Veggies Til the Cowpeas Come Home

This might just look like a hot mess, but it's actually hundreds of daikon seeds ripening on some of my biggest roots. The pods themselves are edible when green and younger, but now I think they're probably only good for seed-saving.

In my first year or two of gardening, I tried growing a lot of veggies in our solid clay soil.

Frustrated by my lack of success, I mostly gave up and focused on ornamentals.

Recently though, I've started tiptoeing my way back into growing food.

I've had some fair success with basil - including a couple of volunteer basil plants the last couple of years.

Last fall and again this spring, I planted daikon radishes (Raphanus sativus) from Sow True Seed. This crop plays multiple roles - the leaves function as a cover crop, the roots are edible, the seedpods are edible and any roots left in place should hopefully decay and thus work as a no-till soil amendment. The fall crop did OK last year despite a drought and the spring crop this year did even better, producing good-sized roots and literally thousands of seedpods.

I ate some of the pods (found I liked them best raw), but ultimately ended up just composting most of them. I'm allowing the pods to mature on some of the biggest roots to save seed and/or let them naturalize a bit.

Meanwhile, as the radishes bolt and fade in the summer heat, I've started some 'Southern Brown Sugar' cowpeas (Vigna unguiculata) - also from Sow True Seed - one of my favorite seed companies!) for the first time.

I'm very impressed with the germination on these seeds. I think almost all my seeds sprouted in under a week and seem to be off to a strong start!

Cowpeas looking good so far!

And then there's the tropical roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa), which I sowed in the garden about a month ago. Germination was a bit slow on these and the seedlings are fairly slow-growing. I'm a little worried that I should have started them indoors and that they won't have time to mature and flower in a single season. (I believe they're actually perennials in zone 9 and warmer, but they'll almost certainly behave like annuals here in zone 6-7.)

To read about roselle's edible uses, you can check out this publication from Purdue University.

Grow strong, little hibiscus!

Pollinators LOVE Chinese chive flowers

As you can see...

First Taste - Sweet Potato Greens!

Sweet potato leaves make one heck of a good side dish.
They're served here with purple mustard greens (self-sown fall crop -- several generations removed from seeds I sowed back in spring 2012!) and sliced green pepper.

A couple of months ago, I let some sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) sit too long in the closet. And they sprouted vines.

Hm. What to do? I could throw them out or plant them in the garden.

So I dug some shallow holes in the sun-baked clay soil, dropped in the sweet potatoes, gave them a little bit of water and basically forgot about them.

Fast forward to this week. The vines were a couple of feet long and covered with healthy-looking leaves.

As University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension reminded me, sweet potato leaves are not only edible, they also may be healthful and nutritious.

(Note - Be sure you are picking SWEET potato leaves, because regular (white) potato leaves are POISONOUS! Also be sure you're picking the leaves of a sweet potato and not some other member of the Ipomoea family such as Morning Glories, as sources suggest that many other Ipomoea species contain toxic alkaloids.)

So, I strolled to the garden, picked some of the soft and tender sweet potato leaves from their vines, brought them inside, rinsed them off and tossed them in a frying pan with some freshly-picked mustard greens and some sliced green pepper.

I drizzled a tiny bit of olive oil into the pan and cooked the whole shebang over low heat for a couple of minutes.

The verdict? Delicious!

In fact, I'd say it's much better tasting than spinach with sweet undertones and none of the oxalic acid sourness you find in spinach or chard.

Here are some other blog posts about the virtues of sweet potato leaves via The Slow Cook and Show Me Oz. And here's a YouTube video showing an alternate method of preparing (blanching) sweet potato leaves.

A New Taste: Serviceberry

Amelanchier x grandiflora "Autumn Brilliance"
Photo taken at Atlanta Botanical Garden, May 2014

One of the things you start discovering when you dive into gardening and horticulture is just how few of the world's edible plants (i.e. plants people can eat) have been widely commercialized.

As a result, even if you've reached the ripe old age of 30-something (as I have), you can still have a brand new taste sensation.

In my case, it happened last month when I was visiting the Atlanta Botanical Garden and came across the marvelous serviceberry tree (Amelanchier x grandiflora "Autumn Brilliance") in the edible part of that garden.

Perhaps to the annoyance of the birds who were hopping from branch to branch gorging themselves on the fruit, my wife and I each snuck a few berries. They were very tasty!

Close up on Serviceberries
Photo taken at Atlanta Botanical Garden, May 2014

I've been talking to some horticultural experts recently at botanic gardens around the country and several have recommended the serviceberry for both its aesthetic and edible qualities.

If you're looking to add some home-grown fruit to your garden with a versatile small tree that reportedly often has very nice fall foliage, Serviceberry could be just the ticket.

Look closely.
Can you spy the robin amid the Serviceberry foliage?
Serviceberries can feed the birds, while perhaps giving you some berries for your own table.
Photo taken at Atlanta Botanical Garden, May 2014

Groundcover Review: Creeping Raspberry, Rubus hayata-koidzumii, Rubus calycinoides

Creeping Raspberry, Rubus hayata-koidzumii in a partially-to-mostly shady spot beneath a large crape myrtle tree. In shady areas, Creeping Raspberry seems to spread faster with less mounding.

UPDATE 4/9/14 - This may be evergreen in warmer climates, but in USDA zone 6/7, after a winter with a low temperature of -2 Fahrenheit, it seems to have died back to the roots and is only now emerging slowly as an herbaceous perennial. It may yet make a good perennial, but gardeners in the colder parts of zone 7 and anywhere in zone 6 should probably not expect Creeping Raspberry to serve as a reliably evergreen groundcover.

UPDATE 3/4/15 - This plant has since been shovel-pruned from Garden of Aaron. Click here to find out why.
Creeping Raspberry (a.k.a. Rubus hayata-koidzumii or formerly Rubus calycinoides)

Pros:

- Evergreen foliage. Always a plus in a groundcover. Plus I'm head-over-heals for this particular foliage, which is charmingly scalloped and crinkly and fuzzy.  

- Spreads at a good pace, by which I mean that I can actually see appreciable growth on a week-by-week basis, but growth is not so fast that I'd worry about keeping it in bounds later on. Plus it spreads by above-ground stolons, not below-ground rhizomes, which means it should be much easier to pull it up or chop it off if parts of the plant start spreading into unwanted areas.

- Tough! Grows in full sun or partial shade (haven't tried full shade). It is supposed to be very drought-tolerant. Handled the winter cold (hardy to zone 6), spring wet and summer heat without batting a (metaphorical) eyelid. I will say that the plant sort of hunkers down for the winter. I don't think it grew at all then (although it was just settling in) and the foliage acquires a ruddy reddish glow, which makes it even more appealing in my book.

In full sun, Creeping Raspberry still spreads laterally, but it also seems to mound up a bit more in the center, perhaps trying to shade its central core from the sun? I ended up transplanting this plant from a spot with afternoon shade to one with all-day sun. Despite being dug up and put at one of the windiest and hottest corners on the property, Creeping Raspberry has performed like a champ. It even produced a flower, but I pinched it off so that the plant would put all its energy into roots and foliage at this point.

- Benefits wildlife and people. Creeping Raspberry produces white flowers (I've seen one, but pinched it off so that the plant could concentrate on vegetative growth) that reportedly attract bees. Pollinated flowers turn into orange berries that are reportedly attractive to birds and also edible (and tasty) for people. The berries are small and sparse enough that most folks say you shouldn't expect to get bowls and bowls of fruit from a Creeping Raspberry patch, but I think I'd be thrilled to get any edible benefit from a groundcover. (In the Pacific Northwest, on the other hand, berry production may be abundant.) I've also read that it may be possible to use the leaves to make a mild tea.

- Reportedly very easy to propagate by detaching rooted stems / stolons.


Cons:

- Not native to the Southeastern U.S. In fact, it's native to Taiwan. This may actually be the only plant I've come across in my gardening research that's specifically native to Taiwan and it makes me wonder what other gems they might be hiding there.

- Honestly, I can't think of anything else. It does not shine my shoes or make me breakfast.


Conclusion:

- Why doesn't everybody plant this? I know that I'm planning to buy more and hopefully propagate / divide the ones I have once they get bigger. 5-stars!

Would You Plant ... Wild Ginger?

Hexastylis arofolia, a.k.a. Wild Ginger. Photo by BlueRidgeKitties.

Hello, fellow gardeners!

I am hoping to benefit from your wisdom with a new series of posts called "Would You Plant..."

These posts will cover plants that intrigue me, that I'd like to add to my garden, but with which I have zero experience.

I'd like to get your opinions (ideally, but not necessarily, grounded in personal experience) as to the merits or demerits of these plants.

So the first one I'm considering is Hexastylis arifolia, a.k.a. Wild Ginger. Another common name is "Little Brown Jug", which refers to the small pitcher-shaped flowers that appear at the base of the stems.

Pros:

- Native to the Southeast

- Evergreen groundcover (I'm looking for groundcovers that will stay green year round, protecting the soil and blocking winter weeds)

- Reportedly hardy to zone

- Beautiful patterned/mottled foliage

- Really cool and unusual flowers


Cons:

- It does not appear to grow very thickly. Would it be thick enough to suppress weeds?

- I'm not sure how quickly it would grow to cover ground. I think gingers generally grow kind of slowly. On the other hand, this should make it easier to make sure it doesn't get out of control.

- Slug damage can reportedly be a problem. I'd probably try stopping the slugs in their tracks with diatomaceous earth if that became an issue.



Other comments:

- Wild gingers reportedly need at least partial shade and will grow in full shade. I think they prefer moist soil, but I hope they would do OK in dryer soil if given enough shade and/or supplemental irrigation in case of a drought.

- Wild ginger in the Hexastylis or Asarum genuses are NOT the same as the edible culinary ginger Zingiber officinale. Native to tropical Asia, Z. officinale reportedly is only hardy to zone 8 and thus would not survive a Middle Tennessee winter. Is Hexastylis arifolia edible? I have no idea. You can read conflicting information on the Internet as to whether Asarum (which I believe is closely-related botanically to Hexastylis) is safe or poisonous. Personally, I am not planning to eat any Hexastylis or Asarum roots. I'm just interested in using Hexastylis for ornamental purposes.


Here are some of the sources I found while researching Hexastylis arifolia:

- Clemson Cooperative Extension (Incidentally, Clemson seems to believe using the ornamental ginger in cooking is OK: "Wild ginger does not refer to the culinary ginger (Zingiber officinale) that is used in stir-fry and ginger ale. However, its fleshy root does have a spicy aroma and can be substituted for culinary ginger in your favorite Asian recipe.") 

- The Annotated Flora

- Alabamaplants.com

- Using Georgia Native Plants - Talks about the role that ants reportedly play in dispersing H. arifolia seeds!



Where to Buy:

- If I end up buying Hexastylis arifolia, I'll probably order it from Woodlanders.


So have you grown any of the Hexastylis or Asarum ornamental gingers?

If so, I'd love to hear about your experiences in the Comments section below.

If not, do you think you might add one of these native ornamental gingers to your garden someday based on the pros-and-cons above or would you steer clear? Why or why not?