One person's exotic crop, is another person's....potatoes! Potatoes are my exotic crop. Hey, don't laugh! I grew up with chayote squash but unable to grow potatoes (they do not grow well in the tropics). I did not realize until recently that: -potatoes will not form tubers in the heat. -potatoes need a low pH. How low? I have seen different figures. I guess I should start a thread on common (non exotic) crops. OK, so I managed to grow enough of them for one meal. This is terrible, because they were the best potatoes I ever tasted, and now I want more. I am trying again. I got enough potatoes (little bitty ones) that I can use them as seed. I will manage to grow potatoes some day. Some say it is easy. I started chayote squash in zone 10, now I will start again in zone 9. I even have a place for them. Very easy to start, get some at grocery stores that do not treat their produce. I got mine at a Mexican food store. It started growing sprouts all by itself, sure looks like an alien type of veggie. Very interesting indeed. I like it in creole dishes, if I call it mirliton then it really sounds exotic even to me! Some more: Methi greens (just use the fenugreek seeds from Indian stores). Aloo methi, yum yum.... Gai lan. I love it but it did not do too well for me. Should I try again? Pak choi. This does great and I will continue to grow them. I would like bananas so I need to take a cutting and transplant or something. I would prefer the plantain type of bananas. Some day I will manage to grow an avocado tree and get avocados. I am growing artichokes but this is not exotic to me, maybe to you? Corn! now that is exotic, not only in Europe but also in Los Angeles. Amaranth could be considered exotic? I grew it and now I have heaps of amaranth volunteers. I wanted it to reseed, but not that much!

Slimy_0kra, you have another unusual vegetable on the way. Two unusual veggies volunteer in my garden every year; Martynia and Litchi tomato. Both are rather anti-social plants (Martynia for its smell, Litchi tomato for its thorns) but I always let a few grow if they come up in an out-of-the-way location... and that is all that is necessary for me to keep a supply of fresh seed. I love unusual greens. Swiss chard is my main green for freezing, but my #2 green is kang kong (a.k.a. water spinach), which is a morning glory relative grown for its edible leaves & shoots. The first planting is from seed, but after the first harvest, I root & plant the stems. After two such plantings, the final harvest of the summer is large - that one gets frozen for the winter. This is a great hot-weather substitute for spinach; as long as it is kept watered, it thrives on hot weather. If you are unable to find water spinach, sweet potato leaves are similar... not surprising, since they are both in the morning glory family. Not all varieties are good for leaves, though; the best ones for that purpose can be found in Asian markets, where you might also find water spinach. Both can be easily rooted from stem cuttings. Egyptian spinach (a.k.a. Saluyot, Molokhia, Jew's Mallow) is another reliable hot-weather green. The leaves are mint-like in appearance, and very mild in flavor. When cooked, the leaves are mucilaginous much like okra, so they are good for thickening soups. They also go great with fish. All of the greens above have something in common - the more you cut them, the stronger they get. Moringa is a fast-growing tropical tree grown for its edible leaves. They are very high in protein, and also have anti-biotic properties. This is probably not a good crop for those with limited space, since the yield is fairly low... but DW makes a soup from the leaves which is to die for, so I grow some every year. Many years ago, I grew some in pots to over-winter; but it was a pain to move those large pots in & out, so now I just grow a lot of plants in the garden, grown as annuals. They will reach 4-5 feet in height by the end of the summer, and yield 3-4 pickings. This year, I will be trying Caihua, a tropical climbing gourd that is edible immature. I have also grown Achocha (which is closely related) and found it to be rather tasteless, so I am hoping Caihua will be an improvement. Bitter melon is a vegetable I grow every year; while we eat a little, we give most of it away to some Filipino friends. It serves other important purposes in the garden: as a wind break (the vines densely cover the trellis); to both attract & isolate pollinators (it blooms continuously all summer); and for the scent of the blossoms, which is very fragrant. Some years I grow Mexican Sour Gherkin and West Indian Gherkin, but not this year. Anyone who has visited the Bean Forum knows I am a bean fanatic, so if a bean relative can be grown to seed in my climate, I will grow it. I am particularly fond of yardlong beans, and grow several varieties each year. Someone on another forum sent me a hyacinth bean which, if accounts are true, could be highly unusual. Most hyacinth beans are climbers, and because they only flower in short days (in or near September) they will not produce seed in Northern latitudes. This one, though, is supposed to be a bush variety which will bear seed in Wisconsin... so I am really looking forward to this trial. This year I will also be growing a yellow mung bean from the Philippines, and a large-seeded reddish-brown garbanzo. And "Madras", an edible-podded radish. Probably a few more oddities, but I've been growing some of them so long I no longer think of them as unusual. Here's a good group photo from one year: I started a similar "unusual vegetable" thread many years ago, but it seems to have fallen off the cliff. Edit: Found it, link below Here is a link that might be useful: Unusual vegetables This post was edited by zeedman on Sun, Mar 16, 14 at 23:56

Happyday, those are indeed large tubers, but I have read that they can get much larger. This is a lightly cultivated strain, and the documentation said "basketball size" tubers were possible. I'll have to see that to believe it. As for the pods, I don't know. Mine have never pollinated, and once I managed to trigger the complex flower to pollinate itself but the pod died of heat exposure or something before it grew very much. I believe there is some sort of swamp fly that is the main pollinator but no one knows for sure. And yes, they like lots of water. I just made sure to water mine enough that the top soil looked moist whenever possible. They can't be overwatered like some garden plants, and they can also tolerate dry conditions for a bit. The conditions that I think are likely to be best are moist, sandy loam type of environments with plenty of sun. But they do seem to be tolerant of adverse conditions.

My bean report: This year we had kind of strange weather (though with every year now being strange in a new way, I guess that makes it a "normal" year). Like drloyd, here we had an early, very warm spring, and are currently in a late, very warm autumn (going to be 70 degrees all this week!), but the summer in between was unusually cool and almost completely missed any of the heatwaves rolling over the rest of the country. The coolness made beans slow and tomatoes a full month late to bear. Anyway: --Alma Whitaker Cornfield-- A bit on the late side but did very very well, healthy tall vines totally loaded with handfuls of pods. Smallish, curved pods tightly packed with small, pinto-patterned seeds. I ate some as full beans and they stringed easily and cooked up pretty quick. Got these from Remy of Sample Seeds. Planted 6 May, flowered 8 Aug, dry seed 14 Sep. --Blue Shackamaxon-- A favorite of mine and in my opinion a real winner. Did very well, as always. Tall plants with shiny black seeds and pods that turn purple at maturity. Great-flavored dry bean. My seed was getting low so I grew a bunch out at my folks' place well away from any other beans, since this variety seems to cross very readily, both as a pollen recipient and donor. --Clarendon Wonder-- Stringless snap bush with large bright red seeds. Australian heritage variety bred by Hawkesbury Agricultural College in the early 1900s. Did pretty well in a container. Planted 4 May, dry seed 24 July. --Gunlik-- Dual-purpose bush bean. Small black seeds look just like Midnight/Black Turtle, but the pods are sweet. Did pretty well despite being grown in a container in a shady spot. Planted 6 May, dry seed 30 June, and all of the plants survived the first harvest and are currently loaded with a second crop just past the shelly stage. --Inka Pea Bean-- Did quite well despite being in a shady spot. Relatively short vines ( petered out at 6'), and seed in the usual pea-bean bicolor red & white pattern, but with pretty pinkish streaks inside the red part. Planted 4 May, dry seed 1 Aug. --Kaiser Friedrich-- Did very well. Fairly tall but well-behaved vines; when they outgrew their trellis I looped them down to the bottom and grew them back up the same way again, making approx. 9' feet of vine total. Pods stringless, flattish, yellow at first getting a neon pink blush, and purplish when dry. Bright purple seeds. Old German variety. Planted 6 May, dry seed 2 Sep. --Kuma Anna's Charcoal Grey-- Got utterly smothered by the Apios growing in the same bed, so I only got out 3x the seed I put in! Pole snap. Planted 2 May, dry seed 30 July. --Lavender Bush German-- Bush dual-purpose variety with seeds a unique lilac color I haven't seen on any other bean. Did pretty well in a container. Planted 4 May, dry seed 25 July. --Mariazeller Bush-- Pretty seed, but didn't seem to like being container-grown and hardly made anything. --Mountain Pima Burro & Caballito-- Poor germination from old seed, I'll have to grow this out again next year to bring numbers back up. Weakly climbing plants, beautiful seeds, tasty thin-skinned dry beans, wish I'd got enough to actually eat any this year. --Norridgewock-- Usual-looking red & white pea bean. Short vines. Didn't have many seed to start with and had damping-off issues, so only got replacement seed for a harvest. --Riesenkorn aus Omsk-- "Giant-seed from Omsk," which sounded intriguing. Summer-planted bush plants that weren't very happy with the container I grew them in. Seeds like large kidney bean size. Limas: --Black Cave Dweller-- Bush lima that turned out to be day-length-sensitive, so I haven't gotten any seed off them yet. --Madagascar-- Large-seeded pole lima. Planted late, so just maturing pods now. Plants doing well despite tomato competition. --Ping Zebra-- Finally deigned to make flowers this month, so I'll see if anything actually comes of them. Cowpeas/Yard-longs: --Washday-- mostly-bush cowpea that did pretty well despite being smothered by Apios. Seed coats tend to split. This is supposed to be fast-cooking, and I think would be considered a "lady pea," but I haven't tried any yet. Seeds small and ivory with some red speckling around the hilum. --Tiger-striped-- Yard-long with red stripes on green. I have a bit of trouble with yard-longs due to the cool nights here, but this one did pretty well for a yard-long. Not day-length-sensitive, and made a couple big handfuls of snaps. Didn't eat any yet but it's still producing. P. coccineus Runner Beans: --Ayocote Amarillo & Ayocote Morado-- Some beans from dinner planted on a whim, they made nothing at all in the summer but perked up slightly in the autumn to give me a very small harvest (like half a handful per plant). --Tucomares Mixed-- Complete crop failure this year. Every legume in their planter shriveled up and died and I'm not sure if it was blight, fungus, herbicide-contaminated potting soil, or what (all-new store-bought soil in only that planter). Misc: --adzuki beans Buff, and Blue Speckled-- both did pretty good this year, making a decent number of pods with seeds of the proper size. Seed for both from Anpetu Oihankesni. Planted 2 May, dry seed 30 July. --unnamed buff-seeded rice bean (Vigna umbellata)-- Second year growing this, and it again did well sprawling over a short trellis. The seed pods corkscrew open explosively when fully ripe, so I've taken to picking them either in the shelly stage or over a deep bucket. Going to try a dal recipe with these next week. --unnamed hyacinth beans-- A veritable explosion of neon purple flowers and pods on horizontally-greedy vines (were quite useful for separating P. vulgaris bean varieties from each other). Seed looks like tiny Oreos. Planted early May, dry seed 12 Sep. --unnamed red-seeded sword bean-- Made tall thick vines, but seems to be day-length-sensitive as it didn't bloom until well into fall. Currently ripening a few thick pods that look like they'll have only 1-2 seeds each. --groundnut/Apios americana-- Went utterly mad this year and swallowed all in their path to form a very leafy 4'x4'x5' hedge out of their 4'x4' raised bed. Flowered a lot (and smells like your great-great-aunt's perfume, pyew) but I don't think set seed. I can see some tubers poking up from the soil a bit and it looks like there're going to be masses of them to try out some recipes.