Obviously, we grow our vegetable gardens so we can harvest most of the plants to eat. Yes, some of them are pretty flowers and foliage that are a feast for the eyes, but mainly we just want to eat, right? I generally subscribe to the idea that no parts of the plants we grow should be wasted. If it’s not something we’re going to eat, that green matter needs to go into the compost pile so it can go back into the soil and grow more yummy veggies for my plate.
Turns out I’ve been doing the eating part all wrong. Many of the vegetables and some of the fruits and flowers offer more edible parts beyond the commonly harvested portion than I ever realized. And this is actually pretty important when we think about the number of people who go without nutritious food every day. The more of each of these plants we can eat, the better our nutrition is and the better able we are to truly nourish our friends and family with the food we’re growing.
Today on Just Grow Something we're jumping into some of the overlooked edibles in our gardens, the parts of the plants we didn’t know we can eat. Let’s dig in!
Episode Resources:
Try Magic Mind and get 50% off a subscription for a limited time with code JustGrow20
7 Ways to Eat Zucchini Greens - Our Permaculture Life
Zucchini, You Can Eat the Stems, Too. – Lower Valley Assembly
Just Grow Something Gardening Friends Facebook Group
00:00:00
This is positively farming media.
00:00:06
Obviously we grow our vegetable gardens, so we can harvest most
00:00:09
of the plants to eat. Yes, some of them are pretty
00:00:12
flowers and foliage. That is a feast for the eyes,
00:00:15
but mainly we just want to eat, right?
00:00:18
I generally subscribe to the idea that no part of the plants
00:00:21
we grow should be wasted if it's not something we're going to
00:00:24
eat. That green matter needs to go
00:00:26
back into the compost pile so we can go back into the soil and
00:00:29
grow more yummy veggies for my plate.
00:00:35
Turns out I've been doing the eating part all wrong.
00:00:38
Many of the vegetables and some of the fruits and flowers offer
00:00:41
more edible parts beyond the commonly harvested portion than
00:00:45
I ever realized. And this is actually pretty
00:00:47
important when we think about the number of people who go
00:00:50
without nutritious food everyday.
00:00:53
The more of each of these plants we can eat, the better our
00:00:56
nutrition is and the better able we are to truly nourish our
00:01:00
friends and family with the food we're growing today.
00:01:03
On Just Grow Something, we're jumping into some of the
00:01:06
overlooked edibles in our gardens.
00:01:08
The parts of the plants we didn't know we can eat.
00:01:11
Let's dig in. Hey, I'm Karen and I started
00:01:14
gardening 18 years ago in a small corner of my suburban
00:01:17
backyard when we moved to A5 acre homestead.
00:01:20
I expanded that garden to half an acre and I found such joy and
00:01:23
purpose in feeding my family and friends.
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This newfound love for digging in the dirt and providing for
00:01:28
others prompted my husband and I to grow our small homestead into
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a 40 acre market farm. When I went back to school to
00:01:34
get my degree in horticulture, I discovered there is so much
00:01:37
power in food and I want to share everything I've learned
00:01:40
with as many people as possible. On this podcast we explore crop
00:01:44
information, soil health, pests and diseases, plant nutrition,
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our own nutrition, and so much more in the world of food and
00:01:51
gardening. So grab your garden journal and
00:01:53
a cup of coffee and get ready to just grow something.
00:01:59
So before we dig in, how's your garden doing?
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How are you doing my gardening, friend?
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I've heard a wide range of sentiments around this question
00:02:08
right now as it pertains to our gardens.
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We're now halfway through September.
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The fall weather is moving in in most areas.
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The summer gardens are kind of starting to wind down, and it
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seems like half the people I talked to are excited for the
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fall garden and they're seeing some great growth in their cool
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weather plants. Now that the overnights are kind
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of getting more reasonable here and north of here.
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And the other half, well, they're just completely over it.
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They're burnt out. They're tired of messing with
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the weeds or the bugs or the diseases, or have just had
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enough of harvesting or pruning, and they really are just wishing
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their plants would hurry up and be done already.
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I get it. I've been there.
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Especially when we have incredibly hard years weather
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wise like we did here. But once the overnights cool off
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and the daytime highs don't hit 80 plus Fahrenheit until the mid
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afternoon instead of, I don't know, 6:00 AM, I find that my
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attitude shifts a little bit. And I know this about myself.
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After almost two decades of gardening and 16 years of doing
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it on a very large scale and as a business, I know better than
00:03:16
to make any major decisions about the gardens or my chosen
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line of work during late July or anytime in August.
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Even early September sometimes is iffy.
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It's just the time of year when everything is hard, everything
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in the garden is ugly, everything is happening all at
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once, and I begin to question my life choices.
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Or I just stand in the garden and yell into this guy that I
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don't want to do this anymore. Experience tells me that that
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feeling will pass. Things will seem more reasonable
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as the season begins to wane, and I will begin to already
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start thinking toward how I can extend the season further into
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the winter and I start crop planning in my head for the
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following year. So if you are in that frame of
00:04:00
mind right now where you want to tear out the garden and just say
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forget it, I hear you, I see you, and I urge you to give it
00:04:07
some time and you might just change your mind.
00:04:11
So while we're asking questions, if you're a listener on Spotify,
00:04:15
have you noticed the little polls that I've been putting at
00:04:18
the bottoms of some of the episodes recently?
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Spotify gives us the option to do a little Q&A or put a poll at
00:04:26
the end of the episode description.
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And some of you have noticed and have been answering and it's
00:04:30
been really fun to see you engage and to read all the
00:04:34
answers. So for example, the most recent
00:04:36
questions I put out there were, are you planning on growing a
00:04:40
fall garden this year? 100% of you said yes.
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That is super exciting to me. What do you need the most help
00:04:46
with in the late summer fall garden?
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25% of you said what to plant, 25% said how to time the
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planting and 50% said when to plant. 100% of you that
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responded said that you are saving seeds this year, which is
00:05:03
really cool. And 100% of respondents also
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said that they're going to try fermenting this year.
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That is really cool too for the fall transplants.
00:05:12
Tips for success in the heat episode.
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I asked will you transplant in the heat or wait?
00:05:18
And 100% of those that answered said are you crazy waiting?
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And when I asked will you over winter crops for a spring
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harvest, 67% said heck yes, 33% said Nah, too much work.
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I don't always leave these little polls at the bottom of
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the episodes, but if you do see these in Spotify, I will let you
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know that answering these helps give me a direction to go on the
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podcast and in the articles that I'm putting on the website and
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it lets me know where I may need to expand some of what I'm
00:05:51
talking about. This podcast is for you and I
00:05:54
want to know what you want to hear about South if you see
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those polls. I I would love for you to go
00:05:59
ahead and answer them. Another way to let me know what
00:06:03
you want to hear about is in the Just Grow Something Gardening
00:06:06
Friends Facebook group, which is where this week's episode came
00:06:10
from. So if you're not in the group,
00:06:12
get in there. Not only is it a great place to
00:06:14
ask questions or show off your garden hall or even your garden
00:06:18
fails, but it's also a perfect place to drop ideas for podcast
00:06:22
episodes like this one. So Rachel posted in the group
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and said would be awesome to see ideas and recipes on some of the
00:06:31
more unknown edible parts of our garden plants.
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I just recently learned that you can eat pumpkin squash, leaves,
00:06:39
can even use them as a wrap. Apparently you can also eat the
00:06:43
defibered stems of zucchini like you would a celery stock.
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A whole podcast on the topic would be extra awesome.
00:06:50
So Rachel asked and you shall all receive.
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Here are five groups of plants with additional edible parts and
00:06:58
how they can be prepared or consumed.
00:07:00
And since Rachel specifically mentioned zucchini, we're going
00:07:03
to start with the curcubits, zucchini, pumpkins, cucumbers,
00:07:06
etcetera, right? Basically, the entire plant and
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its fruits are edible. The leaves of the cucumbers
00:07:15
specifically are best consumed when they are young and tender
00:07:19
because they're less bitter. But in general, with the
00:07:22
zucchinis and the pumpkins, the the leaves are also better when
00:07:25
they're young. The cucumber ones specifically
00:07:28
tend to take on the flavors of whatever they are cooked with,
00:07:30
so some people prefer them raw. Other people really do like the
00:07:35
zucchini as wraps or blended in smoothies.
00:07:39
Other people use the leaves in soups or stews or as a wrapper
00:07:44
to stuff and bake, sort of like a cabbage roll.
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Just be aware that some people may be sensitive to the
00:07:50
compounds in the curcupit leaves, So test them out in
00:07:54
small amounts first before you like, serve a whole tray of them
00:07:56
to your family. Or fill the whole soup pot with
00:07:59
greens from your cucumber or squash plants.
00:08:01
And I think that goes for pretty much everything we're going to
00:08:03
talk about here today. If you've not ever eaten it en
00:08:06
masse before, start with smaller quantities.
00:08:08
The blossoms of the squashes in this category can also be eaten.
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I recommend picking the male flowers so that you don't short
00:08:15
yourself on the actual squash crop.
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Oftentimes these blossoms are stuffed and then they're
00:08:22
battered and they're fried, and they're kind of considered a bit
00:08:24
of a delicacy. And this is because picking and
00:08:27
transporting squash blossoms and keeping them cool enough to
00:08:31
maintain their freshness without freezing them can be really
00:08:34
tricky. I actually had a restaurant chef
00:08:37
request to me if they could get squash blossoms from us on a
00:08:42
regular basis. And once I figured out exactly
00:08:44
what it was going to take me to harvest them and keep them cool
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and get them transported in a really good condition, it was
00:08:51
just going to be cost prohibitive for him to be able
00:08:54
to get them through it from us. So bringing them right into your
00:08:57
kitchen directly from the garden certainly makes them more
00:09:00
accessible. And like Rachel said, you can
00:09:02
also eat the stems of the squash plants.
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The younger the better because they're not so fibrous.
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But once you peel the outer fibers off the stems, not only
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can you use them like she said, sort of like a celery stock, you
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can cut them into one inch tubes and they actually look like
00:09:19
penne pasta and people will cook and eat them just like a pasta.
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You top it with like pasta sauce and parmesan and voila, you have
00:09:26
zucchini stem penne. That's really cool, right?
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Of course, the seeds of curcu bits are also edible.
00:09:33
Roasted pumpkin seeds are a fall favorite, but you can really do
00:09:36
that with any of the seeds. You might stick to the larger
00:09:39
type seeds like pumpkins or winter squashes because the
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cucumber seeds tend to be very small and pulling those out and
00:09:46
cleaning them and roasting them sounds like it could take a lot
00:09:49
of energy, but that's entirely up to you.
00:09:52
Speaking of energy, you guys know I love my coffee, but I
00:09:56
don't love large amounts of caffeine anytime after noon.
00:10:00
I don't want to take the chance that anything is going to
00:10:03
disrupt my sleep, but just like most of us, I often face that
00:10:07
mid afternoon slump of energy and I've struggled with how to
00:10:10
counteract that without doing, I don't know, jumping jacks in the
00:10:13
middle of the garden in the afternoon just to wake up.
00:10:16
So when Magic Mind reached out to have me sample their
00:10:19
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00:10:23
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00:10:36
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00:10:40
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focused edge over that afternoon slump.
00:11:36
OK next category is the root and bulb crops.
00:11:40
We'll start with the beats, the radishes and the turnips.
00:11:43
We usually use the roots of these, obviously, but the greens
00:11:46
are all absolutely edible too. They can be used in salads, stir
00:11:50
fries or sauteed with garlic and olive oil.
00:11:54
You can add them to soups if you like the stronger flavor of them
00:11:57
raw. You can blend them raw into a
00:11:59
smoothie with the rest of your ingredients.
00:12:01
Now these greens can also be dehydrated and blended together
00:12:05
to make a greens powder. Now I will do this and I also
00:12:08
add in spinach and kale and then dry them all up, blend them all
00:12:13
together and keep them in my cupboard.
00:12:15
And I use them to give sort of a nutritional punch to like my
00:12:19
soups, my stews, my sauces, anything that I'm making in the
00:12:23
winter time that can use use a little bit of the extra
00:12:26
nutrition that we generally get from greens when I'm not getting
00:12:29
fresh greens out of the garden. And the flowers from all of
00:12:33
these can also be eaten, You can just pick them off the plant and
00:12:36
toss them into salads. They make a Pretty Little
00:12:39
addition and they give a nice little flavorful kick.
00:12:41
The stems of the beet greens can be pickled right alongside the
00:12:47
beet root for a different take on beet Pickles.
00:12:49
I love pickled bees and I haven't even thought about
00:12:53
pickling the actual stems of the greens.
00:12:56
I'm thinking I may try this as a fermented pickle instead, all on
00:13:00
its own, and the seed pods of the radishes can also be eaten.
00:13:06
I think I've mentioned this before.
00:13:07
If you allow some of your radishes to go to flower and
00:13:10
develop their seed pods, you can harvest those while they're nice
00:13:15
and young and tender before the seed inside gets too big or it
00:13:18
starts to dry out. You can eat the whole pod just
00:13:21
like you do, like a sugar snap pea, and it has that same kind
00:13:24
of a texture, but with a spicy little kick of a radish.
00:13:28
I actually fermented some of these with shredded carrots
00:13:31
earlier this season and they were so good.
00:13:34
The pods on their own are just perfect little snacks anyway,
00:13:36
but they're also really good on top of salads.
00:13:39
Now in this same root and bulb category, we also have our
00:13:42
carrots and parsnips. I love to use the carrot tops to
00:13:47
make pesto, and you can also chop up the carrot or the
00:13:51
parsnip tops and use them on salads or in soups.
00:13:55
The flavor of the carrot tops is very similar to the carrots
00:13:58
themselves with sort of a green kind of tone to it or undernote
00:14:02
to it. The parsnip tops tend to taste
00:14:06
more closely to say parsley. Now the parsnip leaves can cause
00:14:12
a sort of contact dermatitis on some people because of the
00:14:15
chemical compounds that are in the leaves.
00:14:17
So to counteract this you can actually blanch the parsnip
00:14:20
leaves. Just toss them into some salted
00:14:23
water and and boil them a little bit until they're just tender
00:14:26
and then drain them and rinse them in cold water.
00:14:28
And then you can just squeeze the leaves dry and then dice
00:14:31
them up to use and this should help alleviate any possible skin
00:14:34
issues. And then finally, in this
00:14:36
category we also have kohlrabi. Now, we're normally using the
00:14:39
kohlrabi bulb that grows above the soil.
00:14:43
That's the part we generally are used to eating.
00:14:44
But the leaves can also be used in soups and in salads or
00:14:48
sauteed alongside other greens. It kind of has a mild cabbage
00:14:52
flavor, but without the cabbagey texture, if that makes sense.
00:14:56
I prefer these on the small or the young side as well, so they
00:14:59
don't get tough, but they're good raw or cooked either way,
00:15:05
except we have sort of the miscellaneous category.
00:15:07
These are individual plants that have additional edible parts to
00:15:10
them. First up is sweet peas, so young
00:15:14
pea shoots and tendrils can be used in salads, sandwiches, stir
00:15:18
fries. I like to grow these as
00:15:20
microgreens all on their own, but if you need to thin out your
00:15:24
pea seedlings in the garden in the spring, after they
00:15:27
germinate, just pinch them off at the soil level and toss them
00:15:30
in your salad. They taste just like a sweet
00:15:33
pea, and they have kind of a succulent texture.
00:15:35
Then we get to broccoli and cauliflower, so we're all used
00:15:39
to eating those florets or the heads.
00:15:42
But the broccoli and cauliflower leaves are also edible and they
00:15:46
can be cooked like collard greens or like spinach to be
00:15:49
used in stir fries in soups or as a side dish.
00:15:53
I've actually eaten the very young, still very tender
00:15:56
broccoli leaves raw, just tossing them into salads.
00:16:00
But you can also harvest them and they are that you know the
00:16:03
size of your head like a big leaf of collard greens and and
00:16:08
you can cook them up that way and they taste just like the
00:16:10
broccoli heads themselves. And of course, you can also eat
00:16:13
the stems too, of the broccoli and the cauliflower plants.
00:16:16
Sweet corn, surprisingly enough, has another edible part to it,
00:16:21
and that is the actual silk. So those fine threads that are
00:16:24
found inside the husk. A lot of people will use those
00:16:26
to make tea and supposedly it's supposed to be very good for
00:16:29
you. Celery is another one.
00:16:31
Most of us are familiar with using the stocks, but the celery
00:16:34
leaves at the top can also be used in salads or in soups or as
00:16:39
a garnish. They do have a more intense
00:16:42
flavor than the stocks and So what I have found is the leaves
00:16:47
are great to dehydrate because of this and to use as a powder
00:16:52
when I want Like the celery flavor for something but not
00:16:55
necessarily the texture. And then finally sweet potato
00:16:59
leaves. I love sweet potatoes but I've
00:17:03
never actually eaten the leaves so I have added this to my list
00:17:07
of things to try. They can be prepared by sauteing
00:17:10
or adding to stir fried, steaming them, boiling them and
00:17:15
then draining them and seasoning them up.
00:17:17
Or you can just add them to soups.
00:17:18
In fact, there is a very popular sweet potato leaf soup in Sierra
00:17:22
Leone. You can also apparently use them
00:17:25
as a substitute for spinach in salads, which I found
00:17:28
interesting. Our sweet potatoes are already
00:17:30
done and harvested, but next year I'm definitely going to be
00:17:33
picking some of the young leaves and using them for sure.
00:17:37
Think about how many leaves grow on a sweet potato vine for like
00:17:40
the four months that those plants are in the ground.
00:17:43
That's a nice bounty for sure, with plenty left behind to keep
00:17:46
the tubers growing underneath. Of course, we've also got fruits
00:17:50
in our gardens, and many of them have parts that are often
00:17:53
discarded that are actually edible and very nutritious.
00:17:56
I mean, OK, how many of us have to peel the apples for our kids?
00:17:59
Or we peel our citrus fruits and we don't use the skin, right?
00:18:03
Those are just two basic examples, but here are a few
00:18:05
more that pertain to fruit. The 1st is the watermelon rind.
00:18:10
Watermelon rinds can be pickled, which I knew about, but
00:18:14
apparently they can also be stir fried, which I was not familiar
00:18:17
with. They have a mild, slightly sweet
00:18:19
flavor and a very crisp texture. The next is the pineapple core.
00:18:24
The core is often thrown away, but it is edible and it can be
00:18:27
juiced or added to smoothies. If you're growing raspberries or
00:18:31
blackberries, the Raspberry and BlackBerry leaves can be
00:18:34
harvested for tinctures, syrups, powders, or my favorite, to brew
00:18:38
into tea. Banana blossoms are another one,
00:18:41
the banana blossom. That flour at the end of a bunch
00:18:44
of bananas is also edible. It can be used in salads,
00:18:47
curries or stir fries, grape leaves, and fig leaves.
00:18:51
These are often used in cooking, particularly in Mediterranean
00:18:54
cuisine. They use the grape leaves to
00:18:57
make dolomas or stuffed grape leaves.
00:18:59
They use the fig leaves to use as wraps to cook food in, and it
00:19:03
actually infuses that food with the unique flavor of the figs.
00:19:08
And if you happen to live somewhere where jackfruit is
00:19:11
available, the seeds of the jackfruit are edible, and they
00:19:14
can be roasted, boiled, or ground into a flower to be used
00:19:19
in various dishes. So all of these additional
00:19:22
edible parts not only reduce the amount of waste, but it also
00:19:28
provides us with a bunch of new sort of flavors and different
00:19:32
nutrient profiles that we don't normally get from the other
00:19:36
parts of the plant. So using these lesser used parts
00:19:39
sort of broadens the range of flavors and nutrients that we
00:19:44
can incorporate into our meals. And it's just one more way to
00:19:47
get additional nutrients from our gardens, which means more
00:19:51
bang for our buck. Now there is one more subsection
00:19:56
of garden edibles. These are decorative components
00:19:59
that we can add to our vegetable gardens or to our landscapes
00:20:03
that are also edible. The 1st and probably most
00:20:06
obvious one is those edible flowers.
00:20:08
So things like nosturtiums, pansies, violets, marigolds,
00:20:13
calendula a lot of the times. Not only do these make really
00:20:16
good companion plants to our vegetables in our garden and
00:20:18
they are really pretty to look at, but they are also edible and
00:20:22
they can be used to garnish salads or desserts.
00:20:25
Roses also rose petals are edible and they can be used in
00:20:28
salads and desserts or to make rose water.
00:20:31
I also dry the petals and the Rose hips for teas.
00:20:35
And lastly, daylilies, just your common daylily, the young
00:20:39
shoots, the flower buds, and the flowers of daylilies are all
00:20:43
edible and they can be used in salads or in stir fry.
00:20:46
The flower buds of daylilies have been described as tasting
00:20:50
like a cross between asparagus and green peas.
00:20:54
They can be sauteed with garlic and butter, or they can be
00:20:57
dipped in a light batter. They call these Daylily
00:20:59
fritters. It is very important though with
00:21:02
daylilies to make sure that you are consuming the correct
00:21:05
variety. Asiatic lilies are not safe to
00:21:08
eat and they can actually make you sick.
00:21:10
So make sure that you know what it is that you are eating before
00:21:13
you eat it, and then Also, it's important to note that some
00:21:17
people may actually experience upset stomachs.
00:21:20
So just like everything, it's advisable to sample small
00:21:23
amounts initially before consuming larger portions.
00:21:27
That's it for the overlooked edible parts of our vegetable
00:21:31
plants, along with a few bonuses at the end there.
00:21:33
Did any of these surprise you? Maybe you're more adventurous
00:21:36
than I am and have tried many more of these, or you grew up
00:21:39
with somebody in your household that passed this knowledge down
00:21:42
to you. I did not have that.
00:21:43
I am grateful to Rachel for asking the question because
00:21:47
there are a bunch of new things I want to try now in my garden
00:21:50
to make it work even more to my nutritional and culinary
00:21:53
benefit. Until next time, my gardening
00:21:56
friends. Keep on cultivating that dream
00:21:57
garden and we'll talk again soon.
00:21:59
You just finished another episode of the Just Grow
00:22:01
Something podcast. For more information about
00:22:04
today's topic, go to justgrowsomethingpodcast.com
00:22:07
where you can find all the episodes, show notes, articles,
00:22:10
courses, newsletter, sign up and more.
00:22:12
I'd also love for you to head to Facebook and join our gardening
00:22:15
community in the Just Grow Something Gardening Friends
00:22:18
Facebook group. Here are five groups of
00:22:22
vegetable crops. Nope, they're not all vegetables
00:22:24
here on the squash plants. And that's this cucumber style.
00:22:28
Not that you can do better, Cheeso Pete.
00:22:32
Until next time, my gardening friends keep learning and keep
00:22:35
growing.