Tired of piles of zucchini overwhelming your kitchen? Not
that interested in growing yet one more tomato? Bored with squash? I feel you.
I too have gotten to the point where I just can’t stomach the idea of planting
yet another row of cilantro to be ready when the currant ones bolt. I don’t
have one of those gorgeous, picture perfect potagers, because, as we all know
I’m just not that into weeding. So if I’m going to have to slave over something
and tend to it’s every little whim and need, I want it to be something
extraordinary, or at least something worth talking about.
This is how I discovered cucamelons or Mexican Sour Gherkin
Cucumbers (Melothria scabra). A friend was distributing the bounty from his
garden in exchange for some of my chickens’ eggs and he handed me a baggie
filled with what looked like dollhouse watermelons. Tiny little striped ovals,
which he just popped into my mouth. Wow, crazy, pure cucumber taste with a
little zip of lime, these babies were delicious and one of the niftiest things
I’d ever seen to throw in a salad or on a crudités platter. It has to be the
“cutest” edible I’ve ever come across and one of the easiest to grow.
Cucamelons
grow just like cucumber, in that they want sun and fertile soil and decent
water, but unlike cucumbers, they are super reliable and take up a lot less
room. Still a vine, they need some
support to clamber upon, but they’re easy to start from seed and fairly
prolific once they get going.
And to go along with the theme, we need to grow one of the
melons called Metki serpent melons (Cucumis melo var. flexuosus) – a muskmelon
(Cucumis melo) that also tastes like a cucumber (Cucumis sativus). Often called
Armenian cucumber and usually found among the cucumbers in seed listings, these
melons are almost identical in shape and flavor to the cucumber. They get their
name from the fact that they can grow to be almost three feet long, and if not
grown on a trellis or support structure of some kind, will twist up into
squiggles that sort of resemble snakes. They are ridged when growing and have a fuzzy skin, but when
mature smooth out into one of three colors, a pale green to white color, a dark
green or striped, which is the best looking.
I am a huge fan of gooseberries and currants (Ribes) so
those shrubs are pushing their way into spaces where radishes and spinach used
to grow. When I was a child in England, my favorite desert of all time was
gooseberry crumble and I still salivate thinking about it. Ribes were outlawed
in America in the early 1900s to prevent white pine blister rust (a fungus they
are susceptible to) from affecting the lumber industry, the federal ban was
lifted in 1966 but it wasn’t until 2003 that New York State started to allow
home gardeners to legally grow these fruits. There are two types of gooseberry
plants, the American (Ribes hirtellum) which make smaller fruits but are way more
productive and less susceptible to mildew (the one bummer about growing Ribes)
and the European (Ribes uva-crispa) which are larger and much more flavorful.
Unlike most fruits, gooseberries can handle partial shade, but make sure
there’s plenty of air circulation to help you battle mildew. They must have
rich soil since they resent drying out, but they adore our soil and even if you
get small plants give them about 3 to 5 feet of room to expand as they grow. I
promise you the effort is worth it.
Another unusual
fruit worth growing is our native elderberry (Sambucus canadensis) a fast
growing shrub that the deer don’t seem to like. This might be because the
berries when red are toxic, so make sure you’re not harvesting them until they
are at their most purple blackness. This is a big plant (it can grow to be 12
feet wide and tall) that has a tendency to sucker, so you need to give it room.
I would advise planting it in a hedgerow, not the vegetable garden and trying
to find a number of different cultivars as the fruits are better with cross
pollination (much like blueberries.) This is another plant that can handle a
little shade and although they tolerate neglect, you’ll get a lot more fruit if
you keep them well-watered and top-dressed with compost each year. You harvest
the berries by cutting off the entire cluster and must cook the fruits to make
juice, jelly or wine. I’ve not tried the wine, but I do like them mixed with
apples as a pie filling. I do have to battle my birds to be able to really
enjoy large harvest, but when I don’t, I never have to worry about them going
to waste.
Another native edible that’s worth trying is the pawpaw
(Asimina) of which there are actually 9 native species but only one (Asimina
triloba) is hardy in our area. These are trees so if your pawpaw is in full sun
it’s going to get about 20 feet or so tall and would be happiest allowed to
sucker into a big pawpaw patch. Paw paws are not self fertile, so you need to have two to get
fruit set, and the best way to ensure a full crop is help with the pollination
with an artist’s paint brush. Seedlings can’t handle full sun, but most of the
trees you’ll find will be past that stage so plant them where they’ll get
plenty of it. However, do try to avoid planting them in a windy spot, as the
leaves can’t handle the constant stress. This might sound like a lot of work,
but the fruits are really quite delicious, with the texture of a banana and a
flavor that is almost as if you mashed up that banana with a mango and a pear.
I don’t grow pawpaws, but I do have a fruiting quince
(Cydonia oblonga) that is one of my favorite plants. Quince resemble hard fuzzy
pears that have a fragrance that smells like the offspring of a pineapple and a
lemon that made love in a vat of honey.
The fruit is either yellow or pink and rock hard so these are not for
fresh eating, but make an incredible jelly and are ready to be harvested
sometime in October. It’s not a pretty plant, so mine is tucked around the side
of my house, but I adore the plant and will always have one somewhere on any
property I own, albeit in as much sun as I can spare and without fertilizer as
too much nitrogen makes this plant stress.
Of course, if we’re talking about incredible jelly the other
plant that we should all grow is our native beach plum (Prunus maritima). When
I was a kid, there were a billion beach plums growing in the dunes (where
houses now unfortunately sprout) and almost everyone and their neighbor had a
stockpile of beach plum jelly put up for the winter, not to mention that they
all also had their own favorite, well guarded secret bushes from which they’d
picked their preferred berries. Some of the most delicious fruits are actually
growing on two shrubs in the center of The Bayberry Nursery’s perennial sales
area and in late summer it’s worth a visit just to steal a few of these tart
little treats. Totally tolerant of the salty air and sandy soils of the beach,
this plant can also be grown in the backyard and is a perfect shrubby bush to
grow if your garden is not all that fertile and you have plenty of light.
But enough with the fruit. A list of other fun things to
grow would definitely include lovage (Levisticum officinale) a plant that
tastes almost identical to celery but is significantly easier to grow. Normally
seeded in late summer or fall, you’ll probably want to start with a young
plants instead and in good soil the plant is magnificent with leaves that look
like giant parsley and are delicious when used in any recipe that calls for
celery and with gorgeous white umbel flowers that set seeds that mature in
August. Seeds that are amazing scattered into salads and fruit (they are
surprisingly sweet) and that will self sow if left alone, but are better
planted farther apart. You might not need a million lovage plants around the
garden, but once you’ve cut a stalk to use as a Bloody Mary “straw” I promise
you will never go back to celery again.
This year, I’m thinking about growing the rat tailed radish
(Raphanus sativus caudatus), specifically because instead of eating the root,
you consume the seedpods. Sort of ugly, the pods have that same hot radish flavor,
but are an entirely different texture and since I’m a huge consumer of
vegetative matter, I’m interested to see what these things are like. Plus
they’re meant to be super cool in a stir-fry, fantastic pickled in vinegar with
pink peppercorns, allspice and mace and another cool addition to the crudités
platter. The seed pods can get to be 8 inches long and are grown in the same
way you would grow any other radish, except that you don’t have to tear your
hair out it the bolt to seed quicker than expected.
The other day I actually saw seeds of garden purslane (Portulaca
oleracea), which has become this hot thing in restaurants all of a sudden, but
frankly I draw the line at seeding things in my garden I’ve weeded up
previously. I used the weed when making salads, and it is really quite
delicious, with a sharp, citrusy tang and a bit of a bite, the succulent leaves
add an interesting and distinct texture to herby salads, plus it’s super high
in Vitamin C but I enough of these plants have already found their own way into
my garden. I’m not bringing in more.
There are so many other interesting and unusual edibles I
could go on and on, but I have no more room, in either my garden or this
column. But just a few to ask around about would be ground cherries, stevia,
pomegranates, kiwis, amaranth, tastoi and perilla. Be careful with the perilla
though, as mine self-seeded all over the place. Not that self-seeding is bad, I
now let all my self-seeded cilantro go to seed since the seeds of cilantro are
actually coriander (two, two, two herbs in one!) and fresh coriander seeds,
unlike the dried and dusty ones you get at the store in the tiny glass bottles,
are significantly more delicious and work equally well when thrown in with a
cooking salmon or a bunch of freshly picked peas.
Paige Patterson has too many tomatoes planted on her
property, which is, of course, no big surprise.