What's your "new plant" for 2021?

Every year I try to grow something weird or rare or just something I've never grown before and preferably that I can't buy in a store. Brown cotton, banana melons, Tahitian melons, etc. For 2021, I'm going to try peanuts, and if I can find some, sugar cane and black bamboo (yes I know it's invasive, it'll be in a big container). Already have all of my other seed on hand.

Curious as to what others are thinking of trying for the first time?

 

I grow peanuts and found if you go to the grocery store and buy a bag of raw peanuts ($2.00, much cheaper than seed catalogues) they will germinate and do well. Living in SC boiled peanuts is the thing, the wife cans them so we have them all year long, when my boys were younger we had to ration them as they would eat them all within a month. I'm trying some heirloom tomatoes this year and some different varieties of black eyed peas

 

I was born in NC, and I remember we would go to Myrtle Beach in the summer and there would be guys on the side of the road selling boiled peanuts. I don't remember how they tasted (I would have been <5 yr old) but I do remember thinking they were quite the treat. I wondered about using the store peanuts, good to know!

 

The raw peanuts I shell put them on a tray with damp paper towels and wait a few days for them to germinate and then plant that way I'm sure I'm planting good seed. Do that with my ockra seeds too

 

An NC gal ,, I knew I liked you for some reason,,,,, where 'bouts ??
I remember my Dad growing some peanuts years ago ,, cant really remember details,, but I think most of them were just doubles , very few 3 nut shells. And the elusive quadruple nut just never happened. Good luck on your trials.

 

Fayetteville.

 

Since the first reaction by the masses to anything remotely alarming is to hoard toilet paper, I was thinking about Lamb's Ear/Mullein. Useful for a great many things besides: Common Mullein- Mother Nature's Answer to Our Toilet Paper Shortage?

 

How much of that sugar cane you need?

 

Charlotte area ,,, and east coast farm country in the summer's here. FayettNam ,, lol ,,,

 

I have lambs ear/Mullen growing wild in my yard. Let it go to seed and then it will come back every year without any work on your part. My sister-in-law has it growing around her mailbox every year.

 

We tried the black pumpkins couple of years ago. Holy molie - those things put out runners everywhere.

 

TBH I don't know. Since I'm really too far north to grow it, I'll have to do it in containers I can move so I was planning to grow a bit a big cattle mineral tubs. I think they're about 20 gallons? I wouldn't think I'd be able to put much in them.

 

Tobacco. I have tried before but I didn’t know enough to succeed.

 

I'm going to try this coming year also. Got some Aztec Wild Tobacco (nicotiana rustica) off of Etsy; after reading a little, it seems like you need to have a couple species to make a good cigar. There are some medicinal properties to it that I haven't researched, and it's also supposedly good as an insect repellent, insect sting treatment, and other stuff. I'm not a "green thumb" type, unless it's by accident, but not expecting a very successful growing the first year.

 

Next season we are going with Sorghum.
Last season, we went with hopi black dye sunflower as our new plant (oil type seed) and the bees cross pollinated it with Giant russian sunflowers down wind. So we will try planting that hybrid as well next season.

 

im doing mushrooms.... im obsessed this year with mushrooms

there are lots of varietes and they grow in 5 week increments. more later

 

Pecan trees

 

Back when I first got into growing my garden I read tobacco was a good insect repellent so I bought a pack of Lucky Strike (cigarettes) and made a tea out of them and sprayed it on my tomatoes. What a big mistake that was killed all my tomatoes within a week (they were loaded with tomatoes) --little did I know tobacco mosaic virus was in the tobacco which kills tomatoes. Just a word of caution

 

Has anyone ever raised bushel gourds ? The gourds do get the size of a bushel basket,they are big. I need to find some more seeds.