Rat-tail radish! I love it and grow it every year.

Asking for things not common in Western culture gardens? Or just weirder stuff? There is almost an endless amount varieties for most of these "common" veggies, if you look around, to keep your interest year to year, but seems like you are experienced.

Ever try "Rat Tail" Radish pods? Here are some purple ones, little bit of radish spice in a crunchy pod. They grow up and out but kinda get floppy.

An old thread, but a lot of interesting suggestions relevant to this topic:

Unusual Vegetables

It has been many years since I was on GW (used to be phantom_white on the forum), I'm still trying to learn this whole houzz website. Thank you for the link. I need to get an updated seed list and get back into trading to save my pocketbook!

I had seeds for Dragon Tail radishes, they came up but my yearly visitors the squishy green caterpillars stripped the plants bare and I never got any pods. Those were my only seeds of I need to get more.

We grow a lot of unusual veggies for a farmers market. Some of our most popular are mexican sour gherkins, Kalettes (my new favorite vegetable), ground cherries, and armenian cucumbers (actually a melon). Also - try purple tomatillos, the red or purple asian long beans, malabar spinach. and miniature white and /or lemon cucumbers. If you grow greens, try senposai (a cross between cabbage and komatsuna) or biera - a portugese kale very much like collards. We also only grow potatoes with colored flesh - blue, purple and red. Everyone else sells white or yellow fleshed potatoes, but if they want the good things, they have to come by us. :)

In recent years, I've been really getting into pickling... and some of the lesser-known vegetables make really good pickles. West India gherkins make OUTSTANDING crisp pickles ("Liso Calcutta" is an improved variety). And if you like dilly beans, try making them from the red Asian long beans (such as Chinese Red Noodle). The beans can be cut to fit the jar size, stay crunchy, and turn a beautiful deep burgundy color when pickled. Those deep red dilly beans make great gifts.

I have Egyptian walking and Welsh onions and cutting celery, along with wild arugula.

I also have some purple sweet potatoes started from store-bought organic ones, but I have let them grow wild and don't get much of a harvest.

I might suggest Shikou Eggplant. It doesn't like heat tho'; my Central Valley California weather wilts them every year - shade cloth helps. I also have Ping Tang Eggplant that doesn't seem to care what the weather is.... summer or winter.

Shikou is 6-8 " long and about 2-3" across, and is extremely creamy when cooked. Ping Tang is very thin and long - 4-8" long and maybe 1" wide. Also creamy when cooked. Neither are the least bit bitter.

Another fun one is Grilling Zucchini; it is more of a short fat zuc that you are suppose to slice across in thickish pieces, then season and grill. I think it also has more body than the zucs you buy in the grocery.

Your garden sounds like a lot of fun. Good luck on this year and next.

"I don't like yellow squash, so I've decided to replace it with chayote."

I missed that comment the first time, and it is significant. If you garden in a climate warm enough to grow chayote (and Moringa), there are endless opportunities available. Some other unusual vegetables I could suggest would be water spinach, winged beans, hyacinth beans, and Malabar gourd. The Malabar gourd, like chayote, is a perennial.

@zeedman Zone 5 Wisconsin I've been looking for a way to use long beans- the vines are so pretty and productive but so far we've been unable to can or freeze them without the beans falling apart. I like dilly beans and I planted a few long beans so I will definitely give that a try. This is my first year with Moringa, it is a dwarf variety and apparently attains an impressive size in one season before frost hits, which for me will be late November. I'm thinking chayote will also be an annual for me but it could prove me wrong. I may give those gherkins you mentioned a try too- I do love a good pickle! I heard that Winged Beans are one of the most nutritious foods on the planet- it's amazing what superfoods you can discover when you stop paying attention to marketing.

@carolb_w_fl_coastal_9b I had some seeds for red celery but they never came up. I have Amsterdam Seasoning celery in a pot on my porch, it doesn't get the sun it needs I guess. I'd like to try the red celery again and maybe walking onions when I move into a place of my own. As much as I'd like to get perennial beds going it doesn't make much sense for me to plant something when I don't know how long I'll be here.

I've got 2 purple and one orange sweet potato growing. I make a DIVINE sweet potato cake and would like to try it with purple taters instead of the usual orange. Or maybe do a layer in orange, one in purple, and one in white...

@CA Kate z9 I have Black Beauty and Waimanolo Long eggplants right now, and boy do the flea beetles make it tough on them. I let wild nightshades come up early in the season as trap crops then pull them up by the roots with pliers later on. All 4 of the plants are still so small right now, though I did pick a small WL last night. Shikou sounds good but the heat and humidity here in TN would probably wipe them out. I didn't know I like zucchini or eggplant til I started getting Misfits Market boxes and began picking things I hadn't ever tried before. Eggplants make a nice addition to a winter root vegetable and cabbage soup, and deep fried zucchini sticks with coconut chili dipping sauce is something I could probably eat every day!

@ekgrows Growing for market is something I think would be fun, but everyone I see doing it puts so much effort into what seems to be such a small return. Getting up at 4am to fight the slugs for mustard greens, using head lamps to pick beans til 11pm or later... then selling the produce for pennies on the dollar for what the grocery stores charge. I do think oddball stuff like colored potatoes and sweet potatoes, multi-colored sweet corns, and culturally specific vegetables and plants would do well in my area as most people sell the same stuff as everyone else (and half of them didn't grow the produce to begin with). I'm going to start some herbs and medicinals and try to sell them spring of next year. The nurseries in my area know what people want but continually do not supply us with the things we ask for- I can do both so why not give it a try?

Nasturtiums, red and pink buckwheats, bulb fennel, kohlarabi, flowering broccoli and cauliflowers, personal sized melons, asian greens... lemongrass, curry plant, lovage, salsify, ginger, turmeric.

My onions are in large pots, if that's any help. I've had them for years now.

And are you sure it's not PingTung Long eggplant, CA Kate? I've grown that one.