I like Golden Purslane, but be aware, it reseeds like the weed it is. Last year I grew many different greens. I have alpine strawberry seeds to try, This year I am trying new root crops. Parsnips, Arat Rooted Parsley, salsify and turnips. Beets hate me, but my carrot crops have been decent, so we will see.

Well color me impressed Amy, I never could grow carrots. Nice tops...but roots more like Queen Anne's Lace than a pretty g-store carrot.

I grow in raised beds, Dbarron, which I think helps (looser soil). They are fairly new and made partly with compost. I think too much nitrogen supports foliage growth at the expense of roots. Oh, and Dawn taught me to keep them on the dry side when first growing to make the root grow deeper looking for water. I have just been lucky with them. Beets on the other hand, I have yet to get one.

Amy - I forgot about salsify! That's also on my list! I'm terrible at beets and my radishes failed twice last year. :( As for carrots, Dbarron, I grew a very dense patch of them in my winter garden bed for the sole purpose of eating them like sprouts. We've enjoyed them in sandwiches and pitas/hummus and I didn't have to worry about the fact that they'd likely never make it as "real" carrots.

I have had bumper luck with planting beets and just ignoring them. It's always interesting to see what does well for one person vs another.

As you know, I'm primarily an ornamental gardener, but I have grown a few edibles here and there. Radishes also seem to be a plant and forget in Arkansas (here in our rocky soils). I've planted them quite frequently for parents in the past and like clockwork, 30-45 days later...voila..radishes.

You may laugh, but last year, I planted spearmint (yes, I know mint is notorious) and I actually LOST it. I think the toxic waste did it in. I planted the nursery grown pot of it...near where the previous owners used to burn (and dump the ashes) their trash.

Late in summer, I told my neighbor about it..and she promptly yanked up three different mint plants (spearmint, apple mint, and horsemint) and handed them to me over the fence. I put them in pots and I have little doubt that I'll have ample mint this year. I transplanted them into the edge of the yard (not in the trash wasteland) a month or two ago...they're thriving.

So, it is possible to kill mint even when TRYING to grow it...I proved it.

I'd like to grow more edibles, but my yard is currently flooded (and it typically seems to be that way from Nov till June) and most seedling size things would succumb to root rot in the early part of the year....so until I get some raised beds build (and invent a magic way to exclude the bermuda grass), I'm out of luck.

Yay! To this thread. I have killed mint 3 times!

Beets
Turnips & Rutabaga

Catnip! I have a very nice size plant of Catnip that I have never taken care of and it just kept growing all by it's self. I have just lately learned that it is good for so many things like a tea for calming down and stomach and fever and a whole list of other things. It makes an insect repellent also.

Amy, Have you tried growing beets for fall/winter? They produce better for me as a fall/winter crop than a spring crop.

All of you who are having trouble with carrots? Grow them the way I do. (1) Plant your carrot crop in the raised bed where you want them. Don't worry. They won't grow there. (2) Broadcast the rest of the seeds someplace where you do NOT want them to grow---like underneath your tomato plants or mixed in with your lettuce, hollyhocks or other flowers or herbs. They will grow just fine there where you don't really want them to grow. The above method works for me every time. (grin) They also grow well in containers as long as you don't forget to water them occasionally.

dbarron, After you invent and patent a way to magically exclude bermuda grass, let us know how you're selling your method and we'll make you a millionaire.

Have you tried growing water cress? It likes the wet areas of my garden (which, after receiving 77.7" of rain this year is, essentially, my entire garden). My raised beds have spent the year as islands in a perpetual pond that shouldn't be sitting where my garden belongs.

I killed mint in 2011's drought. I guess not receiving any rainfall or irrigation for 3 months killed it. I didn't want to water it because I wanted to see if it could survive our worst drought/heat ever with no rainfall. Nope, it couldn't. Now I grow mint in containers only, and I don't have to water them very often in the summer because they really are tough plants in general.

I can't think of anything that's really new that I'm growing for 2015-16 since I already grow a little bit of everything, y'all.

Kate, Horseradish is highly invasive, so be careful with that one. Once you grow it, you'll have it forever. It won't die, you can't kill it, and it grows like mad. I grew ground cherries for a couple of years but they took up tons of space and didn't produce a harvest until late in the season. I decided I had better uses for my ground cherry space and planted fruit trees and ornamental plants in that space and haven't regretted it. I get irritated with plants that do not produce early and often, so persnickety things that are very late to produce get kicked off the island.

One of my favorite new things in recent years was Roselle, a hibiscus plant you grow for the flower calyxes. They make amazing jam and Red Zinger type tea. I dehydrated enough of them a couple of years ago that I can make Red Zinger tea for another couple of years before I grow Roselle again, but I might plant some this year anyway. I also made about a 3-year supply of the best jam we've ever had. It is fruity and sort of reminds me of blueberry jam, but is better. Who knew a hibiscus flower could give you jam like that? They do take up a lot of room as the plants get huge (5-7' tall and 3-5' wide in my garden a couple of years ago) and they are late to produce (autumn) but I can use them as a background plant along the north fence and just ignore them until they produce.

I'm being cautious with my plans for 2016. First, the tons of rain has to slack off some (though I don't want for the rain to completely stop falling like it often does after an El Nino ends) or it will be too wet to grow much. Our entire place is just a big mud pit and that mud needs to dry out before planting season arrives. Secondly, there is a huge mast crop this year, with acorns and pecans simply everywhere. While walking the dogs yesterday, I noticed a whole lot of newly fallen tiny acorns (maybe from pin oaks----I don't have any tiny acorns like that in my yard) all over the roadway and they simply carpeted it. Our entire property is covered in that same way with tons of native pecans and acorns of all sizes. Walking across the yard is like trying to walk on marbles/ping pong balls. Every time we rake them all up and put them on the compost pile, the wind blows and a whole new batch rains down on the ground....and we have 14+ acres of mostly oak trees. Based on past experience, a heavy mast year like that is usually followed by a population explosion among the rodents that live in the rural countryside, so I'm expecting to have tons and tons of squirrels, pine voles, meadow voles, and probably field mice too. If I am to have much of a garden at all, I need to have a lot of rodent control practices lined up....or plant protection practices. The last time we had a heavy mast crop in the fall, I couldn't even grow lettuce in the late winter and spring because the rodents ate every bit of it the minute it sprouted. This year I'll grow the lettuce in containers to avoid having that problem again. No matter how good a garden fence is, it won't keep out rodents that can dig under it. At least lettuce in containers might have a chance.

I'm hoping to have more flowers in the back garden this year as most of my flowers grow in the front garden, but that's about the only thing I'll be doing differently. Well, fewer tomato plants, but we can't be sure I'll plant fewer until it is transplant time. I might lose my mind and plant as many as always. Last year, though, I did cut back some on how many tomato plants I grew and still made/canned plenty of salsa and other tomato stuff, so this year I'll cut back more and I bet I still have too many tomatoes at harvest time, but it isn't the worse problem to have.

Dawn

Dawn, tell us about growing Roselle. How do you grow it? How much space does it require? Where do you get your start? This sounds really interesting!

George

I have Roselle seeds George. 2014 I grew it in a 5 gallon bucket, which it will tolerate if watered enough. This year one in a bucket, one in a flower bed and one in a raised bed. Raised bed got biggest, probably 6' x 4'. I suspect the better the soil, the bigger they get. You can eat the leaves, they are lemony, like sorrel. In the fall you have pretty purple calyxes all over and before they die, the leaves turn red. It's an attractive plant with small okra like flowers. And, being like okra, kind of looks like a pot plant. Pic was taken 10/29/2015.

George, You can direct-sow or start them indoors like tomatoes. There's really no need to start them indoors because most roselles aren't going to produce until fall. I think the plants must be photoperiodic and don't get going until daylength hits the right point.....like Insuk's Wang Kong, for example, which doesn't do anything for me until the daylength hits the right point.

I think I got the roselle seeds that year either from Baker Creek or Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Roselle is Hibscus sabdariffa. My growing experience was the same as Amy's. For ages, I thought I'd never get anything from them, but when they took off and kicked into production, they produced tons of calyxes.

When y'all lived in Mexico, did you ever drink agua de flor de Jamaica? That is the drink made there from the calyxes and sepals of the roselle. It is pretty tasty!

The plants are pretty enough on their own even before they bloom, but once they bloom they are spectacular with tons of flowers that look a great deal like okra flowers. Other gardeners who would see the roselle plants in bloom for the first time wanted to know what kind of okra plant I was growing that produced so many flowers all over it.

Roselle requires a lot of space. Mine got huge in a year that had pretty decent rainfall. I think I had them spaced either 4' or 5' apart and that was about right. You know how I am about layering plants in my garden, so growing beneath them like ground covers I had hot peppers and beneath the hot peppers I had sweet potatoes. That way I got three crops from the same raised beds. I did have to pull the sweet potato vines down out of the roselle and pepper plants occasionally as they tried to climb them, but it didn't take me too many minutes per day to pull those wayward vines back down to the ground. In our woodland and fields, Mother Nature grows everything all together, and not in nice, straight segregated rows. Well, with virtually everything I grow, I do the same thing, and it works for me. It still drives my old farmer neighbors crazy that I don't plant segregated crops in single rows, but I'm happy with my crazy mix of crops.

Dawn

This is great information! Yes, we drank Jamaica all the time when we lived in Mexico. I am definitely going to try this one! Ami, maybe I could get some seed from you.

One of my daughters had some of this tea in our cupboard. I really enjoyed it. It was sweet without any added sweetener. And, I kept thinking, "this sure tastes like Jamaica..."

Something has happened to my Houz account settings. I don't receive notifications anymore. Gotta fix that.

George, If Amy doesn't have any Roselle seed available to share, send me your snail mail address and I will send y'all some. I came across a packet of it yesterday when I was digging through my seed box.

I figured your family probably enjoyed Jamaica while y'all were there in Mexico, but thought I'd ask to make sure.

The roselle jam is incredible. It is the only jam or jelly I've ever canned that I've never given away. It is too good to give away, and please y'all, don't tell my friends I've been holding out on them and not giving them Roselle jam. They just have to be happy with the other canned goodies they get. As much as we love our blueberry-lime jam, apple pie jam, Habanero Gold jelly, plum jelly and peach jam and jelly, we gladly share all of those with our friends. The roselle jam is just for us. : )

Dawn

This rosette I son my list of things to grow this year. And something else new I am going to try to get butterfly bush to grow from seeds. I got about 50 I thought I would try several ways and see which works best. I could get cuttings if the seeds fail.

I mostly do veggies but I am trying to branch out into flowers also.

Well speaking of flowers i planted saffron this fall. Is the Roselle drink refreshing, tropical, soothing?? How would you describe it?

Roselle is also known as the Florida cranberry. It is tart. Have you tasted red zinger tea? I've loved that since long before I gardened. I would say refreshing. Not as sour as cranberry juice (though I guess you sweeten it).

George I saved seeds this year and I have what are now 2 year old commercial seeds probably from Baker Creek or Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. I'm always afraid my saved seeds won't germinate. I have not tested them for germination yet. I would be happy to share.