Plant Camp Monday's

Its Monday again , seems these weeks are fly'n by so fast. With school back in session for many, harvesting the gardens, battling the heat it just seems there's no rest. I'll be ready for the cooler weather and life getting into the Autumn routine.

Glad you could make it to camp. This week I'm going to share another new plant for me. My hubby brought home some unknown plants from school , they had a plant sale and all the left overs were given out. He handed me a box of seedlings with no name

School was out for summer and the instructor was gone, so no name. It was a wait and see. Where to plant, sunny, shade, where? So I chose in between . Weeks went by and they have flower heads.

Drum roll please,the unknown plant is Cockscomb, Celosia argentea .

These are still pretty small, I chose a good place for them to grow tho, they like sun





Well being new to this plant I googled to get info and was surprised to see it was edible. I clicked it on and it was a picture of a chicken head and its cockscomb said you can eat that part of the chicken and it taste like frog legs, thought I was going to say chicken?.

That was the wrong cockscomb for sure. Cockscomb flowers are said to resemble rooster combs so that's why I got into the wrong site.

But cockscomb is in the Amaranth family so there was hope that one could eat this plant.

Cockscomb flowers are also known as Wool Flowers or Brain Celosia, suggestive of a highly colored brain. People eat brains! its still looking good.

Cockscomb has no fragrance, that was looking positive to for eating.

Then I came upon this , In West Africa, Central Africa, and Southeast Asia, Celosia argentea is grown as a leaf vegetable and cereal crop. In southern Nigeria, it is the most important leaf vegetable and is known as soko. BINGO! We can eat it.

But like all new plants I still want to do more research on it before I cook it for super. Like find someone else around that eats it.

Celosia have very bright colors. They have three different kinds of blooms; candle, crested and plume.

I would like to grow the crested variety (Celosia cristata). It looks more like Amaranth that I'm more familiar with.

Here's some pictures of the different types

http://www.google.com/images?rlz=1T4TSHB_enUS312US313&q=Cockscomb&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=-atoTPCsJYGKlwebtqWfBQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CDcQsAQwAw

Native to Africa, America and Asia. Celosia means "hot" in Greek. Perfect for this HOT summer.

So there it is growing and doing well, pretty easy to grow and not much care. I should be able to save seeds.

So those surprise unknown plants do pay off , hubby did good : )

Another fun camp and so glad you made it, see ya next week. I want to try and get some other everyday blogs in but boy is it hard sometimes. Autumn please come soon : )

Take good care
linda