The 2009 ASHS Annual Conference

Better known as Luffa actuangula, Benincasa hispida var. chiehgua, and Benincasa hispida, these Asian vegetables are but a few of the 70 or so being grown in Fresno, California.  These little-known vegetables are very common to the 1200 Hmong, Mien, Lao, Chinese, and Cambodian farmers growing them for the specialty markets in Fresno.  Having been born, raised, and educated in the United States, I was really quite unaware of the specialty Asian vegetables until I started working with the farmers here.  I knew about the common vegetables in the cucurbit family but not about bittermelon, luffa, opo, donqua, snake gourd, moqua, sinqua, Hmong pumpkin, and kabocha.  Nor did I know that bittermelon stuffed with rice and pork was really quite good.  Or that the loofah sponge I bought in the drug store was from the luffa plant.  Take any vegetable family and you will find an equivalent Asian vegetable to the common American vegetable.  Sinqua is to the Hmong consumer as zucchini is to the American, but it is generally agreed that sinqua is better tasting. For years the supermarkets have been selling the large globe-shaped American eggplant from the Solanaceae family, not knowing that the elongated Chinese or Japanese eggplants were sweeter and more flavorful.  Every Asian farm in Fresno has lemongrass, Cymbopogan citratus, to sell to the packing houses or use at home.  The plants are set out in March from last year’s culms, which are separated from the clump.  Harvest starts in November, nine months after planting, and can continue for the next year when market prices improve.  They are protected in the wintertime from freezes by covering six rows at a time with 4 mil clear plastic.  Dioscorea batatas, or yamaimo, is grown in long plastic tubes filled with mushroom compost.  The roots can reach a length of over three feet and require a backhoe to dig them out of the soil.  Raphanus sativus var. longipinnatus has the same genus and specie as the common red radish but this 10-18” white radish has a much milder, very pleasant taste.  Along with many of the specialty Asian vegetables found on the farms in Fresno is a wide array of medicinal herbs (many referred to as “chicken soup herbs”) used to cure everything from stomach aches to eye infections.