Month-By Month Gardening Plan & Trying New To Us Vegetables

While surfing, I  found a web site which has a month-by-month gardening plan for South Africa. The calendar is fairly detailed and could make my gardening adventure easier.

My plan is to implement the tips where relevant, and we'll see how that goes. To start with, the information provided increases the list of things I could plant this season. So I'll probably buy more seed, plant more variety.

Trying new things

SIL bought me a package of courgettes ( along with the much-disliked Lasagne) and i prepared it for lunch today. I was cautious about it because my mother had never eaten courgettes before, and I've been trying to introduce her to vegetables she had never tried before to expand her choices for healthy meals.

I don't know if i ever mentioned it, but she has diabetes and high blood pressure(worrying levels), so a healthy diet is critical for her. Unfortunately, when I was growing up, my impression was that she had no interest in cooking and vegetables. We used to joke that she would probably list chips (french fries) at the top of her list of healthy vegetable choices. Learning to cook was a survival move on my part, and so was learning about food beyond potatoes/onions/cabbage/beetroot/tomatoes, meat/chicken and canned stuff.

Anyhoo, Mma declared the courgettes as edible and worth including in my garden. I was happy, because we really need some variety around here. So far, the people I grow food for have rejected some varieties of lettuce, radish (had to throw most  of that out), some varieties of broccoli and cauliflower and brinjals (declared edible, but not something to look forward to).

This is why we finally decided when I want to introduce a vegetable they are not used to, we buy the vegetable at the market first, try it a couple of times, and only grow it once we are quite sure that they can have a steady diet of it. I do hope that they'll like turnips though, as I grew them before the agreement, hoping that they will like them and want plenty of them in their soups in the coming winter.

How adventurous is your family about trying new-to-them vegetables? Do they like the varieties of vegetables that you grow in your garden? Or do they force them down because they are good for them, maybe even whine a bit about them?