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Post by templeton on May 8, 2012 18:01:19 GMT -5
I know most of you in the NH are coming into the busy season, but with things slowing down here, I got to musing on what might be the most useless intentionally bred food plant you've come across. Unfortunately we'll have to exclude from nomination anything developed by Monsanto on the grounds that it could be argued that they are so far ahead in the race that no on e will ever catch them. I was also looking for nominations for the name of the prize, along the lines of the Ignobel awards. My first nomination is Green Sausage tomato - small, low production, highly subject to BER and other diseases, not attractive, and not very tasty. I can't imagine why anyone would grow it twice. Any nominations? T
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Post by blueadzuki on May 8, 2012 18:28:22 GMT -5
It's not something I grow myself (being too far north) but I would nominate the Palestinian/Jamaican sweet lemon. While I think the idea of a lemon that was sweet enough to eat like an orange would be an OK idea, this/these (I'm not clear if they are different fruits) takes away EVERYTHING about a lemon (or indeed any citrus) that is actually pleasant and leaves you with a flat sweetness that is frankly rather nasty.
With regards to the green sausage (which I am also no fan of, and I usually worship green when ripe tomatoes). It has one other problem, one that regrettably would occur with ANY green fleshed paste tomato. Quie simply, green is probably the one color that should NOT be in the paste palette. The thing is that, when heated, all tomato pastes change color. Red, Yellow, and Orange Tomatoes turn orangey red (as do blacks) whites turn yellow, and greens turn..........olive drab. Really unappetizing olive drab. They look fine in cold preps (like salsa, brushetta, gazpacho etc.) but a paste tomato that you can't actually sauce, stew, can etc. without turning it a color you really don't want to eat is a bit of a problem.
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Post by oxbowfarm on May 8, 2012 20:59:28 GMT -5
I'm going to vote for those "Flower Sprout" F1 brassica hybrid kale/brussels sprout things that Johnny's is trying to convince the world is the next great thing. I like Johnny's, and I like goofing around with brassica breeding myself, but those things look totally useless to me for any purpose other than decoration, and they aren't even as pretty as the flowering kales that already exist.
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Post by steev on May 8, 2012 21:52:32 GMT -5
The garden world is SO full of crap that looks pretty but isn't worth eating that I don't know where to start. I must say I think the flowering kales are as tasty as they are pretty.
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Post by Drahkk on May 10, 2012 23:33:27 GMT -5
Quite simply, green is probably the one color that should NOT be in the paste palette. The thing is that, when heated, all tomato pastes change color. Red, Yellow, and Orange Tomatoes turn orangey red (as do blacks) whites turn yellow, and greens turn..........olive drab. Really unappetizing olive drab. I'll second that. Last July I made exactly one pint of sauce out of Evergreens. (Not a paste type, I know, but I had a LOT of them...) The attached picture I took a couple of days ago is the only use it has been put to. I'll probably end up making pizza sauce out of it; got to hide it somehow. Nominees... Let's see. Other than as a novelty, I don't see any point in growing West Indian Gherkins. Only edible when they're very tiny and young, very seedy and unappetizing then, and once they get hard and spiny they don't even keep; they split open as they ripen. Pretty much the only thing you can do with them is drag your neighbors out to the garden and say "Hey, check out this weird plant!" Attachments:
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Post by blueadzuki on May 11, 2012 7:17:39 GMT -5
Quite simply, green is probably the one color that should NOT be in the paste palette. The thing is that, when heated, all tomato pastes change color. Red, Yellow, and Orange Tomatoes turn orangey red (as do blacks) whites turn yellow, and greens turn..........olive drab. Really unappetizing olive drab. I'll second that. Last July I made exactly one pint of sauce out of Evergreens. (Not a paste type, I know, but I had a LOT of them...) The attached picture I took a couple of days ago is the only use it has been put to. I'll probably end up making pizza sauce out of it; got to hide it somehow. Nominees... Let's see. Other than as a novelty, I don't see any point in growing West Indian Gherkins. Only edible when they're very tiny and young, very seedy and unappetizing then, and once they get hard and spiny they don't even keep; they split open as they ripen. Pretty much the only thing you can do with them is drag your neighbors out to the garden and say "Hey, check out this weird plant!" Actually, icky as it is in color, your's stayed a lot greener than my batch did (Incidentally it was much like yours I was using green zebras due to an excess) Yours is probably still green enough to convert into salsa (the cooked kind); anyone who sees the green will simply assume it's guacamole. As for the gherkins, I also have never been fond of the west indian burred ones (I sort of like the mexican sour, since pickled it makes a very handy snack) I went through something of a "weird cucurbit phase" a few years ago and started planting most of the odditites at least those I could get my hands on and would grow in my climate (a part of me still wants to get my hands on some oyster nut seeds.....) The results were a few west Indian's a few bur cucumbers, a few hairy gourds.........and a BUTTLOAD of "wild" kiwanos (horned melons) that I am still trying to get rid of (to make matters worse, the wild form is too full of saponins to eat) But your suggestion has made me consider another one to add to the list of useless crops.......Scorpion plant ( Scorpiurus) or, as Seed Savers likes to sell it, Fuzzy Caterpillar. Apart from trying to freak people out by making them think the salad is full of caterpillars (and in these days of knee jerk lawsuits, that's probably not a prank you want to pull). I see no real value in the thing (okay as a legume, it has some nitrogen fixing qualities, but there are plenty of other legumes out there.)
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Post by templeton on May 11, 2012 7:31:18 GMT -5
thanks for the contributions - I had looked at those mexican cucumber things...great, a thread here at last that is reducing my list of crops i must try, rather than expanding it! ;D T
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Post by steev on May 11, 2012 11:58:30 GMT -5
I always assume "makes great pickles" is code for "not worth eating unless flavored by something else".
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Post by blueadzuki on May 11, 2012 13:42:46 GMT -5
Oh mexican sour gherkins are alright raw, sort of like slighty sour cucumbers (if a bit tougher) I just think they taste a bit better with some salt, vinegar and garlic backing them up (then again I think MOST things taste better with some salt and garlic.) I can actually think of a couple other things "makes great pickles) could imply (not that any of them are at all preferable) "Too hard to chew until the brine softens them up" (Like when I pickle winter melons) "too perishable to eat any decent amount fresh before it starts spoiling" That brings up an interesting thing, "preserving" (aka citron) melons, This isn't so much a crop I consider useless as much as one I think may have largely outlived it's usefulness. The amount of sugar, and seasoning you need to convert it into something you'd want to eat (or in this case, cook with) probably offsets any savings you'd get from not simply going and getting the real, actual citrus peel (which isn't all that hard to get nowadays). As fond as I am of them, winter melon (the Chinese Bencasia, not the storage melon Richters is selling) probably is not a particularly useful thing in and of itself. Boiled up in a nice chicken stock with a little country style ham (or an assortment of other things) is does make a truly delecious soup, but in that soup it basically provides texture, and not much else. I've never tried it, but I suspect that, if you made Winter melon soup and replaced the winter melon with the white part of a watermelon rind, not only would it work but most people would not know the difference. I'm not even 100% if there are any actual significant nutrients in the stuff (I know Chinese medicine says it is good for cooling the body in the summer, but how that translates out to nutritional value is a little foggy to me.)
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Post by Deleted on May 12, 2012 20:24:28 GMT -5
thanks for the contributions - I had looked at those mexican cucumber things...great, a thread here at last that is reducing my list of crops i must try, rather than expanding it! ;D T Achocha aka caigua aka Bolivian cucumber?
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Post by blueadzuki on May 12, 2012 20:56:35 GMT -5
thanks for the contributions - I had looked at those mexican cucumber things...great, a thread here at last that is reducing my list of crops i must try, rather than expanding it! ;D T Achocha aka caigua aka Bolivian cucumber? Melothria scabra more likely, given I had just mentioned it in the previous reply
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