Strange Fruit?

Last year I grew Kiwano melons... that was pretty weird. It tastes ok but it's not worth growing again to eat. It's composed of seed and a mucus-like green liquid. It kind of reminds me of an 'alien' egg. I also tried growing Cassabanana last year. The vine got humungous but there were no fruit. I cut it down before it had a chance to fruit. It was just growing out of control.

For this year I don't really have an unconventional crop, just unconventional varieties. I'm growing a mushroom basket and ananas noir tomatoes. I'm growing russian fingerling potatoes. And... that's really about it for anything approaching weird.

I've been growing asparagus for about 2 years now but it isn't really all that strange.

Cajuil....... Or cashew......Or merey....Or marañon.....
Very apple like . Syzygium malaccense as its scientific name.
Java Apple

Kbeitz said:

Cajuil....... Or cashew......Or merey....Or marañon.....
Very apple like . Syzygium malaccense as its scientific name.
Java Apple

Click to expand...

You won't catch me growing that. I'm deathly allergic to cashews. In Florida, I grew passion fruit. Any of you in frost free zones, I'd suggest trying them. Gorgeous flowers and the fruit makes the tastiest juice or ice cream.

Being a southern boy, I was shocked to learn that in MD okra qualifies as exotic. Everyone asks me "what do you do with it?!" (coat it in cornmeal and fry it of course!)

I like growing unusual tomato varieties including the green-at-maturity types like Aunt Ruby's or Green Zebra. I have also grown the "garden peach" tomatoes someone else mentioned already.

I just went out to the greenhouse and it looks like at least one of my Bhut Jolokia (ghost pepper) seeds has germinated. To avoid starting an argument about which pepper is currently the hottest in the world I'll just say that this pepper is certainly top 5 at ≈1,000,000 scovilles. That makes it (roughly) 200 times as hot as a jalapeno.

Some other interesting stuff I'm growing this year includes: Turkish orange eggplants which are smaller than the more common purple/white types and of course they are orange.

As far as obscure crops, many of the things I grow for for research would be somewhat uncommon in the home garden. Among the crops I grow are: Black cohosh, rice, several species of tobacco, and arabidopsis (a small weed used for genetic modeling).

I guess I can also lay claim to growing some of the rarest varieties of tobacco, tomatoes, and a few other crops on the planet since many of the genetically modified crops I grow exist only in petri dishes in a tissue culture chamber in my lab and nowhere else on earth.