Edible parts...

It's buggy, hot, and rainy... hard to grow leaf plants like chard, spinach, lettuce. Which brings us to... what can you eat from all that green stuff growing in your garden... I'll emphatically recommend the new, reddish leaves and tips of sweet potatoes. Batatas are rampant growers and it's easy to gather a few handfuls of leaves a day without really slowing the growth of your sweet potatoes. The leaves are tenderer than spinach with a perfectly nice, slightly nutty flavor. I throw them in soups and larb all the time. I've never tried the leaves of cowpeas, but I plant to, as I have a large batch of volunteers growing in a corner of my yard...

Vegetable	Common Edible Parts	Other Edible Parts
Beans, snap	pod with seeds	leaves
Beans, lima	seeds	pods, leaves
Beets	root	leaves
Broccoli	flower	leaves, flower stem
Carrot	root	leaves
Cauliflower	immature flower	flower stem, leaves
Celery	leaf stems	leaves, seeds
Corn, sweet	seeds	young ears, unfurled tassel, young leaves
Cucumber	fruit with seeds	stem tips and young leaves
Eggplant	fruit with seeds	leaves edible but not flavorful
Kohlrabi	swollen stem	leaves
Okra	pods with seeds	leaves
Onions	root	young leaves
Parsley	tops	roots
Peas, English	seeds	pods, leaves
Peas, Southern	seeds, pods	young leaves
Pepper	pods	leaves after cooking, immature seeds
Potatoes, Sweet	roots	leaves and stem shoots
Radish	roots	leaves
Squash	fruit with seeds	seeds, flowers, young leaves
Tomato	fruits with seeds	----------
Turnip	roots, leaves	----------
Watermelon	fruit -- interior pulp and seeds	rind of fruit

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Note: This article reprinted from Vegetable Production & Marketing News, Dr. Frank J. Dainello, editor, April, 2002

Papaya...Spring rains........

Remember when Florida had a dry season, fires, arid days of June? No longer... 

During a brief break in the rain, I added a papaya to my dooryard orchard... Right now, going strong in my garden: Peppers (hybrid banana), okra, eggplant, small-bodied tomatoes, leeks, oregano, thyme, rosemary... I transplanted some Malabar spinach to replace a flagging tomato plant. Experimenting with basil, trying to find SOMETHING reliable for the Florida garden in summer, so I planted some Eritrean basil seeds from Southern Exposure. (I like Thai basil well enough, but it's quite camphor-y!)

My limas and southern peas haven't yet begun to produce.

Nothing going on in the fruit world in June... my guavas, grapes, pineapples, persimmons, and Nesbit grapes are ripening but months from harvest.......