Confused and wondering what we've grown!

Hi,

I'm hoping someone can help identify our mystery plants - as far as we can recall, we planted: Cauliflower, Parsnips & Brocolli but these plants that have shot up don't seem to be any of the above, are they something else, are they just weeds?!

All help appreciated!

 

I'd say: Chenopodium album, white Goosefoot
common weed
seeds can live up to 1700 years (dunno if thats true but even 100 years would do:-)
roots can go 1 mtr deep
in some countries they even cook the leaves, but you shouldn't eat to many of them
if you have some geese you can feed them ;-)(that's why the name)

 

Eat em with cheese or some form of absorbable calcium, they block the body's uptake of it. I eat it a fair amount, but take Loveweeds advice about the seeds, they'll be everywhere.

 

Oxylates,

http://www.dewsworld.com/FInDefenseofOxalicAcid.html

don't want to be doing too much for too long. To be fair, its been used as a spinage veg since at least medieval times, only falling out of favour with the newer bigger leaved varieties.

Last case of poisoning I heard of was some displaced folk in the second world war eating too much, it would have sprung up in abundance on bomb sites.

 

Is that Fat Hen?

 

Fat Hen/Goosefoot, there's about a 1000 sub species I think.

I grew one with pink splashes on the leaves a few years back, 6 foot tall. Comes up everywhere now.

 

Yes they taste like spinach , but how many spinach do we eat ? at that stage the tender edible leaves are gone , destroy the plants and seeds before they will take over your garden.

 

Thanks all for your super quick replies. That's a shame, I had a horrible feeling they were weeds.

The strange thing is, we actually grew these from seedlings, planted a bunch of veg in seedling trays and successfully grew many plants. These were the only things that grew in what we thought were the parsnip trays, so I took a chance and planted them out once they'd grown to a couple of inches high (all the seedlings were in an enclosed greenhouse too).

I wonder if it was dodgy seeds, or dodgy compost?!

Oh well, never mind - will try for the parsnips again next year

 

Sorry, didn't notice that was your first post, welcome to Gardeners Corner

I germinate my parsnips in damp tissue paper before planting straight out. They're not too keen on root disturbance.

 

if you had no problems in the other seed trays, then it must have been the seeds
my mum bought grass/lawn seeds to cover a smaller patch and ended up with an abundant variety of weeds she had never seen before in her garden...

 

Hi there Jerodequin,
it's been hard enough trying to grow the stuff you wanted let alone the stuff you didn't. Did any of the other veg come good?
Jenny
hope you like the Gardeners Corner

 

Probably a bit of both, I find parsnip very slow, erratic and unreliable germinators.

 

Thanks for all the welcomes

I've now pulled up the offending plants and found there are 2(!) parsnips growing, and even a few brocolli with very small heads (about the size of fifty pence pieces).

I can't really complain though as we've had success with our other bed and containers, we've managed a good crop of sweetcorn, carrots, courgettes, cucumber, squash, peas, french beans, kale, potatoes, raspberries & strawberries and all from seed so I'm quite happy as a first attempt.

Learnings for next year are to plant less kale, and courgettes as these grew like crazy and to plant more carrots, corn and peas.

The cucumber was not as successful as the courgettes, I'd read they are supposed to be equally easy to grow, but ours weren't anywhere near as productive (still got 5 or so nice fruit from them though!)