What New Plants Are You Planning on Growing in 2023

Lisa K

My Botanical Interest catalog came the other day and I ended up ordering seeds for next spring –

Rocky Arugula/Wild Rocket; Windsor Fava Beans; Georgia Southern Collards; Umami Asian Blend; Edible Beauties Flower Mix; Fairy Meadow Flower Mix and Jewel Blend Nasturtium.

What new plants are you planning on growing in 2023?

Megan Venturella

That all sounds lovely! My catalog also just arrived and I was looking through it this morning. I have finally found a collection of plants that grow well in my climate, but I will be trying Golden Amaranth and a few different varieties of okra next year to see what we like best. The amaranth is for the chickens.

gardneto76

@Megan Venturella Let me know what you think of the Golden Amaranth. I looked at it, but already have 3-4 different amaranth varieties. We like the leaves when they are young. As they plant gets older & taller the leaves go to our chickens as well. This year I harvested seeds from several of the plants, as they can be popped in a pan or made into something similar to porridge and eaten as well. They do have to be cooked before eaten.

Lisa K

@gardneto76 I have edible red leaf Amaranth, are all of the Amaranth leaves edible when young?

Lisa K

Lisa K

@heirlooms777 here is the link for Botanical Interest https://www.botanicalinterests.com

gardneto76

@Lisa K Yes all amaranthus leaves are edible, however they tend to get bitter as the plant ages and grows/bolts into having a stalk. And they have BIG THICK stalks like a sunflower if you let it go to seed. I believe you can keep it tender and get several harvests off of it, if you treat it like spinach and harvest the outside leaves and leave the center ones to grow. As long as no pesticides have been used in the area you can do the same with Palmer’s Amaranth, which was called pig weed where I grew up. My new plants I learn to grow often come from learning about from wild foraging. I doubt I will ever long for greens in the winter time here. I like the amaranth because I can grow it in the summer when most greens will not grow here.

Lisa K

Thanks @gardneto76 I may have to consider getting other kinds of Amaranthus. I am very fortunate where I live, I can grow a lot of greens in the winter like Kale.

Lisa K

Last week my Baker’s Creek catalog came and I managed not to look at it but today is a very stormy day so what better to do then look through it. Will post if I buy some seeds … being a seed addict I should say what I buy😁

Lisa K

Of course I managed to find some seeds to buy -

Pink Beauty Amaranth; Lettuce Leaf Basil; Garden Huckleberry; Wonderberry; Wasabina Leaf Mustard; and Aji Charapita pepper. 

Megan Venturella

@Lisa K I’ve grown lettuce leaf basil before and ate it with flatbread and feta. It was so good!

VermontCathy

The main new thing I'm growing in 2023 is a wide variety of tomato types that I have not grown before. While I grow tomatoes every year, I am looking for varieties that will be tasty, maximimally productive under my conditions, and produce enough seeds to keep them going.

This will also let them adapt over time to my conditions. Buying seed every year wouldn't do that.

So in 2023, more than the usual amount of my garden will be in tomatoes. I fully expect 80% of these to die, produce poorly, have little taste, or other issues. I will save seeds from the 20% and go from there!

Lisa K

@VermontCathy what a great experiment! I noticed in the Baker's Creek some very interesting and new tomatoes.

Lisa K

@Megan Venturella YUM! I also like the idea that you can use one leaf on a sandwich instead of putting several small leaves which usually fall out!

heirlooms777

I’m trying to add to my vegetable gardens medicinal plants. I like the idea of adding nitrogen feeding plants in each garden, for example, licorice plants are add nitrogen to the ground. Also trying more local plants, like dandelions. Oh, and edible flowers!

Lisa K

@heirlooms777 I do the same thing and it so far has worked well.

heirlooms777

Nice, @Lisa K . What do you like to grow?

Lisa K

@heirlooms777 I have been growing herbs and common vegetables for cooking for years, but then I started growing all different kinds of greens from different kales to Asian greens. A couple of years ago, I started growing medicinal herbs such as Marshmallow, Mullein, Milk Thistle and many more.

Pretty much I will try to grow anything new and/or unique vegetable, fruits & herbs.

heirlooms777

@Lisa K Nice! I am Going through my seeds for next year right now that I have on hand, and I was surprised that I had a lot of Lori’s “medicinal herb growing guide” already, such as:

alfalfa, (local Michigan!) Beebalm/Bergamont, Borge, chamomile, cumin, echinacea, fennel, lemon balm, Yarrow (white), Ginger root, and the ones that she doesn’t have listed in that chart anise, basil, time, fennel, rosemary, lemon balm, dandelion, lavender, peppermint, mountain mint, Madorom, cilantro. I have not started anything any of these from seed before, or in the case of ginger root, but in her direction she said that they have to be either refrigerated, opened up, soaked, and/or planted in a certain way. So we will see what happens this year. Some, like mint, if I can’t figure out how to start from seed I’ll just get a plant and divide it. I just want the challenge of trying from seed.

I have something like marshmallow, I think, with my native Michigan seeds, but I am not sure. It is called “rose mallow,” and is a local native Michigan plant. Both “marshmallow” and “rose mallow” have the word mellow in it. I wonder if there’s any relation between the two plants.

Besides rose mellow, the other native Michigan’s seeds that I might try include purple coneflower, yellow coneflower, ironweed, little bluestem, marsh blazing star, Prairie dropseed, Prairie Rosinweed, showy goldenrod, stiff goldenrod, swamp milkweed, common milkweed, switch grass, big bluestem, Canada wild rye, cup plant, false sunflower, Indiangrass, and blue flag iris. I only have two blue flag iris seeds, so I’m a little nervous about starting it.

I am just looking at what vegetables and fruit plants to start. I am turning my east facing bedroom into a sun room, taking greenhouse shelves and clear bookshelves and making an “L” in the bedroom to divide the room, and putting only plants and (soon!) seedlings there. Trying to plan everything out now. What fun!

Torey

@heirlooms777 Lucky you having rose mallow. I'm too cold for that. I have marshmallow, though.

Marshmallow is Althaea officinalis. Rose Mallow is Hibiscus moscheutos. Both are in the Malvaceae family. Being mucilagenous, they do have some similar properties such as demulcent, emollient, anti-inflammatory, etc. But I would do more research before substituting one for the other.

Lisa K

@heirlooms777 Wow what a great variety!

I have grown ginger, turmeric and horseradish from roots with buds on them from a local Sprouts Market. I don't have the patience to grow them from seed 😁

Cornelius

I'm going to add some more medicinals this year, I need to stratify them though. I am also going to try a new pole bean (Cherokee Trail of Tear).

heirlooms777

@torey I am in Michigan. Where are you located? What is your weather like?

Torey

@heirlooms777 I'm in zone 3b-4a in central BC in Canada. Bitterly cold right now!

SuperC

I’ll be planting marigolds up and down along both sides of the driveway. A whole package of sunflowers. I’ll be starting a new job and sunflowers seem to take a lot of work as well as caring for five grapevines; three that are Frontenac wine grapes.

Lisa K

Very cool @SuperC!

Seeds for Generation is having a seed sale until tomorrow night -

Our Year End Sale going on right now helps us do that, and you can get a bunch of great seed varieties at huge discounts (up to 50% off!), because we need to get them to you ASAP to make more room for the new stock!

 

Plus, you can get free shipping on qualifying orders, so make sure and take advantage of it on TOP of the already discounted seed prices!

 

Plus, we have a limited amount of seed garlic and elderberry cuttings on sale as well!

 

Year End Sale (seedsforgenerations.com)

This sale ends Tomorrow, Friday night!