Salvaging misgrown crops, your best ideas

[shoshannah]

You invested time, space, and money but your plant didn't come through.  Can your failures still offer something good?

My cauliflowers didn't make heads but the shoots next spring were real tasty.

Onions didn't bulb up much but I really like the green leaves and the seed stalks were a treat until they got woody.

Plant bolted too fast, are the seed pods tasty?   Wished I knew to cut back the failed cabbage to get new heads.

Brassicas didn't head, are the leaves still usable?  I heard many are using in soups and coleslaw.   Can they be cut back and regrow?

Without these failures I would have not known how good rapini is from plants other than broccoli.

Gardening was pretty easy years ago. Now I seem to have a lot of failures. I sure would like to hear your thoughts on this.

I sure would like to get more mileage out of my failures.

[diane]

You don't need to have a failed cabbage to get new ones from the stalk - a good cabbage carefully cut will do it.

Radish pods give you so much more to eat than than if you pull up the little roots the way that is expected, and you don't need special seeds for good pods.

And green onions - if you carefully cut off a bit of the white when you remove the roots, you can replant it for a second go. This also works for ones you buy in the supermarket.

[shoshannah]

I have regrown onion greens from both green onions and bulb onions when I had no access to a garden.  Grew them on my window sill with a small amount of soil, also did garlic,

to use up the tiny cloves.  I now plant the tiny garlic cloves outside for garlic greens.  I haven't tried radish pods but will give them a go and will see what other brassica pods are like. 

When you grow your own foods it's so neat to discover you like other parts of the vegetables not included on supermarket veggies.  I like broccoli stalks over the broccoli flowers.

 I want to try those thick stalk Kailan or broc/kailan and see if they are good for coleslaw, or a cabbage like salsa, and the seed pods since they are quick growers.    I've made salsa

with overgrown kohlrabi.  Haven't tried fried green tomatoes.  Maybe beans that didn't start to get dry or green beans got too fat could be used as shellies.  I always seem to miss

a zucchini and have to freeze some for later baking.  Some plants may have enough salvageable parts to go into the soup pot. 

[shoshannah]

I recycle bolting, bitter greens and thinings through our guinea pigs and their bedding goes into the compost pile

For a refreshing bath soak I blended wheat grass with a bit of water and placed in a mesh type bag and let the water run over it.

I think it's the chlorophyll that makes it soothing.  Would be interesting to try with with other dark greens, I'm thinking romaine with

a handful of mint thrown in for some extra aroma goodness.  A good use for greens that have become too bitter to eat.

[reed]

Oct 6, 2016 21:35:54 GMT -5 diane said:

Radish pods give you so much more to eat than than if you pull up the little roots the way that is expected, and you don't need special seeds for good pods.

I agree! Radish plants get big and make lots and lots of seed pods. You can have all you want for weeks off a few plants. The flowers, buds and tender stems are good. How ever thought of killing a radish plant to eat its root must have been goofy. Same with turnips and cabbage and who knows what else. I just started figuring this out a couple seasons ago. 

I'm working on a radish landrace just for that purpose. I like milder ones so this year I tagged and saved seed mostly from the milder plants. Seeds that self sowed are blooming and making pods right now so double bonus! I expect to be eating them till a good freeze puts a stop to it. 

[shoshannah]

reed, how far apart do you space a podding radish plant?

[reed]

I generally just sow radishes pretty thick and then thin but don't really pay much attention to how far apart they are. Maybe three inches or a little more is what I thin to but I'm not very diligent about it. A few big ones or a bunch of little ones, I don't think it matters much.

This year I did make effort to plant them about 5 to 6 inches apart in a single row along a path. That was a mistake, they got way too tall and spread out way too much filling up the whole path and encroaching on air space in the corn next door. Then they fell over. Next year it is back to a little corner maybe 5 x 5 or so and crowded so they don't get quite so big and can help hold each other up.

[RpR]

You can take plants that did not do much, leave them where they are, go outside when it is dark dusk and pee on them.
That always makes me feel better.

[reed]

I'm thinking I might plant radishes here and there around the edges of the yard and in flower beds. I think they also are a nice flower and bees like them a lot. I'm also going to add the diakons that I use for tillage into the mix and just have one landrace. I notice self seeded ones of even the small round types get really big roots in fall, early winter. They easily can make two crops of seed in a single season here. I bet I can just turn them into a basically self sustaining, eatable weed that looks pretty and improves the soil.

[shoshannah]

I like the idea of harvesting seed pods.  You could still let some mature for seed and use for sprouts or mini greens.   Years ago I sowed them inside in shallow trays and clipped them

off like mini greens.  Your own seed would be so much cheaper that buying it. 

reed, thanks for the radish sowing tips.  LOL, if left on my own I would of had another misgrown crop.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I've loved this thread since it started. Because it is pretty much the nature of my gardening. I'm in the midst of my heaviest fall harvests, with the weather closing things down quickly, so I haven't responded...

What I love most about my mis-grown crops, is that they often times still produce a harvest. Or they volunteer the next year, or for many years after, and the project continues on whether or not I am there to follow through... For example, I grew a crop of turnip seeds in the 2010 growing season. During the 2011 growing season my turnip roots didn't survive the winter. However, the turnips are still volunteering in my garden every year. I haven't saved seed from them. I till them under each fall. They survive the winter, and re-sprout, and make seeds. So this fall, 6 growing seasons later, I finally collected a bunch of the roots, and put them into a root cellar for the winter. I'll try to grow a seed crop next summer.

As another example, I was frequently loosing my carrots to weeds. I couldn't find the puny, slow-growing carrots among the fast growing weeds, so it was easier to till the whole thing under instead of weeding. Then I allowed a carrot crop to grow without weeding or thinning. Productivity was very low, but some carrots did thousands of times better than other carrots. So I grew seeds from the best growing. This year, I weeded and thinned the carrots. The tops were super-vigorous, and out-competed the weeds. Many of the plants were two feet tall, and super bushy to shade out weeds. I am thrilled that I can finally grow carrots without putting much effort into weeding.

This year, I didn't weed one of my bean crops. Some of the plants thrived. Those are the ones I will plant next year with minimal weeding.

Or I find traits that I never thought could exist... Like fava beans that re-sprout after harvest, and make a second seed crop...

[reed]

I had about gave up on carrots. Last fall I planted with big expectations of getting seed this year. They grew up pretty tall but only half a dozen or so bloomed then they died I got very little seed. I thought it was because they were too tick and maybe it was, but some, maybe a 1/4 of them turned out not to be dead and have started growing again so maybe I'll get seed after all.

My brassica patch is looking good. It's been very dry so I'v had to water but have a nice stand of little plants plus some larger ones that came up volunteer from the ones that bloomed this year. There were probably a lot more that got killed in cleaning up the corn and potato patches. Another thing best sown at the same time it naturally makes seed? Another useful weed? I'll see what lives through winter and what I get next year.

Two of the cabbage that made so many good seed pods and flower tops this year are still alive and started growing more in the cooler weather. I gave them a little chicken poo and mulched with some corn stalks. The little leaves are getting that nice bluish color and tasting good again.

I think I need to learn to be more patient in the garden and unless I really need the space stop ripping things out just because they look a little spent or dead. I don't need to learn ahead of time what a particular crop needs or try to make special arrangements for it. All I got to do is plant it and watch.

[templeton]

I suspect these mis-grown crops will need some selective intervention, if they are not to revert to totally wild phenotypes again. I do recall my first self-seeding effort - decades ago before i even took plant selection and breeding at all seriously, i let some radishes self seed - all i recall is that they finally produced black, twisted, tiny woody rooted plants - maybe 2 or 3 generations. I must say it reinforced my bias against letting things go to seed. lucky my eyes were reopened - thanks Raymondo and Joseph.
T

[reed]

It will be fun to see how it turns out. On radishes I'll be selecting for tender mild flavored pods and flowers stems. If the roots go to heck I'm OK with that. Counting ones that have volunteered more than once per season they are already at four or five generations. If anything the roots have turned into big stumpy things, sometimes hollow.

[add] actually I assumed the big stumpy, hollow roots is just what happened anyway when a plant was left to go to seed. Maybe not?

[shoshannah]

I was wondering about the plants reverting to a feral status.  But in the meantime they have gained a great deal of strength and vitality. 

If one is selecting for seed pods rather than roots I suppose the roots will revert but if you don't care about the roots but prefer the pods than it's of no consequence.

One can still add in domestic seeds to maintain roost and pods and do more selection.    Seems there's a happy medium between the gardener and nature that we can benefit from.

Sometimes we should give nature a chance.  This really excites me to learns these things.