What new plant will you try in 2025?

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:Lotus! Which will be a challenge. I'm going to have to keep water in my tiny baby pool. I've moved to mostly dry gardening. Except for the two months of seasonal drought.

All about why I want to grow lotus. Edible!

Lotus that flowers put energy to seeds and the tubers will be much smaller, edible lotus rarely flowers. The 27 gal black tote or 32 gal trash can will be suitable for growing lotus if you have any.
https://tenmilecreeknursery.com/products/hubei-5-vegetable-tuber

I'd like to try some "old" plants that failed before to see if there's improvement now that I am a better gardener: blueberry, eggplant, tongho, amaranth etc. For some of them I still have the seeds but I will have to buy blueberry plant again.

Going to try some moringa from seeds. Also some alpine strawberries. Have never grown strawberries from seeds before.

On a similar theme ... I built a squash tunnel this year. Have wanted one since the first time I learned of that technique. It will have butternut squash, yard long beans, Dragon's Tongue beans, cucumbers, & probably a few tomatoes climbing on it.

No, I don't think I'll grow any new plants this year. I want to do my best to grow better plants. I mean: better maintenance of the shrubs and perennials, and more attention to the annuals (sow the seeds in the right month, add more compost to the soil, give water when needed ...).
This way I hope to have more yield from my allotment garden than last year.

Was a little dismayed by the Asheville photos as I have been planning on using the cattle panel approach to try mostly vining veggies as an experiment in my new location.  I heard that they are the most primitive varieties and thereby most likely to survive the new heat levels we are experiencing now.  Not sure if the deduction is accurate or not but I also no longer have the ambition to build raised beds to avoid bending over to tend the garden.  The plants are not the only things that like to remain vertical these days.  Have seeds for a couple each of moschato pumpkins,  small watermelons,  tomatoes, field peas & pole beans, cukes, sweet potatoes & malabar spinach .  I know I am already late for planting in N Fla but that will test their survivability.  
Not vining but tried some tree collards last year without success so am going to try that again.  Hopefully this does not attract the hurricanes as the one that hit Asheville just missed me.    

Dale Nute wrote:Was a little dismayed by the Asheville photos as I have been planning on using the cattle panel approach to try mostly vining veggies as an experiment in my new location.  I heard that they are the most primitive varieties and thereby most likely to survive the new heat levels we are experiencing now.  Not sure if the deduction is accurate or not but I also no longer have the ambition to build raised beds to avoid bending over to tend the garden.  The plants are not the only things that like to remain vertical these days.  Have seeds for a couple each of moschato pumpkins,  small watermelons,  tomatoes, field peas & pole beans, cukes, sweet potatoes & malabar spinach .  I know I am already late for planting in N Fla but that will test their survivability.  
Not vining but tried some tree collards last year without success so am going to try that again.  Hopefully this does not attract the hurricanes as the one that hit Asheville just missed me.    

Just a note on growing tree collards. They need a little babying and protection in the beginning. Once they have matured, they are hands off plants, that just need some water. I have started all of my tree collards in containers, and transplanted them when they have gotten too big for the container. The times I have planted them directly into their final home, they usually get eaten, or otherwise dies. Good news though is, that once established, they are close to indestructible.

I am trying a bunch of new plants this spring; I have hazelnut and witch hazel saplings on order, and I hope to a couple of paw paws as well,  In smaller plants, I will try to start some ground nuts from seed.

I planted a bunch of sunchokes in the fall, and hope to have enough to eat as well as leaving some to come back next year.

Ground nuts are actually New England natives, but have been forced out.  They are nitrogen fixing legumes similar to peas, but they also produce edible tubers, and have dark pink flowers that attract pollinators-- practically a perfect plant!


Here's info about groundnuts: https://www.ourtinyhomestead.com/groundnuts.html

I'm trying salsify and swede. Malabar spinach is a godsend in hot weather. It tolerates high temps well as long as it is watered. I find it is not so pleasant raw, but cooked is fine. It also seeds itself. Another virtue!

Artichokes. Starting the variety 'Imperial Star' from seed.  It has supposedly been bred to produce in one season.  However, since I am in long suspected and newly official zone 8, they may just be perennial for me.  I've made a nice new bed for them in hopes that they will stick around more than one season.

I'm trying to build a dyer's garden, so I'm going to try my hand at some dye plants - Japanese indigo and woad. Both produce blue dye. The idea is to see which one grows best in my garden and make it a garden staple.

Leigh Tate wrote:I'm trying to build a dyer's garden, so I'm going to try my hand at some dye plants - Japanese indigo and woad. Both produce blue dye. The idea is to see which one grows best in my garden and make it a garden staple.

I really, really liked indigo, it was pretty easy to grow and seemed to like the summer here in 9b.
I grew it two years in a row but didn't have the space/time to dedicate to the quantities I needed. I did some dying with the fresh leaf and am saving the seeds for next summer, I think.

Tereza Okava wrote:I did some dying with the fresh leaf and am saving the seeds for next summer, I think.

I hadn't even thought about fresh leaf dyeing, so thanks for that!

I also recently found a source for true indigo seed and want to add that to my list.

Riona Abhainn wrote:I want to do a mushroom kit, since I've never done mushroom growing before.  I feel like once I do that then I can try doing it the less expensive and more DIY way.

just got a bag of wine cap mushroom mycelium from NorthSpore.  Hoping they grow.  

Mike Barkley wrote:Going to try some moringa from seeds. Also some alpine strawberries. Have never grown strawberries from seeds before.

On a similar theme ... I built a squash tunnel this year. Have wanted one since the first time I learned of that technique. It will have butternut squash, yard long beans, Dragon's Tongue beans, cucumbers, & probably a few tomatoes climbing on it.

The alpine strawberries took very very long to germinate but I finally got two plants out of an entire seed pack. The two plants multiplied and in less than a year we have 11 plants. They have to be divided, no runners. They are so delicious it is nothing like a store-berry. :-)

Trying out bush beans, especially Blue Lake 274 and Dragon's Tongue. Hoping for lots and lots of green beans to eat and put away! Also hoping to try many varieties of Japanese turnips!

Jen Fulkerson wrote:Every season I enjoy trying something new to me.  This year I'm growing
Malabar spinach: I've heard it's great, and I've heard terrible. I thought I'd give it a try. My family loves their veggies, so why not.
Swiss chard perpetual spinach: I grow Swiss chard, it grows year round here. It's pretty bitter in the summer heat, so I feed it to the chickens, they don't mind a bit. This is supposed to taste more like spinach, I can't wait.
Fennel: I'm not a big fan of licorice flavor, so have never tried it, but my daughter wants it, so it's on the list.
Tumeric: last year I struggled to grow ginger. All of YouTube says how easy it is to grow, but I had a very different experience. Finally at the end of the summer I got some to grow. I planted it in the center of a raised bed that had loofah, and  a large tomato. It hardly got any sun, and seemed happy that way. In our intense heat, it seems it needs to be an understory plant. So I hope to actually get it to grow and I'm going to apply the same for tumeric.
The next list are not exactly new. Last year I tried and failed.
Moringa: I got it to late. It didn't get big enough to survive the winter. I will start them early in the spring, so it will be established, and maybe I can get it to survive the winter.
Butterfly pea: another "easy" on that didn't grow. Totally my fault. I built a raised bed with a trellis. I work for a co-op. We were cleaning the chick tanks, and I took the wood pellets from the tanks home for the compost. For some stupid reason I decided to put it in the beds. I'm pretty sure it was just to much because all the peas sprouted, and grew about 2" and that was it. I think poor soil, and planting to late so it was to hot kept them from growing.
Hyacinth beans: same as the butterfly pea. Bad soil and to late. I removed a bunch of the wood, and replaced it with compost. I hope this and the time to break down added a much earlier planting will make the difference.
Of course I'm always trying different varieties of tomatoes, peppers squash and melons.
What new plant are you trying? Maybe I'll add it to my list.

I grew malabar spinach, and it's perfectly great as spinach goes! Perhaps the naysayers are comparing it to baby spinach they'd buy in a store as salad greens. Malabar is more like the kind I grew up with: bigger, thicker, a bit wiggly looking. I'd eat it raw as a salad, and if it's cooked there is no difference between it and the typical frozen type spinach. Maybe you'll want to remove some of the thicker mid-ribs for picky eaters, that's all.

I want to try turmeric too! I haven't looked into it enough yet, because apparently sticking a piece into a pot of dirt is not working for me indoors. It's shriveling up down in there, lol

I believe Butterfly peas are used to make color-changing butterfly tea! Not sure if it's the flowers or leaves, but it makes a blue tea. When you add some lemon juice it turns purple! What fun! It tastes nice too, cold or hot, though I added honey especially after adding the lemon. I did not grow it myself.

I will be trying loofah and wintergreen! I want to try growing something on the edge of some woods with a lot of pines, and I read here somewhere that loofah & wintergreen would do well there assuming the soil is on the acidic side. I mean I AM assuming it, lol, I'm not testing it, I'm at an experimental stage where I  plant seeds, thank the Universe in advance, walk away, and come back a couple months later. (I can only go to my future land once in a while) Out of 9 things I planted last year, I got a pumpkin and some turnip greens. But if something can grow without me at ALL, then that's really good information for planning other things. And if all I can grow is pumpkins, then dangit I guess I'm opening a pumpkin farm, with hayrides!

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:Lotus! Which will be a challenge. I'm going to have to keep water in my tiny baby pool. I've moved to mostly dry gardening. Except for the two months of seasonal drought.

All about why I want to grow lotus. Edible!

I'm growing lotus for the first time too. Filed the belly button end of the seeds, dropped them in cups of water and they sprouted within a few days. Put them in a container and submersed them in my pond. They've been doing well. Probably a month in the pond now and they are still putting out new pads.

Very excited to grow more of them. The tubers were what I originally wanted, food-wise, but this site made me want to try grinding the seeds into flour: https://feralforaging.com/lotus-bread/

Apparently you can use 100% lotus flour to make bread, which seems rare for the non-gluten flours. I'm not a gluten free guy, but I'm always looking for bread ingredients that are more convenient to grow and process than wheat and its cousins.

Suzette Thib wrote:Trying out bush beans, especially Blue Lake 274 and Dragon's Tongue. Hoping for lots and lots of green beans to eat and put away! Also hoping to try many varieties of Japanese turnips!

I'm trying out pigeon peas for the first time as an annual in my fall goat pasture. My hope is my Memphis summer is hot and muggy enough for them to grow big and then get eaten down by my goats before the December weather kills them off.

Mark Griffin wrote:Artichokes. Starting the variety 'Imperial Star' from seed.  It has supposedly been bred to produce in one season.  However, since I am in long suspected and newly official zone 8, they may just be perennial for me.  I've made a nice new bed for them in hopes that they will stick around more than one season.

I've had an easier time growing its kinsman cardoon in the same zone. For whatever reason, artichoke just doesn't thrive for me, though I keep trying. But cardoon takes off and outcompetes most everything around it. The cardoon stalks don't match artichoke hearts for texture and richness, but they hit some of the same flavor profile.

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Nothing new in my world, plant-wise. I think I will be aggressively scaling up more of the same old. Volume of calories will be of the greatest importance. Because I can, I must. Not for me, but for others. These are interesting times.

That's still the plan.

But I do have one new addition: while visiting my sister, she gave me a bunch of sunchoke tubers and I can't resist planting them (somewhere far, far away from my garden proper). Naturally it felt pleasantly sneaky to "smuggle" them home on the plane. This is a long term project, but worth a try. BTW she cooked up a few tubers while I was there, sliced oiled and roasted, and they were excellent!