Growing Food to Waste It

So you only eat the beans and pods on green beans? And only the sweet potato tubers? And only the mature ears of corn? You may be missing a taste treat and wasting a lot of good food.

There's a good reason we don't eat all of some plants. Tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant and the like, all have leaves that are poison to humans, but many plants are not. Some of the plant parts can be boring to eat or hard to harvest. Some of them you may not know that you can eat them. Some of them are very good, though.

Here are a few common plants with the parts we normally eat and the edible parts we throw away.

• Green beans. We eat the immature beans and pods. We could eat the young leaves and make tea from the dried pods.
• Broccoli. We eat the unopened flower buds. We could also eat the flowers, leaves and stems. The opened flowers taste milder than the buds and young broccoli leaves taste something like cabbage. The stems will usually need to be peeled. If you've ever eaten a cabbage core, you know what a broccoli stem tastes like: Sweet, crisp and tender.
• Sweet corn. We eat the immature seeds. We can also eat the mature seeds ground into corn meal and the young ears before the seeds have fully formed. Corn shoots are good food when they're small enough to look like heavy blades of grass. They taste like corn, of all things.
• Cucumbers. We eat the fruit with the seeds, but we waste the young leaves and the growing tips of the vines. Use them fresh in salads.
• Okra. Seeds in the pods is what we eat, but the leaves are good food, too. If okra gets too mature before you get it picked, let the seeds dry in the pod, then remove them and cook like beans or mill to add to soups and breads, or grind them and use as a coffee substitute. You can eat young okra pods raw, too.
• Parsely. We eat the leaves and tender stems. Don't waste the roots; they're edible, too, and tasty.
• English Peas (shell peas). Pick them young and eat the pod and all. Or pick the young leaves to eat along with the peas.
• Sunflowers. We often grow these just to look at, but sometimes roast and eat the seeds. Go a step further and eat the buds. Boiled briefly, they can be eaten like an artichoke. Sunflower sprouts are edible, too. Pick them when they're just two or three inches high.
• Sweet potatoes. We eat the tubers. Try the leaves and stems.
• Radishes. When we say "radish" we mean the root. We can also eat the flowers, which are mildly pungent, the leaves and the young seed pods. Cook the leaves to eat like greens. They're edible raw, but the hairy texture is not pleasant to most.
• Watermelon. What's better than a cold watermelon on a hot day? Don't waste seeds though. Salt and roast them on low heat. Use the rinds in pickles.

That's just the tip of the iceberg, as they say. So much of the plant food available to us is thrown away with no thought at all. If you're not concerned about food waste or saving money, try some of these as a culinary adventure. You're sure to find a few that you really enjoy.