The Compost Bin

Image via Wikipedia

Since I’ve got a lot of free space in the vegetable garden lately, I’ve been on the look out for something interesting to try growing. Sometimes I’ll go to the store to buy tiki torch fuel and I wind up coming home with a new plant. That’s exactly what happened this week and now I’m going to try growing kohlrabi.

Kohlrabi definitely seems like an interesting vegetable to try growing. So what exactly is Kohlrabi? Kohlrabi is also known as a German turnip. It doesn’t taste like a turnip though. People say it has a taste that sort of is a cross between a broccoli stem and an apple. I think technically the vegetable is related to cabbage but it must be a third cousin or something because I just don’t see the family resemblance.

I planted them a few feet apart but only because of all that space in the vegetable garden that I’ve mentioned before. You can put them a lot closer together if you’re short on space. The rest of the planting instructions are pretty typical, well drained soil, amended with a lot of compost, heavy feeder.

So what can I do with this Kohlrabi? That’s a good question. I’ve looked up some recipes to try and they seem pretty simple. You can eat it cooked or raw. You can fry or grill kohlrabi with garlic and oil but that’s not very exciting. You can cook and old shoe with garlic and oil and it’ll still taste good. I also found some coleslaw recipes that use kohlrabi instead of cabbage. That sounds good. I’ll definitely give that one a shot.

Well I hope to be able to try these recipes, but that depends if the plants don’t get eaten by a woodchuck or get bombed with several inches of hail. It’s been a weird gardening season so far but hopefully I’ll be able to remember it as the first season that I grew kohlrabi.