Grow These Unusual Edible Plants in Your Vegetable Garden

Hello and a very warm welcome back to the garden. Today's video, I wanted to go about and show you some of the unusual edibles that we have growing around this site, just to give you some ideas and to show you that there is so much out there. This is not an exhaustive list because a lot of the things that we grow maybe come into fruition a bit later on down the line, but this is just a little wetting of the appetite of some of the incredible plants that are out there. So a lot of the plants that we grow here are perennial vegetables. So to the side of me here, these are potato onions. This here is nine-star perennial broccoli. And I thought I'd talk about some of the different brassicas that we're growing that are perennials because these are kind of like the gateway drug, I say, into growing these perennial foods, which are more resilient and they are wanting to grow over a longer time. So they have better root systems and they're particularly really exciting things to feed you. This here is the most productive perennial broccoli that I've ever grown in terms of a plant that I started from seed last year. We're about to do the second harvest. I was so shocked when I came through and saw how much there is growing. And in general, the nine-star perennial broccoli just produces about nine shoots, but this is going above and beyond. It's so sweet, it's so succulent. It is really easy to grow. And it looks incredible. It's something that feeds you during the hungry gap. Of course, you've got the leaves, but basically what you need to make sure is that you harvest all of the flowers so it can then go another year and give you another harvest. So this really is, it's easy to grow, probably even easier to cook. And you know, everyone loves tender stem broccoli. Well, I reckon, well, this is more tender than broccoli when you do cook it. Than the tender stem. So it is an absolute joy to have. This here is the most productive kale I have ever grown. It's called keeper's kale. Got it from Incredible Vegetables. And it is just the most like bountiful kale that is evergreen. And because it's a perennial kale, it'll grow for about four to five years. Now, the great thing about this is that you don't need to buy packets of seed. Instead, what you can do is you can find certain shoots, that's maybe a little bit long, but you can take cuttings from it. And so you can get one plant and this can easily feed a family. And it also responds really nicely from quite heavy harvesting. So if you want to take out like a big clump at a time, it doesn't matter, it responds nicely. But like, unlike other particular kales, maybe like the Taunton Dean, which can grow a little bit taller, what I love about keeper's kale is that it has this kind of compact spreading growing style, which means that it's less likely to get knocked over if we have any winds or storms over the winter. So this here is great. You just use it as you would for kale or even cabbage, but it is so much easier to grow. And unlike other things like certain cabbages or kales that you grow that are more of an annual, if they get hit by cabbage white butterflies, caterpillars, and they get stripped, they die. Whereas if something like this gets stripped, it then almost responds even more strongly with loads more growth. So it's well worth having. There you go, paid actors. And just to stick on the brassica theme tune, this is Dauberton's kale. Now this one here, it definitely needs like a little bit of a seaweed feed, but it's coming on fine. We've got loads of Dauberton's kale around the place, but this is beautiful because this is a variegated version. So it has these variegated leaves that are amazing because when you cook them, it holds the variegation. So it can be a little bit of a nice conversation starter if you have anyone coming over for some food. And this again is another nice kind of compact, low growing perennial vegetable. But I picked this one here because I was looking around and I forgot about this beautiful plant, which is about to start flowering. It's called salad burnet. And this is a herb that has these beautiful feathery leaves. They can stay evergreen over winter. But the lovely thing about this is that it looks so nice, soft and delicate, but these leaves taste like cucumber when you eat them. So that's quite fun. It's a nice fun thing to put into salads. And it is a perennial as well. So this here is a patient stock. I'm just moving out the way, which is a cool edible and it is nice and structural. But I'm just showing you this little tree that's growing. It's a beautiful little tree. This here is tiliocodata or small leaf lime. This is a tip that I picked up from Joshua Sparks about growing the leaves as a lettuce alternative in salads. How cool is that? So the plan is let this tree grow and I'm going to pollard it. And then this is going to be my lettuce replacement tree. So that's quite fun. But pollarding will keep it to a suitable size if you only have like a small to medium sized garden, because really a small leaf lime can grow like 30, 40 odd meters. You don't need that. You can just pollard it or coppice it and use it for a leaf crop every year. And I love that. Who said you can't eat trees? Also, does this make me a giraffe? Moo. This is another perennial kale called Taunton Dean and it's great, but I just wanted to highlight it because these flowers are so beautiful because they're white. A lot of brassica flowers, like certain mustards or kales, these kinds of things, tend to be yellow. Even the opening shot of this video when I was doing the intro, next to me you could see yellow brassica flowers. But this here is Taunton Dean. Once it starts to set the little seed, I will then cut these off. But I love it. I'm just letting this flower and it adds a lot of vibrancy to the space. Like another thing here, this here is some rhubarb that's starting to flower. I've got quite a tall rhubarb that I'll show you just there, which looks really cool. And Ellaria's off in the van to go deliver plants. Beep, beep. And just to show you just how many different, interesting perennial brassicas there are, this here is purple tree collard. You can see the beautiful purpley leaves. This is actually using this damson tree. It's a damson merryweather that we got an amazing harvest of last year. I can see little mini damson starting to appear. This is using the damson tree as a structure to climb up or at least support it. Otherwise it would need staking. So that's a lot of interest is like utilizing the different, like almost using it as a climber within this food forest system. And you can just see how nicely it compares like colors wise against the rhubarb. And then this is going to turn. You can just see it here, the magenta beginning to appear, mainly on this other side. This is going to turn into like a shot of red of this patient stock, which is taller than I. And you're going to have all of these different things. These red seed heads are going to come in. So you've got all these textures that are coming from plants that also give you a huge amount of food. So I'm here under one of the fruit tree guilds that we have here. And I'll do a video about it at some point. You can see these little chives popping through. But this plant here in front of me is a type of sorrel and it's called mountain sorrel. And it is as tough as old boots. It is so, well, it's called mountain sorrel for a reason. It's so hardy and it sells seeds. So half of this clump has just seeded itself but it has that beautiful citrusy tang to throw into salads. And it's a great perennial plant to grow under taller things, be it like fruit trees or soft fruit. Yum. Brassica flower, yellow. Taunton Dean, white. Perfect. I want to show you some fruits, some more interesting fruits that we're growing so it's not all too leafy even though it is very much leafy season. So if I can like move this back a bit, this plant here is, I think, my favorite kind of trailing berry. This is Japanese wineberry. And I love it for so many reasons. I'd say the primary one is because the fruits are almost like mini wine gums. They have like the same texture, very similar kind of sweetness, and they're really fun. But this is a fantastic plant to grow for the structural value of it having these red stems which show off even more during winter. So if you have a slightly awkward sunny spot, plant a Japanese wineberry. You won't regret it. Now there's another fruit hiding here. This is goji berry. And people are always like, do you ever get fruit? Yes, we get goji fruit. The secret though to getting goji fruit is neglect. Just neglect it. Just completely forget it exists. And that's how you get goji fruit. If you kind of pamper it too much, then what's the point? Why would it want to like put the effort into fruiting when it's being pampered? So goji berry is great because it is a disgusting fruit to eat raw. I'll tell you that now. But you can dehydrate it and it's far more appetizing that way. But in terms of thinking of a survival food, it's actually got edible leaves that you can put into salad. So it's a great thing to grow. Stick it in a corner, leave it, and you'll probably get some nice goji berries. Here is a bit of an experiment. And I'm not sure. I think I need to grow it another couple of years. And we are trialing other varieties. It's called a honey berry. Now, honey berry is a bit like an elongated blueberry. And it doesn't need ericaceous or acidic soil. And the most important thing to know is if you've got one variety, you need another kind of pollinating variety to get a better yield. Now, there's actually a couple here that are starting to ripen. And it's the earliest fruit that I know of. So probably next week, I'll be able to start eating some of these little honey berries. Now, they have been a little bit wind-scorched where the other ones are, but I'm hoping that if they have another good year, because it was really dry last year, that they'll kind of hunker down, I'll plant some other things around them, and away they go. But it's just an experiment, and it's something to try out. I had turned around, and there's actually a ripe one, which I'm gonna enjoy. There's some nice growth on these. I think they'll bounce back. They just look a little bit unhappy, but perfectly soft. Oh, it's just like a bilberry. You know those wild blueberries. What's the date today? 6th of May. This is quite a fun plant that I'm about to plant out that we've raised at the nursery. It's called stradolo. And it's a type of cultivated bladder campion. And the leaves have just like a pea shoot flavor. It's a very distinguishable pea shoot flavor. And it is used in Italy as like a herb or a green. And you can grow it as a perennial. And it also creates the most beautiful kind of little, almost like bell kind of shaped flowers. So this is a bit of fun to put in like more wild borders. I'm gonna be planting this around my herbs. But it kind of just shows you that even some like random things like this type of bladder campion can give you some amazing surprises, particularly with that taste and kind of like fresh pea shoots. Now down in the corner here, kind of hiding in out the way, underneath the Rouge de Provence globe artichoke where I've seen the first couple of globes appear. This here is called mashua. And mashua is a perennial nasturtium that I grow as a climber. It looks so cool, just climbing up pretty much anything. But it has these cuter leaves compared to say normal nasturtium, which I think would look better as a garnish compared to microgreens nasturtium. But it gives you nice edible leaves. And it gives you these beautiful orange trumpet like flowers late autumn, just before the first frosts as something a little different, that like final hurrah, that final pop of color before winter starts to set in and also produces an abundance of tubers. So this is super resilient. Yes, the frost will then kill it off, but the tubers can lie on the ground all through winter and they'll still grow. It's amazing. This is fun. This is a sedum. It's like a sedum salmatosum. It'll probably be spelt out in the video. Good luck, Sam. This is one plant that is evergreen perennial, really hard to kill. I'm just resetting this bed to plant it this year, but I've left this in because it grows over the side. And as a sedum, it is, we've got those beautiful kind of succulent juicy leaves that are very pleasant and add a nice crunch or texture into your meals. And it's also the easiest thing to propagate because you can just get a little stem with a few leaves, stick that in the ground and you'll get a plant from it. It's amazing. It's amazing how many things are there edible. Even the rose above me is an edible plant. This video doesn't cover nearly everything that we're growing here. So if you want to find out more, I'm very happy to do another video, but this is just a little teaser of the kind of things that you can also be growing in your garden. So for more gardening inspiration, there'll be a video there and I will see you again soon. I can't close this though, cause it's broken. It broke again after I fixed it. All right. See you later, Sam. Oh.