and lychee flavors
