Secondary crops

Post: # 104495Post **MKG** » Wed May 21, 2008 12:15 pm

One of AXJ's posts about radishes made my mind start ticking over (it does sometimes). The young roots of radish are edible, but so are the young seed pods. You can snip the leaves of onions and shallots to use as chives. Turnip tops make excellent spring greens.

How many other such secondary crops are there?

red · Post: # 104512Post **red** » Wed May 21, 2008 2:46 pm

beetroot tops are lovely

marshlander · Wed May 21, 2008 3:27 pm

You can ue carrot thinnings as salad leaves.

Cheezy · Post: # 104519Post **Cheezy** » Wed May 21, 2008 3:40 pm

Beetroot leaves are a favourite, in fact we just eat the leaves, as cut and come again, rather than use the root.

Cauliflower leaves are great greens, and since it's a large plant (takes up room and time)that over winters before it flowers (ie the actual curd), its a great winter supply of greens.

garlic "scrapes", this is the curly bit that has the flower head on the end, you are meant to pull this out to make sure the energy goes into th ebulb, what is not so well know it's bloody lovely to eat especially in stir fry's.

The garlic leaves are great in steamed new potatos with butter...hmmm

Borlotti bean pods that haven't ripend up in time and are still green make great "runner" beans

Mrs Moustoir · Wed May 21, 2008 8:08 pm

You can eat the tips of broadbeans when you pinch them out...just lightly steam them.

Don't fancy mine though - the dreaded blackfly have arrived.

frozenthunderbolt · Thu May 22, 2008 5:46 am

Mrs Moustoir wrote:You can eat the tips of broadbeans when you pinch them out...just lightly steam them.

Don't fancy mine though - the dreaded blackfly have arrived.

Thankee, a handy thing to know since the BB's i planted last moonth from seed have gone balistic and are now between 20 and 30 cm high!

JustinFun · Thu May 22, 2008 10:46 am

If you leave some of your salsify in until spring you can use the leaves as early greens (so I'm told, I've not tried it).

Cheezy · Post: # 104661Post **Cheezy** » Thu May 22, 2008 11:21 am

JustinFun wrote:If you leave some of your salsify in until spring you can use the leaves as early greens (so I'm told, I've not tried it).

You can also eat the flower spike, steamed it's very like asparagus. THe blue flower is also v. pretty

Cheezy · Post: # 104662Post **Cheezy** » Thu May 22, 2008 11:22 am

Mrs Moustoir wrote:You can eat the tips of broadbeans when you pinch them out...just lightly steam them.

Don't fancy mine though - the dreaded blackfly have arrived.

I eat the tips raw, along with pea shoots in a salad, all very fashionable at the mo

Mrs Moustoir · Fri May 23, 2008 7:23 am

I'm sure they would be lovely - without the blackfly garnish!