Garden Talk: Fun plants from the produce aisle

My purple stemed Taros have sprouted and sending up big shoots. The ginger has sprouted as well. The little Edo tubers sent up green shoots.

I bought a papaya, passionfruit and Chocho. The choco is already sprouted so I just tucked it into a pot. It seems to form a nice vine. I looked for guava and a few others at the grocery store, but couldn't find any so I'll have to hitch a ride to the market downtown where I know for sure I can get them front a West Indian woman who has a stall there.

Anyone have any ideas of what else one can buy and grow?

avocado - and check out the california avocado growers website for growing information, and they have cool edible recipes as well as recipes for facial masks etc.

Pebble,
Good idea, I forgot about that one. I've also grown tons of different citrus-pink grapefruit, tangerines, oranges, clementines, jamaican uglyfruit, and lemons. My grandbaby gets me to plant every fruit that has a seed in it. lol I've also sprouted kiwi, apples, green grapes and a pear. I guess by the time she is grown she can say she helped grow these from seed.

Joydie, by the time ur grandbaby grew, those plants u started should be ready to bear fruits :)! LOL!

chocho otherwise known as chayote or merleton need a big space to grow. i hope u got the room and the warm weather to grow them. same thing with the kiwi!

edited to add more info...
Joydie, have u tried growing the pineapple tops. the root easy. i have several going in pots now! once they begin growing they are like bromiliads. make nice houseplant in the wintery months :)!

This message was edited Wednesday, Sep 4th 12:49 AM

MaVieRose, I have 2 pineapple lilies that I rooted back in the spring. I forgot about regular pineapple. I should get one of those too. I can grow plants over winter in my heated sunroom that faces south. I also will have a small heated greenhouse by the time winter approaches.

You know its fun to do these things as it gives children an idea of where fruit comes from in terms of seeds and what the plant they grow on looks like. Alyssa can pinch the leaves on the citrus plants and knows which fruit they are by the fragrance of the leaves. Lemon leaves smell like lemon, orange leaves smell like oranges etc.

She knows most of her vegetable seeds and its the watermelons and pumpkins she loves the most. I then fooled her when I bought a yellow watermelon and she kept saying "no not watermelon, sweet." It took her a while to figure out watermelons come in different colors. She'll be 4 in November. Oh of course she just loves her patio tomatoes, strawberries and raspberries and now knows when they are ripe.

One time I took her to a garden nursery. Was that ever an experience for her. You should have seen her examining all the plants. She could have stayed there all day. So many questions she asked and commented on the ones she liked and didn't like. Then we went indoors where they had the tropical plants. She spotted a 6 foot tall Lime tree and ran over to it and tried to pick a lime. I almost had heart failure and hoped no one was looking. She asked what every plant was and we were in there for another hour. I bought 2 small banana plants that were reduced to half price. She kept hugging my legs and saying, "thank you grand mommom"

Off topic...
I have a ficus tree in my son's bedroom and the tree is really large so I pruned it to look more like a bonsai. One time my daughters and I were talking about family trees and geneology. All of a sudden Alyssa jumps up and runs upstairs. She started calling me to come quick. I went upstairs and she pointing to the ficus and says, "Oh thank you grand mommom, the 'family tree'."

Pommegranates can be grown from seed as well. I am in zone9a and found they were easy. I have read that you should stip away the fruit from the seeds, but all I did was poke holes in the ground and pop them in. Almost all of them came up. Makes an nice plant with an interesting fruit. -Nurafey