hahaha i noticed that too. i think because he is european, i wear shorts and tshirts from around 13-15c for californians those temps are prob too cold.
@@dirkjanrulez23 Years ago I was on Tenerife on vacation in February. There it was like 18 to 20°C. At my place it was freezing. So I was walking around in Tees and shorts while the locals were all bundled up
Ground cherries are a great novelty for kids. The birds did the insisting that the ground cherries come back though. They helped it right along. And I feel like my pineapple tasted SOOOOOOOOO much better than the grocery store. Mine was small, single serve, but the flavor was sweeter and more delicious. I was able to pick it when I wanted. the original plant does die back, but a new shoot comes off of the side(dont rip it out immediately after cutting). I love my pineapples near a fence or border. Pineapple is not inviting(especially 2ndgen) and that's usually what im going for along the fence :) I like hearing peoples reasons for not growing these different foods though. good insight, and a joke helps you to remember why not a little better!!!
Pineapples doesn't have to be "hard" nor spacious if you can find the room for them and say "scatter" them across your lawns for instance. You might be able to also do it more tightly if you can provides aeration to the roots so you don't say need a 20 gallons pot for each of them for example. But I am still gonna grow at least a few because believe it or not organic pineapples ARE STUPID expensive. Even though they are "demanding" on space and time. Just also, try to make the fruits lasts, really do you need pineapple smoothies, cakes and dried rings every day of the week or could you do with one every few weeks or so?
I agree about the ground cherries. The one year I tried it ( based on a description I read and it sounded like an interesting experiment) it was a gorgeous looking plant. It was also extremely prolific. I did not like the taste, but kept trying over several days seeing if I would warm up to them. NOPE! Just did not like the taste so ripped out the whole plant. Experiment done. Will never plant again.
Until I ate a homegrown pineapple, I thought people were crazy for wasting the space for that amount of time. I grew one, absolutely loved it and now I want to dedicate more space for them
A lot of the dislikes seem to be highly climate-dependant. Rhubarb is a very cold-climate crop, my family had it in Norway 200 miles north of the arctic circle where little else but radish and carrots can grow. I now live in a wet temperate forest where beets won't grow (though I love them when I can get them anc I'll look into the Boron problem)...I also have trouble with Brassicas, probably because I can at best muster 50% sun, and am limited so far to peas, beans, peppers, tomatoes, and herbs.
I think something that is overrated are persimmons. They are bitter if they aren't fully ripe, and then practically mush by the time they are ripe. A fruit I just don't understand.
Vanilla beans come from a vining orchid. They don't bloom until the vines are about 20' long. I've had mine for about 5 years and it's just now getting long enough that it MIGHT bloom. When it does bloom, you have to be the pollinator (there is only one bug that does it and it's only located in the original country) and there's a special way to do it. The blooms only last ONE day so you have to pay attention and be quick, lol. If the bloom pollinates, it takes 9 months for the bean to mature. Now I understand why the beans are so expensive.
@@veliaantila1099 I grow them indoors. They're doing beautifully. If I can get citrus trees to bloom, then provide the pollination with a paint brush and get fruit - which I have done - then surely once this vine blooms (and it will since it's an orchid and orchids bloom in indoor environments), I should be able to pollinate it and hopefully get vanilla beans. Yet, isn't the experimentation half the fun? The challenge? And what time am I wasting? It doesn't need to be constantly watched over. Open up to the possibilites that are out there, my dear.
@@KaiSub Mine were on a shelf in a sunroom where the vines were growing up a window frame and the sunroom has gotten as cool as mid 50s and they showed no stress.
Wowee, gents I was so surprised to hear you mention my plight with kale. Your advice is taken. Just to let you know, I do grow tomatoes, many colours of cherry as well as huge Alisa Craigs that were fantastic, as well as a 'black' cherry tomato that ended up more purple than black. I also grow Paris atlas carrots, a variety of beetroot, I love the burpee golden; and lastly, salad blue potatoes as well as red and purple Duke of York potatoes. Entering the boat in the Summer is challenging 🤔, but the produce is a blessing and a joy😄 Kevin, thank you for your channel, I started growing microgreens after watching you!
@@Estertje93 Hi Ester, thanks so much for your message😁. No Instagram account as YT is about as far I go in social media. If you are growing this Spring/Summer, hope all you grow turns out fabulously 😆
I don't think that I've ever eaten rhubarb that wasn't from a plant that was at least 100 years old. It seems like it's impossible to kill, my buddy buried an ancient rhubarb patch under 2 feet of bony gravel to build a driveway and it pushed right up through it in 2 years..it's still there 40 years later...
istg some people in the past must had seen a big ol' rhubarb and thought _“man, I bet this plant will lives for centuries and become a plant spirit”_ then create the myth about Mandrake 😂
summer. I would never have tried it except for a hydroponics grower in Ohio does it. She sows broccoli seed like for micro greens but grows them out til the leaves are almost a bit bigger than your hands. Maybe 6 to 8 inches. Then she cuts them like micro greens and uses them in stirfry or in salads. I had a few broccoli that went to seed on me last year so I kept the seeds and grew them like extra big microgreens. Cut and put in stirfry they were awesome. I plan on letting a few plants run to seed to have extra seeds for winter growing in the house under lights. (I have led shop lights and led grow lights and they are the best. Plus hubby did some math according to the specs on the box and with the timers my electric is only running about $3.50 to $4.50 extra a month. Totally worth it for my greens/houseplants/green onions and lettuce I grow under them.
I know a lot of people think they are bland but as someone who tends to prefer icebergs and romains, I found the broccoli leaves to be VERY pleasant. It took me 3 years to successfully grow broccoli heads, so being able to eat the leaves made the crop worth the failure otherwise lol
Hey guys! Love the show :) A small tip for Rhubarb is to put their feet in the shade and make the leaves stretch for the sun. This way you get much longer stalks and you get to your pie sooner! Big hugs from SA! keep growing :D
That pineapple one is true. I’ve been growing em for decades here in Hawaii. Takes time to fruit but when you do get one, it’s beyond any store bought one. Ridiculous sweet. But yes they do take up a ton of space. I grow them in their own individual containers. 10 gallon squat pots. They do really well. At least they are portable and not permanent. Try it!!🤙🏼👍🏼🙏🏼👊🏼
I learned to grow pineapple from my Grandfather in Florida. He had a huge patch next to the shed, had to cage ripening fruit so the rabbits don't steal them! I have now grown them in pots in both NY and WA! They take a while, yes... But I agree that the fruit is far better than store bought. I think since they're picked before ripening.
My favorite use of ground cherries was with cheese and spinach as a stuffing for perogies. The sweetness of it combined with the tart of the spinach and salt of the cheese was soooo good! Another fun way to use them is to slice them in half and dehydrate them: they make great candy.
Rhubarb and strawberry smoothies were my FAVORITE this year…recipes online with coconut milk for a pie like smoothie. AIP COMPLIANT auto immune protocol elimination diet. Rhubarb freeze dries well for southern folks to enjoy.
I kinda agree about the broccoli, thats why I started growing Chinese broccoli. You can fit tons of plants in a tiny space and get lots of crowns, leaves, and stems.
Growing Yod Fah and Rapini this time. I hope I actually get something to eat this year. Last year was my first year growing Brassica of any kind. All bought from local stores got a few leaves of Cabbage but all the broccoli got a tiny head the size of my thumb and then bolted within a day or 2.
Yes, or try one of the sprouting broccolis or broccolinis. Purple sprouting broccoli does very well for us over our whole cool PNW growing season; you treat it like a "cut and come again" plant and it's super-productive for months. Nothing better after a day of gardening than a broiled broccolini and fresh mozzarella sandwich with butter and lemon zest!
Funny story about broccoli. I grew collards from seed that I purchased from a local seed provider. They were labeled as collards but seems they weren't. So I did a cut and come again method for harvest for a few weeks only to have them 'magically' grow into broccoli. I was none the wiser, the greens were delicious! 💚
Living in Maine I can't imagine not growing rhubarb! There's so many options for cooking with it beyond just strawberry rhubarb pie: drinks like wine or shrubs; using cherries instead of strawberries for less sweet pies, cobblers, and jams; in marinades it's perfect for pork or turkey; and the leaves make good compost or lay them flat to suppress weeds. As an additional benefit when your bed gets too full, cull it down and give the plants as gifts (though, hopefully the recipient won't notice your eye twitching).
I do a lot of the same things, but I also use it to make the Filipino dish, pork adobo. I replace the vinegar with rhubarb and it makes an amazing sauce!
Here in Denmark it's very popular in jam, both in different combinations like strawberry or elderflower but also on its own. It's great as compote for "old-fashioned chicken" which is a whole chicken stuffed with parsley and pretty much lightly caramelised and then cooked low and slow until it's fall off the bone tender, served with potatoes, a brown sauce made from the juices, homemade pickled cucumber, and depending on the season either rhubarb compote or foraged mushrooms. With the rhubarb it's a perfect summer classic here. Rhubarb cake is also fantastic if you need a variation from the pie, and keeping with desserts the ultimate Danish classic summer dessert that we also use to torment foreigners with by challenging them to pronounce it, rødgrød med fløde. It's a variation of a compote served with cream according to the tongue twisting name although I personally prefer it with whole milk (which only adds to the linguistic torture as that's called sødmælk). Rhubarb syrup mixed with water, either still or sparkling, for a refreshing cordial is also quite amazing.
@@RobMyself Not the outer leaves. The secondary shoots that form after you harvest the main crown! They're the reason to grow your own broccolli. Absolutely delicious!
I use radishes as diversion crops to keep cabbage flies and other nasties off my crops. The bugs seem to develop a taste for whatever grows early, and losing a few 20-day radishes is a good trade for untouched bigger veggies! Elk ate my rhubarb down to the roots- oxalis acid-housing leaves and all!- 3 years running. Now in a broody gray marine climate where sun-starved tomatoes and peppers die of depression, but cold weather crops do well in my Eeyore raised beds! Fond of groundcherries, beets reach dental floss proportions here, and broccoli got leg cramps and didn’t get beyond 2-bite size. Looking forward to spring- my brassica crops grew through winter!
I grew in me cucamelon plant one year and ended up with so many! They are prolific. Took some to a group meeting and the one person who couldn’t stop eating them was the young teenager. I can see how kids would really like them. I think if you have little garden snack foragers who pick your garden clean, they’d be great. But you’d probably need 2-3 hungry kids who like them to keep up with their pace because they’re prolific to the point of almost becoming a weed.
They're a weed here in my area, we didn't know it was edible until I saw RU-vid video about, now I eat here and there since I like cucumber, still annoying weed tho.
Cucamelon is wonderful for me! Where I live cucumber beetles have been horrible for the past few years, and they've destroyed any cucumber I've tried to grow, except cucamelon. So I can get that nice cucumber flavor when all of my plants have wilted over from the disease those buggers bring.
Pineapples grow very well where I live (Puerto Rico), but I had 2 grow beds dedicated to them for a couple of years and I decided not to do it again like this. Now I'm growing them on rectangular 1 by 2 feet pots (2 for every pot) and they grow even better cause I can move them around the backyard depending the time of the year. I have 4 fruits growing right now and around six more that are still without fruit. I did struck out with Broccoli. I will try again in the future following some tips from some agricultural experts of the UPR who have a channel dedicated to home gardens.
Hi! Or should I say, wepaa! What's the UPR channel? I'm from PR too! I have a hard time finding resources about growing certain things in our grow zone.
@jacquesinthegarden If you are growing Rhubarb, you should try making rhubarb crumble ice cream! Also, another big hit with the family is my rhubarb, orange and ginger Jam. Once cut it doesn't last long in the fridge before it starts to go floppy, so if i am not making rhubarb, apple and raisin crumble, i cut them in one inch pieces and freeze it. It also needs cutting every 3 years during winter, when it is dormant as you need to cut off and separate the baby nubs to create new plants. i grow spinach next to it as when the rhubarb grows it give the spinach a bit of shade during the hotter months.
My brother grew cucamelon's last year. They are such an odd fruit. The best way our family could describe them was that it was a cucumber that couldn't decide if it also wanted to be a lime or not. We didn't end up experiencing any soft of bitterness with them.
Yes, I was genuinely surprised that they gave cucamelons a thumbs-down. We grow them every year, we always get lots of them and they're delicious! I've never tried to peel them, I just give them a quick rinse and toss them in a salad. Sometimes I eat them straight off the vine. Ours are delicious and crunchy and I'm always a bit sad when the growing season is over (we're zone 5b). I've never noticed any bitterness either. Maybe it depends on the climate or the soil?
Interesting to hear all of the ways a plant might not be worth it for a particular situation. Beets and turnips around here have a hard time because of the micro-climate, supremely dense clay/rocky soil, and wandering herds of vagrant deer. So many factors play a part in whether a crop can be a worth it for any given area/person. How about a plants that you didn't expect to do well, but actually did? I have a bunch of peach trees that I started last year, started from local orchard peach pits. (No stratification needed, just crack open the pit with a vise or a pair of pliers... carefully. Extract the almond like seed and soak between wet paper towels until the brown seed coat can be peeled off. Watch out for the growing tip! Then put them between some layers of damp, but not soggy, paper towels in an old plastic Chinese take out container, and let them sprout.) Now I need to figure out where to plant them and how to keep them trained low.
Basil! It’s literally the easiest herb to grow and you can keep them for the leaves first then let them flower. It’s beneficial for the garden while also having uses in the kitchen. Plus it smells so so so nice when you walk by them. I’m planting two whole trays this year just to have random basil plants in between crops where there’s room 🥰
I swore off brassicas after I tried growing brussel sprouts and fought cabbage moths for months to ultimately get nothing out of it. Last year I tried some faster growing broccoli and cabbage and had decent success. I think interplanting with my garlic helped hide them.
With ground cherries, I let them ripen a while indoors after picking (about a week or so). If they are at a certain ripening stage, they taste way better IMO. But it can be hard to find that sweet spot
I'm one of those super hot pepper fanatics and that's nearly all that I grow, and there's a lot of reasons to grow them in my opinion! Not only do I really enjoy some of them raw like peach and chocolate ghost peppers, but I like to use them in sauces and dehydrated in my own seasonings. String them up on some thread and let them air dry and the flavor is totally undamaged by the dehydrator!
We're going into our 7th year with all our raised beds here in Virginia zone 7A. We decided last year to focus mostly on the staples that we eat and preserve. The last 4 years have been very successful and we've been able to share the bounty with friends/neighbors. Beets do okay. Turnips do great. Collard does well. Pole beans and okra do fantastic. Squash does very well and I keep succession planting on them because they're a favorite. We don't eat much on the green leafy side as it doesn't set well with my wife's stomach, only small amounts of butter crunch. Keep Planting Folks!
I’m in your same area and we doubled the size of our raised beds to try more varieties. Hot peppers do exceptionally well here too, we have many many jalapeño plants among other hot peppers. Okra eggplant and other heat lovers do well in the summer here too. Mild winters and hot summers are great for gardeners here! Carrots are my not worth growing pick. Too much range of success, mostly tiny in my experience, and not worth the effort compared to the price of a bag of organic carrots at the store.
@@ilanaregan7507 Okra is one of our FAVORITES to grow and eat! My wife and I are both from GA, so fried okra all the way! We're growing in Spotsylvania County
Pineapples basically grow themselves in the part of Florida I’m from, we actually used to be the pineapple capital of the world 😂 It’s a nice set it and forget it plant for the side of your yard but be prepared to battle raccoons and squirrels for the fruit 😤 On that note, if you don’t like regular/pineapple ground cherries you might like Peruvian/Aunt Molly’s ground cherries. They taste more citrusy and not savory at all.
I love ground cherries, they make a great salsa addition, I toss them in my pineapple salsa. I’ve also canned them whole with lemon drop peppers and Tabasco peppers to make a syrup like jam. I use that on so many things. You can make them sweet, use as a pie filling or fruit leather, or you can go savory. I’ve tried them on crostini with goat cheese and balsamic vinegar.
Pineapples and pumpkins are the plants I should have done my research about with space being taken up. especially when you bring the pineapples inside for the winter. There is hardly any space to walk around and water in my plant room. And those babies will poke ya. His Challenge on trying to survive by growing his own food for a month is what really opened up my eyes on what's important and what isn't.
I’ve tried beets in different types of soil and fertilizer and can’t get beets to form. The first year all I got were greens. I give up. There are many other things to grow in that space.
Yep, same here, beets and turnips, i just cant grow. However. I dont really care cause i dont eat em anyways, i was only growing them as a "friend" plant to my other crops. To help keep away pests or lure other pests.
I HATED the Aunt Molly's ground cherries, they had the weirdest taste, but last year I tried the Pineapple Ground Cherries and they were SO good, they were so sweet and delish. Try the Pineapple Variety! My kids loved them too!
You guys are super entertaining, and I love the humor. I'm a pretty new viewer, and I'm having a hard time figuring out how to describe Kevin's humor. Is it deadpan? In one video, Kevin explained the expression "chitting out", and said something like: "Interesting phrase. I don't use it often.". For some reason the way he said it made me laugh out loud, and I've been wondering for days if it's on purpose deadpan humor or not.
Pinapples. I'm in south florida so pinnaples are simple and tropical looking in the landscape. They are Bromilliads and require minimal resouces. Also they love to be overcrowded.. i plant mine 6-8 inches apart. So DON'T waste space putting them in your vegetable garden beds, but rather just tuck them into your landscaping. They even do well in dappled light / afternoon shade ( especially in the south florida summer heat). Every grocery store top finds a home in my yard.
I didn't know they can be so TIGHTLY grown. I bet you can make it well worth it with quality grow bags due to aeration of the roots or at least a heavy coir mix for almost the same effects.
@@rickytorres9089 the thing about bromilliads is the root system is more there as an anchor to hold the plant in the ground... most of its "eating" is through the top crown. This is the main reason why u can bunch them together.
@@stokelymarco8042 Ah that make sense now, thank you so much for explaining all of this to me. That further make sense that any of their pups that comes up, you don't need to be concerned of digging them up either.
Rosemary from seed fought hard with me for years. Proper vernalization was the key. Shiso is doing the same right now, I am not a quitter. Thou shall yield Shiso.
I couldn't grow shiso in pots but I accidentally spilled some seeds in the yard in late summer I had more shiso than I wanted. I froze the rest. Apparently it has to be quite warm for the seeds to germinate.
Not for a boat, but for landlubbers, grow kale in the fall. The cool weather keeps the bugs away and kale doesn't mind the cold. In fact many vegetables are sweeter grown in the fall. Same for lettuce in my experience. In the summer my lettuce is infested with white fly, but if I just grow in spring and fall, it's clean as can be. For me, I hate growing zucchini. I love cooking with it and I can even get a great crop for awhile but the borers make me feel like an absolute failure. I'm not wrapping stems in foil or bandages, and I'm not interested in eating bt drenched vegetables. Then along comes the powdery mildew to top it all off. My baking soda spray works great on that, but then I have to worry about the bees that I might be harming. At this point, the only way I would grow zucchini is with full tulle netting, in raised beds and hand pollination. It just seems like too much work when I can just go buy some at the grocery store. It's not like tomatoes and strawberries that taste so much better homegrown.
I grow pineapples in SoCal. Love them. Easy to grow. Drought tolerant. Fruit is so much tastier than store bought. What more can you ask for? I grow them with my landscape vs. in the vegetable beds.
Same here. I get fresh pineapples every year and don't have to do much but cover the bed with alfalfa hay once a year. I don't have a problem with overgrowth because I pull out the plant once it is done flowering and the new one fills the space.
@@rickytorres9089 Use it as mulch. As it breaks down it makes excellent fertilizer and makes plants grow huge. There is something specific in alfalfa that acts as a growth stimulant. I use organic bales from tractor supply. I use it on everything.
I enjoy hearing about the struggles it always reminds me that I'm not alone when it comes to those one or ten that seem to give us problems 🤣 Cauliflower and Brussels are those for me.
brassicas consistently fail on me. other i dont really hate growing specific plants. i do have some plants i love to grow: popcorn, bush beans and yellow raspberrys. on the cuca melon: called mouse melon here but they have no bitter in them for me maybe it is the heat you guys get and i dont get. where regular cucumbers die off in early august the cuca melon produces until the frosts come in november. ps: would love to see you guys do a plant memes reaction.
I love topics like these and I love it when these two making episodes together! 💗 I live in Indonesia and I agree with the pineapple one, although it's actually one of my most favorite fruit, I will never plant them again. I got lots of scratches on my calves from their tiny thorns, too. Ugh. 😅
Chiltepin Peppers are my favorite hot peppers. Hot enough to add a serious kick but they don't last long enough to leave you with a burning mouth for the entire day. They're also really tiny like the size of peppercorns so that makes them very useful for seasoning food.
We have a couple rhubarbs on our allotment, and used to have one in our tiny 2m wide front garden, and they get huge, and you can harvest so much just from one plant. Rhubarb jam is really nice too
That's what I love about most brassicas: you can use the leaves like kale most of the time, and often even use the flower buds like a broccoli rabe if you time it right.
I grow pineapple in SoCal 9b in fabric pots. I can (and do) drag them around to new locations if I need too. They are very neglect tolerant. I currently have about 15 in different grow stages that all came from one top.
This year I’m doing peppers and tomatoes like usual, lemon squash, radishes, and huge sweet onions. Probably beans in the bed I used for sweet corn last summer. But there’s a lot of other things that will be in the garden. I share it with my dad and he grows beets and potatoes.
The hot pepper Halloween episode was interesting in that I was really entertained watching you guys suffer. Am I a terrible person?? That was hilarious!
I am done with the " heading" Brassicas. No broccoli 🥦 cauliflower or cabbage. They bolt if you plant them here on unseasonably warm weeks, but if you wait later you they hit our once a year FREEZE.
I don't actually like raw tomatoes but I'll make stuf out of them, I have friends who love them, and I'm weirdly fascinated by growing them. :) I have a rhubarb plant that came with my house and it does it's own thing. I've split it a couple times every year and given people plants and it's still comes in huge every year! Sometimes plants are just meant to be where they are
I live in southern Spain and have a teeny garden. I finally got a brocolli plant to survive but it never made a florette BUT the leaves and the insect loving flowers were very welcome
I’ve got 17 pineapples going right now. This batch, I set up 3 in a hydroponic system (basically ran out of dirt space). If I have a yard, I’m darn well going to have pineapples.
@@epicgardening We’ll see how it goes. It was actually by accident, I left them in a container with water for 7 months(with refills as needed) while I tried to figure out what to do with the extras. They’re actually as big as the ones in dirt for the same period of time. I transferred them to a dedicated “actual” hydroponic setup last week so we’ll see. Some googling has found unsubstantiated claims that hydroponic pineapples not only work well but grow larger and faster…
You are going to "cherry pick" the list of vegetables - Kevin is too funny. Kale is a bad vegetable: reminiscent of lettuce, wrapped in cardboard, soaked in oil. Beets are the best, and agree with the Shovel Boys: golden beets are the best. Thanks for this video - y'all are entertainingly the best!
Rhubarb is almost a weed up here in Canada. It's almost impossible to actually REMOVE it from a garden here. If you don't get all of it when you dig it up, everything left behind will sprout as a new plant
hey kevin! i’m really excited to start my first year gardening myself. i work with students in a private high school and i would love it if you could recommend some simple gardening projects i could do with my students. love the channel, so excited to start my berries when my garden center gets them in :D
If you're in a climate where they're pretty low maintenance pineapple can be a pretty cool decorative plant, but they are definitely slow to produce and even if/when you do get a fruit it just takes one trespassing a hole for it to all be gone cause you're getting one fruit at a time, it's not like how trees take awhile to fruit but after enough time end up loaded with fruit.
I will always grow pineapple, I planted a three by 5 foot garden section and now five years on and we get about 1 pineapple a month throughout the year, they just keep pupping and spreading but still easy to keep in their designated space
Oh my! Hard disagree on rhubarb! it is amazing! Add it to literally anything to make better jam/pies/crisps/etc. Takes zero effort, it just pops back up every year. The gift that keeps on giving!
Beets! I cannot grow beets but giving it one more shot this year! I LOVE beets! No go on sunchokes and kale for me. I don't care for cooked greens, I know, I know...never tried ground cherries but am this year. Broc!!?? LOVE it!!! I would have half my garden in it! lol Pineapple, if only. I watch Danny n Wanda and they have a ton in a small side greenhouse and I will try to go that route one day but know it takes forever....lol Great video guys! Oh and no go on hot peppers besides the big J's!
I don’t know, I’ll always grow broccoli. It’s one of my favorite vegetables, but also here in Seattle it’s not cheap. I also grew ground cherries for the first time last year, and I absolutely loved them. I’m planning to grow a couple more plants this year.
I’m in Michigan-My parents bought their house in 1991 and there was 3 rhubarb plants. Those same plants are STILL there and we couldn’t kill them if we tried. They have been run over by construction equipment, had the roots messed with, and neglected for years but still produce every year!
Pineapple I have in its own dedicated bed. I am in Florida so as long as I can keep the occasional frost and freeze at bay, it is relatively care free. Home grown pineapple is like a home grown tomato, nothing in the store can quite get the same flavor profile. But, it is a long term investment crop and for me worth the investment.
No no no, she's wrong about the Pinnapples. They can Initially take 18-24 months to fruit, but then after that you will get Fruit every season/year after that if you take all the suckers and slips off the Mother plant except the very largest one that uses the Mother plants roots. Growing pinnapples is an intial time investment, but after that first 18 months or so you get a yearly harvest. Also, you can plant them very densely as long as you fertilize them sufficiently.
I tried growing cucamelons last year (in Florida) and at first it absolutely flourished. I couldn’t believe how full and big the plant got… and then suddenly the whole thing died… completely dried out and shrivels over a period of four days. NO IDEA what happened.
* I grow the Aunt Molly’s variety & my husband & I have been really impressed with it. The key is to wait for the husks surrounding the fruits to turn brown and fall off the plant onto the ground (hence the name “ground” cherry) The fruits are then at their peak ripeness & you definitely don’t want to eat them before they get to that point.
I'm always surprised by the number of people that don't like cucamelons or they find them difficult to grow. I'm in southwestern ontario and they're almost a weed in my garden. I can't kill them no matter how hard I abuse the seedlings I start inside, they come up on their own from dropped melons the year before, and they're extremely vigorous and prolific, and beautiful. Thankfully I also love to snack on them which is interesting since I don't like cucumbers much at all. I will say that we've made fridge pickles from them and I'm not a fan, they never stay crisp.
@@AmateurUrbanFarm I think it's that sour/citrus bite to them that I like, though that's the big turn off for (almost everyone) that's tried them here and didn't like them. My husband loves ground cherries and they're very meh to me. They have this funk at the end of the flavour that lingers for me haha.
