In a previous post, we gave you a sampling of some of the specialty type vegetables that we grow, including bitter melon, bok choy, callaloo, Napa Cabbage, Cee Gwa and Chinese water spinach. By popular demand, here are some pictures and details about a few more of the asian or specialty ethnic vegetables that we sell as box plants for your gardens. These are harder to find vegetables, but gaining in popularity with our local area.

Fuzzy Squash is so named because the fruit is fuzzy when it is young, but has a thick white sweet flesh that is tasty. The fully grown crop is not sweet but it does lose the heairs in favour of a waxy coating that enables it to have a long shelf life. The Aisan name for fuzzy squash is Dit Gwa, but many know it as a type of winter melon and it is widely grown throughout Aisa.

Shanghai Bok Choy or Green Bok Choy is essentially a “baby” bok choy with pale green leaves and spoon-shaped stems, a miniaturized version of Bok Choy. It is valued for its tenderness but some might say that it isn’t as sweet as some of the other varieties of Bok Choy.

Jwala Finger Hots or Indian Hot Peppers are a very good hot pepper that dries nicely. It is an extra-hot variety that is very popular in Indian cooking. The plants are prolific and easily grown in the ground or pots. The peppers are about as long as your finger and a beautiful red colour when they are mature.

Winter Melon is known by many names including Dong Gwa and Dong Gua and is used extensively in Chinese cooking. Winter Melon are the largest of the cold season melon and in stores they are often sold by the slice due to their large size. If you grow your own and harvest them, whole winter melon have a long shelf life – they can be kept for months in a cool place.

To grow Winter Melon, you need a lot of sun and while they are a food staple in China, they are quickly gaining popularity here in the greater Toronto area also. At Jade Gardens and Greenhouses, we grow the long and round varieties of Winter Melon.

The Oriental Long Eggplant or Aisan Eggplant are native to tropical Asia but are quickly gaining in popularity in North America. Oriental eggplant are said to have thinner skins and not so many seeds, which makes their flavour more delicate and less bitter. So, overall, Oriental Eggplants have a sweet and delicious taste and can be prepared in a multitude of ways, including stuffing, baking and sauteeing, making them a super choice for your home vegetable garden.

For those who don’t know it already, the Scoville scale is a measurement of the spicy heat of a chili pepper. The Scotch Bonnet pepper has an intense heat rating of 100,000 to 350,000 Scoville units. Compare this to most regular jalapeño peppers that have a heat rating of 2,500 to 8,000 Scoville units – this is one spicy pepper.

The Scotch bonnet has a sweeter flavor than havaneros and is often used in Caribbean recipes. Colours range from orange to bright red and and a very flavourful choice.

Asian Flat Cabbage is round and relatively flat. It has a stronger flavour and is slightly tougher in texture. Chinese flat cabbage suits quick moist cooking methods or the young centre leaves can be used raw in a salad.

We carry a great assortment of vegetables, including the staple of summer: peppers. Green, red, yellow, orange, sweet – we’ve got them all. But, if you’re looking for a little spice, or something a little different to try, we’ve also got a fantastic array of hot and unusual varieties of peppers. Try: Hot Paper Lantern, Peter Pepper Male, Carolina Reaper, Ghost Pepper, Trinidad Scorpion or Trinidad Butch T.

 

 

NEW FLOWERS & VEGETABLE PLANTS

• Sesame Plant
• Edamame – edible soybean
• Callallou Red & Green Leaf
• Karela – Indian Bitter Melon
• Mammoth Russian Sunflower
• Sunspot Sunflower

Varieties of Heirloom Tomatoes available at Jade Gardens include:

• Brandywine
• Cherokee Purple
• Old German
• Pineapple
• Valencia
• Heirloom Rainbow Blend
• Black Krim
• Oxheart Red

We serve a special clientele in the local areas of Milton, Georgetown, Oakville, Mississauga and Burlington, who want to grow some of the more unique and difficult to find asian type vegetables. We grow these more specialty type plants from seed for our customers to grow in their own gardens. The following are just a sample of some of the ethnic type vegetable plants that we grow and sell as box plants.

We grow Bitter Melon including the Indian [Karela] and Chinese [Foo Gwa] varieties. While not really well known in North America yet, this vegetable is a member of the gourd family and is liked by many for its bitter flavor. Many people have developed quite a palate for bitter foods and this vegetable is considered the most bitter among all edible vegetables. You would usually eat Bitter melon cooked in the green or early yellowing stage. Some people also eat the young shoots and leaves of the plant as greens. The Bitter melon is very popular among Asians in stir fries, soups and even in tea and in Northern India there are also many popular recipes calling for bitter melon. Whether you’ve got a favourite recipe already that calls for Bitter Melon, or you would like to introduce a new and unusual vegetable into your family’s diet, you can find Bitter melon plants at Jade Gardens and Greenhouses and they should be ready for planting in the ground after the danger of frost is past.

Bok Choy is a Chinese vegetable found in many traditional Chinese dishes. It is very nutritious, high in Vitamins A, C and calcium. Though it is classified as a cabbage, its tender green leaves fit easily in most stir fries, salads and soups. The inner leaves are more palatable in a salad and the tougher outer leaves are better cooked. Bok Choy is gaining popularity and is getting easier to find at farmer’s markets and in local grocery stores, but why not take a stab at growing it yourself – just can’t get any fresher. Box plants of Bok Choy will be available in the late spring, for planting in your garden!

Callaloo is a popular Caribbean dish in which the main ingredient is a green leafy vegetable called Amaranth. It has become common to just refer to the actual amaranth leaf as Callaloo. Callaloo is much like spinach, but its fans say that it is not as sour. Callaloo is purported to be high in dietary fiber, iron and calcium, as well as being high in vitamins C, A, lutein, folic acid as well as a host of other minerals.

The Chinese Cabbage or Napa Cabbage is a popular leaf known for being very tender and delicious. Napa Cabbage originated near the Beijing region of China, but it has become quite popular and easily found in Western grocery stores. It is a great choice to try in your own vegetable garden. The flavour of Napa Cabbage has been compared to bok choy, but is said to be more delicate. It is a popular ingredient in many stir fries, with other ingredients like tofu, mushrooms and zucchini.

This Chinese Okra or Cee Gwa is actually a variety of squash. It grows long and cylindrical and though it can grow as long as 8 to 10 feet, it should be harvested when it is less than 1 ft. Cee Gwa has a dark green outer skin and it is ridgy. Though it looks similar to a cucumber, if picked when it is only about 6 inches the inside pulp is very similar to a zucchini in flavor. If allowed to grow longer, it becomes more bitter tasting and less flavorful. Cee Gwa or Chinese okra can be easily added to salads and stir-fried foods as it takes on the flavours of the other ingredients. While many asian countries prefer to harvest this type of squash young, and to ingest it, interestingly, in some countries this squash is not harvested until it is much more mature and has formed a “fiberous” type of webbing, and the webbing is then removed and used for washing. In countries that use Chinese Okra for washing, they call this vegetable the dishrag gourd – just an interesting little bit of trivia.

While it is a spinach, Chinese Water Spinach has the advantage of having long hollow stalks that are able to hold the flavours of the other ingredients they are cooked with. In fact the Chinese word for water spinach literally means “empty-hearted vegetable”, referring to the stalks. The stalks even stay crunchy when cooked, making them more appealing than regular wilty greens may appear. Chinese water spinach is also referred to as Chinese Morning Glory because it has a beautiful flower similar in size and shape to morning glory flowers – another bonus.
While it is still not a complete list of all of our ethnic or specialty type Aisan vegetables, more choices and samplings are available on our next post.