Do you grow anything uncommon?

I do, but maybe not what you are looking for Mabel. I grow wallnut trees over here in Ireland, in my back garden.

But first why. as a kid growing up in the 1950s wallnuts were a saught after nut among us young boys. To find a wallnut tree was a quest in itself. You see they are such a slow growing tree that they get smothered out by other trees aqnd are very rare. For example, most wallnut trees grow 3 or 4 inches a year. A willow will grow seven feet in a year. Nevertheless one could find them here and there, but no more than ten in a huge city.

We harvested early, just before they fell naturally when the rooks (birds) got them before us. We used sticks and rocks to knock them of the branches and if there were a few of us at it a split head from another's stick or stone as you were retrieving fallen nuts or your stick occasionally happened. These early nuts had to be taken out of their green outer shells. These would stain your hands like someone who smoked heavily. Ever see such brown-fingers? This brown stain could not be washed away. It too time to wear off. You then had to break the hard brown shell to get at the nut. Then there is a skin on the inner core that had to be peeled off to get at that pure white prize that tasted like more.

The most memorable of all wallnut trees was the one in the church grounds. If you were on to serve 7.30 am Mass you would be first to get any nuts that fell overnight in september. Then there were those in the Christian Brothers estate that we found. It was beside a small lake. My pal and I used to stand on a bridge and go through that long process to get to the bit you eat and guess what? We would throw it into the water as a sacrifice to get some 'poor soul' out of Purgatory.

40 years later I took it into my head that I would love to have a wallnut tree of my own. I simply got a half-dozen nuts from a tree I had my eye on in a nearby garden. I planted the nut and to my surprise up came four tiny trees, reaching about 3 inches that year. Now a wallnut tree can reach 300 years old and grow to a fair height so I out planted the little trees in a golfcourse ground. Since then, every year I plant about ten and get about five healthy trees that I sneak off and plant in parks and places like that.

Now I do not expect to live long enough to ever see nuts on them, but at least I will leave a legacy of wallnut trees behind me in Dublin. I know of not one other tree planted or grown here since I was a kid. Indeed I never see kids looking for wallnuts from trees that I still know of and visit every year. It is a thing of the past. They now buy them in bulk in the supermarket, dry tasteless nuts. Few will ever have experienced the taste of a fresh recently fallen wallnut in their lives. For me, and my pal, both of us now 70, not 7, still hope a few souls got out of Purgatory thanks to a few of God's wallnuts.

Really great to hear cassini!

-Purple potatoes.  

-I actually have a garden bed where I'm trying to grow "wild onions" by seed.  They're good with eggs.  

-I've been encouraging poke salat growth on the side of my house, and I've been cultivating a patch of local Oklahoma sage for the past few years.  

-I've also been toying with the idea of making a special place for sow thistle.  The rabbits love that stuff.

There is a PawPaw tree in our backyard...I don't know how it got there, because it is the only one I have seen in the forest (my backyard is a forest).

The tree is right next to the house, in the shade, I don't know how it has grown to be so big, it was probably 15 feet tall 3 years ago, now it is over 30 feet tall.  

The tree has about 40 fruits a year, they just fall right on the ground in the spring and summer.  

Probably a passing bird has dropped the seed. With the right climate pawpaws grow like weeds. It's grown tall because it's in the shade and is reaching for the sun.