Unusual vegetables for 2015 – The Garden Lady

As catalogs keep coming to the mailbox to be read and as this GardenLady scans the Internet for new and interesting plants for 2015, I thought it might be fun to write about some exciting and unusual vegetables to be considered for this summer’s gardens.

The most unusual plant I have seen this year is a tomato/potato plant called “Ketchup ‘n’ Fries“Â Â or “Tom Tato” (see here). These plants grow cherry tomatoes on top and white potatoes underground on the same plant so that if you have limited space to grow vegetables or you want to grow one plant in a pot on your deck, this is the perfect plant.

There is a heart shaped tomato (see here).Â What a romantic addition to any salad.

Kalettes are a cross between kale and Brussels sprouts.Â If that doesn’t sound like a healthy fusion to eat at a meal! (see here)

Radishes one of the easiest to grow vegetables, now come in a number of colors – red, purple, white, yellow, black and green and some of them have pretty coloration on the inside as well as the outside. How pretty will salads from these be?

There is a white strawberry with red seeds that supposedly tastes like sweet pineapple.Â (see here)Â Also for the artist in you, there are all the different shapes, sizes, colors and varieties of vegetables. For example, tomatoes come in tomato red, yellow, green, orange, white, blue/ purple/ black or striped. Tomatoes comeÂ in small, medium and large round shapes, elongated shapes, pear shapes and accordion shapes besides the heart shaped ones. (see here)

There are different colored peppers. And purple or green broccoli and orange, white, purple,Â lime green cauliflower. And even Bugs Bunny must be thrilled with all the colors of carrots that one can grow in the garden.

With all the variety, no one should have difficulty getting children or anyone to eat their veggies especially if you tell them to play with their food. Why paint by numbers when you can “paint” using vegetables?.

And there are so many different species or types of the same vegetable. For example, one site sells 50 different types of basil.Â Â With all this variety everyone can now be a gourmet chef. One of my favorite poets, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote “the world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be happy as kings.” I do not think he was writing about vegetable varieties, however, with this selection of vegetables in 2015, I think we all should be as happy as kings – if we could just decide which new vegetables to buy and try this year.

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