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Comment by rwmj | Hacker News Reader

There are loads of interesting fruit and veg not available in most supermarkets. I'm growing: medlars, perilla, quince, kohlrabi, sloes, rosehips, wasabi, horseradish, kinkan, yuzu, naranjilla, damsons ... In fact the reason to have a veg patch is to be able to source these ingredients.

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>Quince

I have a quince tree I planted. They used to be very common in New England because they contain a lot of pectin. So, prior to the availability of commercial pectin, people mixed them with other fruits to make jams and jellies.

They're hard to do a lot with though outside of whatever you can separate using a food mill. You can make quince "applesauce", butter, jelly, and paste pretty straightforwardly. But because they're so hard and tend to have a lot of scattered seeds (probably depends on the variety), it's a lot of work to cut clean fruit that you can use for poached slices or preserves.

Something my dad taught me is to bake them. Slice a cross in the top, add some brown sugar, wrap in foil, bake for a while until they're caramelly and softened.

You just eat around any seeds.

That's a good idea. That's basically an apple recipe. And pretty easy to deal with the seeds that way.

I love quinces. The best way is to cook them very slowly in sugar syrup (slower the better - at least 6 hours). You end up with an amazingly fragrant dark red syrup.

I don't care for the texture of quinces (too gritty), so what I do is add halved pears to the quinces about 2 hours from the end. This way you get quince flavoured pears - fantastic warm with vanilla ice cream.

I grew up around some quince trees, and my mother made a lot of jelly. It's great, although she did complain that segmenting them prior to the boil was a bit like trying to chop up billiard balls.

(The thing I really miss, though, is wild raspberry or bramble jam. Mmm...)

Yes they are certainly hard to cut up. My wife can't do it.

I used to have a raspberry patch - nothing nicer than wandering out on a warm morning and gorging fresh raspberries - certainly more fun than getting caught up in a bramble.

If you want to make jelly (or quince butter), just boil them until they're soft and process them through a food mill. No peeling or cutting up of hard fruit needed.

I have never actually made quince jelly - to me quince is a stew fruit cooked in chunks the same way baked stone fruit are eaten. A big sharp knife and some strength will get you there :)

Slice in half and bake with pork.

How is the growing of hips separate from the cultivation of the flower? I usually deadhead my roses so the energy goes towards more blooms instead of hips, am curious what you do to cultivate the hips specifically. Do you use neem oil or other methods to keep the aphids at bay?

A good question! The rosehip tree (or rose tree, I suppose) was planted by a previous owner of the house. It has small pink flowers in spring and massive red hips in autumn, so it's quite unlike a cultivated rose. I have no idea what variety it is, but it makes plentiful rosehip syrup. It has no pests at all, indeed no kind of maintenance has been required except to cut it back when it got too large.

> medlars

I love those, too bad they are rarely available in Germany. It's one of the fruits I always show other people if I can.

Have you found any useful guides for how to grow these? I'd love to mimic what you're doing when I have space to set up a garden next year but I honestly haven't even heard of half of those plants! I really enjoyed my failed attempts at growing amaranth and Nicotiana rusticum when I lived in Austin...

> wasabi

I thought that was supposed to be pretty difficult to grow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasabi#Cultivation

I recall reading about some company trying to do so in Oregon and failing at it, despite the climate being pretty good.

I've seen US-grown wasabi at some specialty stores in San Francisco.

It looks like there's actually a farm in Half Moon Bay producing it: http://www.foodgal.com/2014/04/californias-only-grower-of-re...

My reading of that link is it's difficult to grow commercially, which is a long way away from difficult to grow in your own garden.

Could be. Here's one thing in Oregon, not sure if it's what I remember, but I don't think so because it appears to be a going concern: http://www.oregonlive.com/foodday/index.ssf/2011/10/real_was...

"Mountain streambeds are the plant's natural habitat. Though some Japanese wasabi is cultivated in soil, the highest quality product is water-grown, with plants sprouting from gravel-laced terraces through which streams are diverted."

Still sounds tricky compared to a lot of stuff.

Makes it sound perfect for aquaponics.

First year, so I'll let you know. We've grown horseradish for years, and that grows like a weed - it's almost invasive.

There is a UK company which grows Wasabi - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/10/fresh-wasabi-in-the-uk/ - absolutely delicious. Bit of a pain to ship and keep fresh, but well worth it.

I've also found a place which imports it from Japan and the USA - https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/12/more-fresh-wasabi-in-the-uk... - which may be closer to where you are in the world.

This is a good book for people in the UK (or similar climates) that fancy growing something other than carrots, potatoes, runner beans etc:

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/James_Wong_s_Homegrow...

Instead he lists mini kiwis, cucumelons, New Zealand Yams etc etc

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