- As you can see, I like to grow just about everything I can get my hands on in the garden, but there are some crops that I think, for me are a total waste of time. There are some plants here at
Epic Gardening that myself, Jacques, and Chris all feel, eh, they might not be worth
the time in the garden. So let's saunter on over with the epic dragon
staff to the first crop. (chill music) The first crop that I will
never grow again are artichokes, but not these artichokes. These ones are incredible. As you can see, I've
let these ones flower. Oh, I just got a lot of pollen in my nose, but it smells sweet and
it tastes delicious. No, the artichokes that
I will never grow again are Jerusalem artichokes, also known, and this is part of the
reason why I won't grow them, as fartichokes. I grew them last year, guys, and let me tell you, there is a way to process these things where they don't give you insane gas. I've yet to find that way. So I haven't really figured it out. The other thing is I simply don't think they taste that good. They're also known as sunchokes. The flavor's just not there for me. When I can eat a potato, why am I eating a Jerusalem artichoke? That's my personal opinion. The other thing is if
you plant them in ground, good luck ever not growing them again because they spread like crazy. So if you are gonna try it you're gonna wanna put it in a container. That's what we did. I gotta say, you can grow 'em maybe for the ornamental value. There's some sunflower-esque type flowers that come out of the top, but for me, the flavor's not there, the effects on my body
are there in a bad way, and for me that's why I'm not growing the Jerusalem artichoke. (gentle music) - The first plant that
I'm not gonna grow again is a thorned blackberry. So what I have in my hands
here is actually a thornless. You could tell, because I can touch it. I can touch the leaves. I could harvest from it. I'm not stabbing myself, so that's already a great
improvement from the previous. But basically this whole fence line here was entirely thorned blackberries, which honestly was mostly my mistake. I shouldn't have put thorned blackberries in the primary pathway on
either side of the fence. Everyone walking by always got snagged. And whenever it came to
harvest it was such a chore. We'd end up getting stabbed all the time, smashing berries, the whole deal. So from here on out I'm not gonna grow any
thorned berry varieties. I've grown a couple different
thorned plants before, most famously definitely the blackberries. But before that, I grew a litchi tomato, which even had thorns
erupting out of the leaves. So no more thorned berries for me. I'm going thornless all the
way out from here on out. - As much as I love growing
novelty and rare edible plants, especially ones that look a little funky, I will not be dedicating
anymore space to kiwano, or the horned melon, or jelly melon. So last year I had a couple of plants growing on this tall A-frame trellis, and although they
produced a whole bunch of very, very prickly leaves and stems, which are actually hard to handle, they produced very little in
terms of flowers and fruit. So growing this just for the leaves doesn't really make much sense. I wanted the fruit, so I was disappointed there, but actually, as it turns out, I wouldn't have liked the
flavor of the fruit anyway. After I tore down the
plants when the frost hit, I got my hands on a ripe kiwano, and I tried that, and I didn't like it. The experience was kind of like cutting into a very thick
skinned field cucumber, and then using a spoon and
scooping at the gel and the seeds and eating that. So texture wise, it
wasn't appealing for me, and there were just so many seeds. It was like chewing that with the gel, it was very strange, and it lacked the tropical notes that a lot of the seed packets
say that this plant has. So instead I'm gonna stick
with melons and cucumbers. - The second crop that I won't grow again is a type of cucumber. No, not this one right here. In fact, it is a lemon cucumber. This one looks amazing. This is a Japanese pickling cucumber. You can see it's a big boy right there. Lemon cucumbers in my old epic garden. I grew pretty much in this same setup right next to my front fence, and I kind of threaded it
through that front fence. And honestly, the flavor
is not there for me. It's a very prolific cucumber if you're just looking to
get a win under your belt. It's sort of like a softball size, yellow and very, very prolific. But I find the flavor is very seedy, and sort of just, I don't know, it's not there for me. It's a slicing cucumber, so for me, I'm growing a lot of
pickling cucumbers this year. I'm growing a few slicers. I personally like
cucumbers a little bit more as a pickled product than a fresh product. Of course that might be different for you. But I think lemon cucumbers kind of popped onto the scene for a while. We all grew 'em, and I don't see a lot of
us growing them again, so lemon cucumbers are my second vote for things I won't grow again. - The next plant that I
would never grow again, or I should say I
probably won't grow again, is actually just basic zucchini. So I've become addicted to all the different types of summer squash that are just orders of magnitude better than a basic zucchini. This right here is a Lebanese squash. It is a very delicious summer squash. If you guys have not tried other types of summer squash
variety, you absolutely must. This is much creamier, much denser, much richer, has more flavor. It has less of that
watery kind of grassy note that a basic zucchini was. So I'm just not gonna
grow any basic zucchini if I could grow all these other varieties that I like a lot more. Up in the front here, I
actually have two other types, which are the Lemon Sun patty pan. These again, they have a firmer texture. They're less watery. You can see that the main thing I'm worried about with regular zucchini is that it's just so watery. I don't understand the appeal. It's harder to cook, and the flavor's just not there for me. On the back I actually
have two different types of climbing summer squash. One of 'em is the center cut squash which is become our favorite
at Epic Gardening, I'd say, and in the middle, I have a Korean variety called Early Bulam, which
is a avocado squash, so they make these kind of balls that look like a very dark green avocado. And again, the advantage
of all of these squashes is that they're not watery. They have this much
creamier texture to them, and they just have a
much more rich flavor. So you guys should definitely
try to explore the options when it comes to summer squash, because there's so many
good varieties out there. There's really, in my opinion, no good reason to grow
basic zucchini anymore. - For the past two,
maybe even three years, I have been trying to grow edamame but I've seen very little success. So the first year I got really excited. I bought a bunch of different varieties thinking I could grow a patch, and then taste test the different pods to see which one I liked most, and then I could grow my
own highly nutritious, high protein plant at home. Unfortunately, I never
got to harvest more than maybe 20 pods over the course
of two to three summers. So I'm not sure if the conditions are just not right where I live 'cause I know these plants need a long, extended period of heat. Whereas where I live, we get a lot of weird fluctuations
even during the summer. So instead of soybeans, I'm gonna focus my garden
beds on growing bush beans and other types of beans. And I really think bush
beans are more my style, because they take a shorter amount of time to actually pump out mature fruit. So it's roughly 50 days compared to, on average, 80 days with the edamame, so it's easier to control
your success of sewing. And another plus is that
you can eat the entire pod, as opposed to just the
inside of the edamame. - My third crop that I'm
not gonna be growing again, at least for a while, are any type of tomato
that I chose to grow for how it looked, and not necessarily how it tastes or how it performed in the garden. So last year I grew about
15 different tomatoes in this row right here using three different types of trellis, and some of them were
just not there for me. Like Brad's Atomic Grape didn't work as well as I would've liked flavor wise, but does look beautiful. He's produced a beautiful looking tomato. There was a brown one
that I didn't really like, so I'm kind of going back towards classic, red, slicing tomato varieties, things like sun gold, which is a very classic,
delicious flavored cherry tomato. I would just say, be careful about growing things that look really cool, might not grow well in your climate, and might not taste well in your kitchen. - This last one is a
little bit personal for me and that is Napa cabbage. It's not that I don't
wanna grow Napa cabbage, and it's not that I
don't like Napa cabbage, but I just can't seem to grow it. Every single year, we've tried twice now, both in the fall and the springtime, we grow these wonderful
looking Napa cabbage. They start forming up,
making their nice heads, all the nice ruffly leaves, but those ruffly leaves
mean really one thing, and that means it's the perfect
environment for earwigs. No matter what we do, no matter how good it looks
up until almost the end, by the time we harvest them they are absolutely loaded,
packed, stuffed with earwigs, not to give you guys nightmares. But basically crinkly leaves and things like newspaper traps, they're basically the same thing. Newspaper trap or crinkled
Napa cabbage leaf, they look the same. Earwigs love it. They love hiding in there. And that's why things like a curly kale might have a lot of ruffles, but there's no leaf on leaf stacking, so there's no way for the earwigs to hide. Same with this green chard, they could kind of nibble at the leaves, but they won't nest in there, fill it with their earwig poop and babies, and destroy your Napa cabbage. So I think this is the warning
shot for my Napa cabbage is 'cause I'm gonna try one more time with the fastest growing variety I can with as much protection as
I could possibly give it. But after that, if I can't
get a nice Napa cabbage, I'm done with Napa cabbage, and ruffly cabbages in general. So that's my third one, and it's a little bit of a warning shot, so watch out Napa cabbage. I'm coming for you this
year and it's gonna work. - Malabar spinach, which
has got nothing to do with the spinach that
we're used to eating, is one plant that I've always
wanted lots of in the garden, more so for its ornamental
value than its edible leaves. But despite putting them in
the sunniest, hottest spot so that they can thrive, because they do come
from tropical regions, the plants just never took off and climbed up the
trellis that I gave them, so I never got to appreciate their beautiful purple red stems, the really cute shaped
leaves, and the flowers. But if you do live in a hotter area, this could be a good plant for you, especially if you like spinach, and you're looking for an
alternative that doesn't bolt. So instead of attempting
Malabar spinach again, I will give more vertical growing space to the Scarlet runner beans, which I know will climb reliably, and produce a profusion of red flowers for the hummingbirds and the bees, and I will also get a lot of
tasty edible pods as well. - I know that some of these crops might seem blasphemous to you. Why would you never grow that crop? But remember this is just the list from us here at Epic Gardening, and of course there's plenty of things that we are always going to grow. Dragon Daddy K, for example, is always gonna have
dragon fruit in his garden. It's never leaving. For some of you, that
might not be the case, so if you think we missed
something or we're totally wrong, let us know down on the comments, and until next time, good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.
