Recently I began to appreciate the sheer beauty of the Mexican tarragon in my garden. Then I learned what a delicious iced tea it makes, and from there I discovered its huge array of potential uses in the kitchen, the medicine cabinet, and the garden.
Ginger has thrived at our place since I learned to think about what it gives and what it needs in terms of its connections to the other plants around it, to me as the ginger-grower, and to me and my family as the ginger-users.
Loofahs are easy to grow. You can eat them when they’re small, and if you let them get big they make great bathroom sponges. They also make pretty good kitchen sponges. Best of all, when they wear out you can compost them to feed next year’s loofahs.
Yacon tubers are sweet, crunchy, and delicious raw or cooked, and are a firm favorite in our family. This post is a quick introduction to yacon and my experiences with growing and eating it.
Some of what you might want to know before choosing if and how you’ll use stevia-based sweeteners, along with tips on growing and using your own stevia plants.
A vegetable from the tropical highlands of Papua New Guinea, rungi (Rungia klossii) is an attractive, edible, nutritious year-round ground cover for the tropics and semi-tropics.
Sweet Violet (Viola odorata), is a shade-tolerant, ground-covering edible plant with a long list of nutritive and medicinal uses.
Okinawa spinach (Gynura crepioides) is an edible, nutritious, prolific, and low maintenance ground covering plant. It looks good enough to landscape with. And the more you eat it, the better it looks.
Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) has a long history of use for food, medicine, cordage, and dye. Here are some ideas for making use of the free food and fertilizer that this under-appreciated weed has to offer.
6 Salad bowl contenders that can handle heat and high humidity. The 7th plant can make a nutritious salad by itself if you have the right growing niche for it. Plus a tip on getting the most nutrition from your salad greens. UPDATED July 2023.