Growing health food plants- How to make so-so food taste delicious-(newer post)

3 plants got covered in white flies. took off most of the leaves for lunch. sprayed the rest of the 3 with insecticide; 1st time i used it. plan is to kill them so they won't spread and i will not eat any more leaves from the 3.
Giant grasshopper(4") on another. These buggers are hard to kill. Years ago i put 1 on a block and put a 35# block on top of it. Took it off, and it walked away :shock:
So now i get my leather gloves, and twist its head off :twisted:
If the bugs get real bad, i'll harvest the greens, blanch, and freeze.
 
I'd prefer to get bit by the bugs than eat broccoli three times a day. My neighbor has been growing tiny little 'maters. Some of them are purple, not sure what's up w/ that. They actually taste sorta like the tomatoes of olden times.

I had a LOT of trouble w/ wasps in Florida. Turns out they are afraid of hornets, their arch enemies. Probably the only thing on earth they're afraid of. Rather than pay $8 for the plastic fake hornet nests, I wadded up some small brown paper bags to look like them and strung them in several places on the porch near the bush the wasps had taken over. Took about a week but they went away! It works.

Never did figure out anything that a roach was afraid of. The little German ones will actually charge you if you get them running. Then there were the flying waterbug roach things that were right out of a horror movie. You name it, if it's alive in Florida, it wants to get at you. Here in Tucson, it's just stuff like scorpions, bobcats, poisonous snakes, mountain lions....all of which I prefer to wasps and flying waterbugs the size of a Chihuahua .
 
momus
thanks for the tips on the wasps hating hornets :D
broccoli up to 3 times a WEEK for me is enough. It is their greens that i like 3x a day! BIG difference! :shock:
Same with beets. 3x a week is plenty, but the greens taste good every day w/meals. Except beet greens contain oxilates which can, in some people cause kidney stones. :eek:
I take 3-4 leaves, about 1 ounce, chop and mix into rice, potato, or lintels. So a total per day of 3 or 4 ounces. They really disappear when cooked. I was intrigued about greens when Dr Essylstyn proved thru a scientific study that heart disease could be reversed by, among other things, eating a lot of raw greens :shock: So i was looking for a tasty way to add them to my diet.
 
i don't know what happened, but those wasps are gone, empty nest :shock:
(covid 19?) :lol:
still eating greens 3x a day 8)
 
Fun fact about typical North American wasps: the adults are vegetarian. Another, less fun fact: their offspring are carnivorous.
 
All the broccoli plants in full sun are dead :( They died a month ago; i'm surprised they lasted this long :thumb:
BUT i put some in the shade of my sycamore tree as an experiment :bigthumb: they like the shade :mrgreen:
so i'm still getting a few greens.
Ate greens 3x a day until 9-1 :thumb: Now just a few.
Learned to plant next crop in the shade 8)
And i never got tired of eating the greens 8)
 
Been wanting to try growing these for 2 years. Said to be the most healthy vegetable- a tribe that ate these did not get any western diseases :shock: no cancer, no heart disease, etc. Don't know if the variety is the ones i have, or if the story is true, BUT they are delicious without any spices! Extremely rare, i got 3# at .99/lb, a great price (Publix had some last year $4.17/lb)
3 of them are sprouting - only the organic sprout, because they spray others with growth inhibitor, making it hard to grow your own as you have to make clones, called sipes. So this is my new garden experiment. they say it takes months to be ready to plant, so could be ready for spring.
video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yulzgQswS80&ab_channel=SummerRayneOakes
 
2 are starting white roots despite being purple :shock:
#3 as an experiment i cut in half and put the sprout half in water, i'm eating the other half at lunch 8)
 
Here is how i plant "green". the purples are growing roots- 1 in long in 2 days, and the cut in half is also starting roots about 1/4" above the cut.
For pots, i cut in half an empty 42oz oatmeal, and put a plastic bag in it. the plastic lid becomes the bottom.
For soil, i'm using last years pile of composted sycamore leaves mixed with some dirt(sand).
So no trips to the store to get them started. 8)
:mrgreen:
 
Here is how easy it is to start lots of plants!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqtP5U6PAII&ab_channel=CubanGardener%2FSemperCultus
 
so you take off the bottom leaves when you start a new slip in a jar :arrow:
so i cooked it 6 minutes and it tastes good :D like spinach :bigthumb: cooks much faster than broccoli leaves, they can take 1/2 hour or more. totally different taste. contain less oxilates than spinach, but i don't know the exact figures.
 
it is cloudy, so a good day to take a chance planting PSP 2 with an inch or so of roots. the slips grow fast from the whole potato, but the one cut in half is barely alive :shock:
last year this time i tried red malibar spinach, but they died when they detected short winter days.
they say sweet potatoes will grow year round, so this is a test. I'd sure like some of those good tasting greens ASAP. :thumb:
Next day i see the one that had a leaf touching the ground has grown up and away :shock:
Planted 2 more today :D I've never seen anything grow roots this fast :shock: i have 3 tomato cuttings and no sign of roots :roll:
 
i put a jar of slips in the sun and in 1 hour they had white flies :eek:
they didn't find the 4 i planted yet.
morning glories are in the SP family and the backs of the leaves are covered in white, BUT they do not seem to kill the plant. Not at all appealing to eat, however. :bolt:
.
read how wild grape leaves are good to eat :shock: boiled some for 10 min and they tasted awful :evil:
.
UPDATE: have planted 7 slips. 20 slips coming soon! these PSP like to grow fast!
Using shovel to plow over weeds, good exercise :roll:
.
11-1-20 now have 15 slips planted from 2 whole PSP. (still making more :shock:
the one cut in half only has 1
 
Since it is election day, i'm voting YES for more broccoli 8) planted 18 seeds in a row for transplanting later.
Also some extra in small area for experiments :twisted:
A week ago i planted 6 seeds in a pot and none came up :eek: So this time i soaked them 24 hrs and they started to pop 8)
 
so i'd say it is easier to throw a bunch of seeds in a small area than in a row. it was sunny and low humidity and i had to sprinkle water a dozen times a day. and then cover them so the sun would not burn them up.
Last year conditions were perfect, 3 days of drizzle, and i didn't have to do anything. got lucky.
once they grow for a while, they will be easy to transplant. i plan to try some on the front lawn since with the sun low in the sky, it is hard to find a spot where they can grow.
 
gave psp slips to neighbor. have too many :lol: grow like crazy :bigthumb:
broccoli doing fine, but tiny. when a sycamore leaf falls, it could crush them :roll: :mrgreen:
 
So it is stormy/dark clouds expected for a few days. I stuck a 800 lumen LED bulb 6 inches above the broccoli that are bunched together. test is to compare growth to the row :thumb: bulb is a 60w replacement, only 9w, so cheap to test, cost 75 cents each on sale box of 8, had 2 extra.
 
So i have 2 old, last season broccoli plants, 1 barely alive, and it dawned on me :oops: i should make cuttings and grow them like sweet potato slips, as this could be a lot FASTER than seeds, and easier too 8)
The 2 old plants have some shoots so i cut off 2 and put them in a jar. hopefully they will make more shoots, as i left enough leaves on to keep them alive. Not being sure that this idea would work, i found this video 8)
https://www.google.com/search?q=grow+broccoli+from+cuttings%3F&rlz=1CAACAC_enUS604US809&oq=grow+broccoli+from+cuttings%3F&aqs=chrome..69i57.21827j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#kpvalbx=_P9KyX8GSN6bJ5gKk0YUI12
 
Matt Gruber said:
So it is stormy/dark clouds expected for a few days. I stuck a 800 lumen LED bulb 6 inches above the broccoli that are bunched together. test is to compare growth to the row :thumb: bulb is a 60w replacement, only 9w, so cheap to test, cost 75 cents each on sale box of 8, had 2 extra.
Click to expand...

so after 9 days :roll: 2 under the led's have passed the 17 in a row. they like being 1.5-2" from the lamp.
today i started a new test- 1 came up in the pot, and i put a single led at 1 inch, in the spare bathroom.
check back in a week, this is like watching grass grow :lol:
 
i'm so :shock: i gave up on the papaya seeds, planted a month ago. they look great pointing toward the fake sun.
1 baby broccoli leaf burned up as it pressed itself directly on the LED :eek: so i learned that plants don't konw when to quit, like moths flying into a fire. But it grew a new leaf, so it is growing in my bathroom with just 1 one watt led. BUT now there are 3 papaya that want the led. i don't think there is enough light from one, so ..............
 
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