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Waste of time & effort ?
I've just read the thread about cucumelons and how they were bitter and needed pickling. I wondered if you'd grown anything with great expectations and found it a waste of time and effort.
Asparagus Peas. They needed a great deal of heat to germinate, they were carefully potted on, hardenened off and placed in a prime position, they needed a good sized area. They produced plenty of slender pea pods. I picked them very young, a lot smaller than my little finger, as directed. I was so looking forward to them.
They were like cardboard, they didn't taste one bit like asparagus. In fact steamed they didn't have a taste and stir fried they irritated my throat. On the positive side the flowers were lovely.
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Sweet potatoes, they took a huge amount of room in my greenhouse for almost no return I don't think I watered them enough - but looking back the pot was never going to be large enough for a bumper crop!
I also grew gherkins in the garden one year. Bumper crop, I was thrilled. But then wondered how many pickled gherkins two people could eat.
Sweetcorn - Wonderful taste but two mature cobs per plant before end of season just not viable. Anyone know a corn that gives a better return - 6 per plant would re-awaken my interest!
We can eat all you can grow and pickle, and there's only two of us
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Dove, if I still have the seeds you can have them
Russian DIL is very keen on such things too - her Baboushka (grandmother) pickles hers in brine - she also grows tomatoes by the ton - huge meaty ones, and sweet peppers, huge and really sweet, so they tell me - I'm planning a trip out there next year after I've retired - Have I mentioned I'm retiring???
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Cabbage. At the time I only had two veg beds 4ft by 10ft and was told they are easy pezzy to grow, can't go wrong. They were easy pezzy to grow but are huge and took up one veg bed. I may have grown 6, hardly a glut and I spent several nerve racking weeks keeping the slugs and caterpiller off the leaves for a crop which didn't taste that much different from stuff in the supermarket.
..melons in a cold greenhouse... summer and autumn were over and they still weren't ripe..... and this was in Cornwall.... perhaps they need the heated version...
Mangetout, grew loads, don't know why only like them in a stir fry. Grew summer broc' once, soaked in salt and when blanching to freeze caterpillers floated to the top. Yuk, yuk. Worst part we'd eaten loads. Now only grow purple sprouting broc' that matures in March, so no crawlies. Better not be any
aubergines. Though the plant was quite attractive
In the sticks near Peterborough