- As you can see,
I like to grow just about everything
I can get my hands on in the garden,
but there are some crops that I think,
for me are a total waste of time.
There are some plants here at Epic Gardening that myself,
Jacques, and Chris all feel, eh,
they might not be worth the time in the garden.
So let's saunter on over
with the epic dragon staff to the first crop.
(chill music)
The first crop that I will never grow again are artichokes,
but not these artichokes.
These ones are incredible.
As you can see, I've let these ones flower.
Oh, I just got a lot of pollen in my nose,
but it smells sweet and it tastes delicious.
No, the artichokes that I will never grow again
are Jerusalem artichokes, also known,
and this is part of the reason why I won't grow them,
as fartichokes.
I grew them last year, guys,
and let me tell you,
there is a way to process these things
where they don't give you insane gas.
I've yet to find that way.
So I haven't really figured it out.
The other thing is
I simply don't think they taste that good.
They're also known as sunchokes.
The flavor's just not there for me.
When I can eat a potato,
why am I eating a Jerusalem artichoke?
That's my personal opinion.
The other thing is if you plant them in ground,
good luck ever not growing them again
because they spread like crazy.
So if you are gonna try it
you're gonna wanna put it in a container.
That's what we did.
I gotta say, you can grow 'em
maybe for the ornamental value.
There's some sunflower-esque type flowers
that come out of the top,
but for me, the flavor's not there,
the effects on my body are there in a bad way,
and for me that's why I'm not growing
the Jerusalem artichoke.
(gentle music)
- The first plant that I'm not gonna grow again
is a thorned blackberry.
So what I have in my hands here is actually a thornless.
You could tell, because I can touch it.
I can touch the leaves.
I could harvest from it.
I'm not stabbing myself,
so that's already a great improvement from the previous.
But basically this whole fence line here
was entirely thorned blackberries,
which honestly was mostly my mistake.
I shouldn't have put thorned blackberries
in the primary pathway on either side of the fence.
Everyone walking by always got snagged.
And whenever it came to harvest it was such a chore.
We'd end up getting stabbed all the time,
smashing berries, the whole deal.
So from here on out
I'm not gonna grow any thorned berry varieties.
I've grown a couple different thorned plants before,
most famously definitely the blackberries.
But before that, I grew a litchi tomato,
which even had thorns erupting out of the leaves.
So no more thorned berries for me.
I'm going thornless all the way out from here on out.
- As much as I love growing novelty and rare edible plants,
especially ones that look a little funky,
I will not be dedicating anymore space to kiwano,
or the horned melon, or jelly melon.
So last year I had a couple of plants
growing on this tall A-frame trellis,
and although they produced a whole bunch of
very, very prickly leaves and stems,
which are actually hard to handle,
they produced very little in terms of flowers and fruit.
So growing this just for the leaves
doesn't really make much sense.
I wanted the fruit,
so I was disappointed there,
but actually, as it turns out,
I wouldn't have liked the flavor of the fruit anyway.
After I tore down the plants when the frost hit,
I got my hands on a ripe kiwano,
and I tried that, and I didn't like it.
The experience was kind of like
cutting into a very thick skinned field cucumber,
and then using a spoon and scooping at the gel and the seeds
and eating that.
So texture wise, it wasn't appealing for me,
and there were just so many seeds.
It was like chewing that with the gel,
it was very strange,
and it lacked the tropical notes
that a lot of the seed packets say that this plant has.
So instead I'm gonna stick with melons and cucumbers.
- The second crop that I won't grow again
is a type of cucumber.
No, not this one right here.
In fact, it is a lemon cucumber.
This one looks amazing.
This is a Japanese pickling cucumber.
You can see it's a big boy right there.
Lemon cucumbers in my old epic garden.
I grew pretty much in this same setup
right next to my front fence,
and I kind of threaded it through that front fence.
And honestly, the flavor is not there for me.
It's a very prolific cucumber
if you're just looking to get a win under your belt.
It's sort of like a softball size,
yellow and very, very prolific.
But I find the flavor is very seedy,
and sort of just,
I don't know, it's not there for me.
It's a slicing cucumber, so for me,
I'm growing a lot of pickling cucumbers this year.
I'm growing a few slicers.
I personally like cucumbers a little bit more
as a pickled product than a fresh product.
Of course that might be different for you.
But I think lemon cucumbers kind of
popped onto the scene for a while.
We all grew 'em,
and I don't see a lot of us growing them again,
so lemon cucumbers are my second vote
for things I won't grow again.
- The next plant that I would never grow again,
or I should say I probably won't grow again,
is actually just basic zucchini.
So I've become addicted to
all the different types of summer squash
that are just orders of magnitude better
than a basic zucchini.
This right here is a Lebanese squash.
It is a very delicious summer squash.
If you guys have not tried
other types of summer squash variety, you absolutely must.
This is much creamier, much denser,
much richer, has more flavor.
It has less of that watery kind of grassy note
that a basic zucchini was.
So I'm just not gonna grow any basic zucchini
if I could grow all these other varieties
that I like a lot more.
Up in the front here, I actually have two other types,
which are the Lemon Sun patty pan.
These again, they have a firmer texture.
They're less watery.
You can see that the main thing
I'm worried about with regular zucchini
is that it's just so watery.
I don't understand the appeal.
It's harder to cook,
and the flavor's just not there for me.
On the back I actually have two different types
of climbing summer squash.
One of 'em is the center cut squash
which is become our favorite at Epic Gardening, I'd say,
and in the middle, I have a Korean variety
called Early Bulam, which is a avocado squash,
so they make these kind of balls
that look like a very dark green avocado.
And again, the advantage of all of these squashes
is that they're not watery.
They have this much creamier texture to them,
and they just have a much more rich flavor.
So you guys should definitely try to explore the options
when it comes to summer squash,
because there's so many good varieties out there.
There's really, in my opinion,
no good reason to grow basic zucchini anymore.
- For the past two, maybe even three years,
I have been trying to grow edamame
but I've seen very little success.
So the first year I got really excited.
I bought a bunch of different varieties
thinking I could grow a patch,
and then taste test the different pods
to see which one I liked most,
and then I could grow my own highly nutritious,
high protein plant at home.
Unfortunately, I never got to harvest more than
maybe 20 pods over the course of two to three summers.
So I'm not sure if the conditions
are just not right where I live
'cause I know these plants need
a long, extended period of heat.
Whereas where I live,
we get a lot of weird fluctuations even during the summer.
So instead of soybeans,
I'm gonna focus my garden beds on growing bush beans
and other types of beans.
And I really think bush beans are more my style,
because they take a shorter amount of time
to actually pump out mature fruit.
So it's roughly 50 days compared to,
on average, 80 days with the edamame,
so it's easier to control your success of sewing.
And another plus is that you can eat the entire pod,
as opposed to just the inside of the edamame.
- My third crop that I'm not gonna be growing again,
at least for a while,
are any type of tomato that I chose to grow
for how it looked,
and not necessarily how it tastes
or how it performed in the garden.
So last year I grew about 15 different tomatoes
in this row right here
using three different types of trellis,
and some of them were just not there for me.
Like Brad's Atomic Grape didn't work
as well as I would've liked flavor wise,
but does look beautiful.
He's produced a beautiful looking tomato.
There was a brown one that I didn't really like,
so I'm kind of going back towards
classic, red, slicing tomato varieties,
things like sun gold,
which is a very classic, delicious flavored cherry tomato.
I would just say, be careful about
growing things that look really cool,
might not grow well in your climate,
and might not taste well in your kitchen.
- This last one is a little bit personal for me
and that is Napa cabbage.
It's not that I don't wanna grow Napa cabbage,
and it's not that I don't like Napa cabbage,
but I just can't seem to grow it.
Every single year, we've tried twice now,
both in the fall and the springtime,
we grow these wonderful looking Napa cabbage.
They start forming up, making their nice heads,
all the nice ruffly leaves,
but those ruffly leaves mean really one thing,
and that means it's the perfect environment for earwigs.
No matter what we do,
no matter how good it looks up until almost the end,
by the time we harvest them
they are absolutely loaded, packed, stuffed with earwigs,
not to give you guys nightmares.
But basically crinkly leaves
and things like newspaper traps,
they're basically the same thing.
Newspaper trap or crinkled Napa cabbage leaf,
they look the same.
Earwigs love it.
They love hiding in there.
And that's why things like a curly kale
might have a lot of ruffles,
but there's no leaf on leaf stacking,
so there's no way for the earwigs to hide.
Same with this green chard,
they could kind of nibble at the leaves,
but they won't nest in there,
fill it with their earwig poop and babies,
and destroy your Napa cabbage.
So I think this is the warning shot for my Napa cabbage is
'cause I'm gonna try one more time
with the fastest growing variety I can
with as much protection as I could possibly give it.
But after that, if I can't get a nice Napa cabbage,
I'm done with Napa cabbage,
and ruffly cabbages in general.
So that's my third one,
and it's a little bit of a warning shot,
so watch out Napa cabbage.
I'm coming for you this year and it's gonna work.
- Malabar spinach, which has got nothing to do
with the spinach that we're used to eating,
is one plant that I've always wanted lots of in the garden,
more so for its ornamental value than its edible leaves.
But despite putting them in the sunniest, hottest spot
so that they can thrive,
because they do come from tropical regions,
the plants just never took off
and climbed up the trellis that I gave them,
so I never got to appreciate
their beautiful purple red stems,
the really cute shaped leaves, and the flowers.
But if you do live in a hotter area,
this could be a good plant for you,
especially if you like spinach,
and you're looking for an alternative that doesn't bolt.
So instead of attempting Malabar spinach again,
I will give more vertical growing space
to the Scarlet runner beans,
which I know will climb reliably,
and produce a profusion of red flowers
for the hummingbirds and the bees,
and I will also get a lot of tasty edible pods as well.
- I know that some of these crops
might seem blasphemous to you.
Why would you never grow that crop?
But remember this is just the list
from us here at Epic Gardening,
and of course there's plenty of things
that we are always going to grow.
Dragon Daddy K, for example,
is always gonna have dragon fruit in his garden.
It's never leaving.
For some of you, that might not be the case,
so if you think we missed something or we're totally wrong,
let us know down on the comments,
and until next time,
good luck in the garden and keep on growing.