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What's up everyone? Welcome back to the show. Today we're talking about weird veggies or uncommon veggies, not really weird ones. So this is a question that comes from Bruce and he wants to know just some of the less common vegetables that you can grow in your garden.

And this is actually my specialty, because I really like growing things that are odd, whether that's odd looking, odd coloring, or odd tasting. I like to grow a lot of different unique things that make a statement, I guess you could say.

Sometimes I get a little bored growing maybe a basic purple eggplant and I want to grow a white one or a red one or an orange one. And that's what's interesting to me. That's what keeps me interested in gardening. And so I figured I would cover just a couple unique vegetables that you can grow.

Chinese 5 Color Pepper

Okay let's get into a few of these weird veggies that you can grow. One of my absolute favorites, to be honest with you, is the Chinese Five Color Pepper. It's probably one of the most beautiful plants that I've ever grown in my entire life. It is a hot pepper. It's exceptionally hot. It grows all five different colors of peppers on the exact same plant. And so I have a picture of this on my Instagram if you scroll down for a while and you go on to the Epic Gardening Instagram, you can see it.

The peppers are very small. They're about one and a half, one inch long. Something like that. And they start off light purple. Then they move to dark purple. Then they move to a cream. Then they move to yellow, orange and then red. What's interesting about this plant is the fact that not all peppers ripen at the exact same time on the plant and so it looks like a rainbow of peppers which looks absolutely incredible. It's more of an ornamental plant, to be honest with you, because eating these peppers are quite hot. If you want to eat them when they're mild, I would pick them when they are purple or cream so, earlier on in their life. If you want them to be exceptionally hot, you're going to wait until they've turned all the way red and they will be extremely hot. So I'd be careful if you actually eat those.

Dragon's Tongue Beans

Next one on the list is another one of my personal favorites. This is a bean, it is the Dragon's Tongue Bean. I've grown plenty of these in my life and they are absolutely delicious but on top of that they also look really cool. So, they have these yellow-green pods with these purple streaks. They are more or less pest-resistant and they are actually delicious as well. So, a lot of these ornamental plants or these unique looking plants sometimes don't taste that good. But in this case, in the case of the Dragon's Tongue Bean, it tastes absolutely delicious.

Purple Podded Peas

Now, one more little bonus when it comes to interestingly-colored podded plants. Go for a Purple Podded Pea. Purple Podded Peas are a really cool idea. Most peas of course are green. Go for those purple ones, you'll get a very interesting little color pop on your plate.

Chioggia Beets

Now, next one. Chioggia Beets. These are a wonderfully beautiful plant, to be honest with you. I'm not a huge fan of beets, personally. They need to be worked into a recipe where the beets aren't the feature of the recipe for me to actually like them. But, if you cut into the middle. If you cut a cross-section of the Chioggia Beet, you're going to see red, white, red, white, red, white, red, white. It's a striped color. Looks like a bullseye, very, very cool. If you're a market gardener, really popular at the market.

Chinese Long Bean

Next one is a Chinese Long Bean. So, these are long beans, they will grow anywhere from a foot to a foot and a half long. They're somewhat pinkish in their coloration. They grow vigorously. They need support because they're putting out not only a lot of beans in general but the beans that they're putting out are very, very long. So do not let them get too mature. They're going to become a bit fibrous, you won't really want to eat the outside of them, if you do that. So pick them somewhat early but let them get as long as you want them to, at least a foot long before you harvest.

Glass Gem Corn

Next one, Glass Gem Corn. This one's been really popular over the last five years, I would say. It's kind of come back onto the scene. The Glass Gem Corn, it grows these translucent corn kernels in all sorts of colors. It's very similar to the Chinese Five Color Pepper in the types of color you're going to see on the plant. It is an edible corn, though. So you can actually eat this as well. It's not a sweet corn, so what you should probably do is pop it as popcorn or grind it. So, you can't really enjoy it right off the cob, however it is really cool to look at. It's absolutely beautiful. And if you want, some people I know have actually grown this, dried the seeds and then sold those seeds for a nice little profit as well. So, just another option.

Those are some cool fruits and vegetables that you can grow. Hopefully I covered some interesting ones that you haven't heard of. If there's one that you think I haven't heard of, please send that to me, below!

Thanks For Listening!

If this is your first time reading my writing, thank you! Please leave a comment so I can get to know you better.

My name is Kevin and I run Epic Gardening, a website, podcast, and YouTube channel. My goal is to teach 10,000,000 people how to grow their own food.

I'm a big believer in Steemit and decentralized platforms, so I'm going all in on Steemit, dtube, and dsound. Be sure to check me out there too! You'll find me writing about gardening, travel, health, and philosophy - I can't seem to stick to one topic :P

Thanks and happy Steeming,

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