Was inspired to try growing water chestnuts for myself by recent trip to China, where timed with the moon festival, a rather alien looking vegetable was sold by street vendors on nearly every corner.
I was served this delicacy at a small rural restaurant just outside Wuhan where I discovered it was a type of water chestnut - the water caltrop or horned water chestnut.
This version had a hard outer shell that had to be cracked open with ones teeth - so i've opted to grow the common water chestnut Eleocharis dulcis which is an aquatic sedge with edible corms which have a soft brown skin that can be peeled and then they are ready for eating.
Water chestnuts are grown in a similar way to rice in Asia - within flooded paddy field type situations - so by all accounts an old bathtub with 10cm of flooded water at top over a good quality rich soil will be perfect. So, old baths put to good use - I like that kind of up-cycling!
Then the corms arrived with new shoots in the post - nothing better than receiving tiny parcels of life through NZ Post wrapped up in a box - best mail ever to open!!
Once unwrapped you can see last years corms that the small plants have started to re-sprout from.
So, in the bath they go and we'll see what happens over the coming months - apparently 6 per bath will be plenty and they are supposed to grow like crazy - here's hoping we'll have fresh water chestnuts in autumn to stir fry!
They have pride of place next to the bath dedicated to my nettle crop - which is doing particularly well so far this spring.
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