In December 2011, Cornell Vegetable Program Specialist Robert Hadad and Jim Ochterski, CCE of Ontario County, held an ethnic vegetable workshop in Canandaigua, NY. More than 40 farmers attended an all day workshop on the production and marketing of various types of vegetables representing a broad ethnic background. The range of what is available can be as tomatoes, peppers, and squash we are familiar with known by different names by varying cultural communities. Other types of vegetables are quite unique and exotic. As new ethnic groups move into the regions across the state, the marketplace opens up a bit wider to new and exciting vegetables to grow and sell.

The interest from the attendees in exploring growing ethnic vegetables was quite high coming out of the workshop. With a little funding from the Western NY CCE Association group, Robert Hadad launched a two year ethnic vegetable variety and marketing trial. The focus is to see how well assortments of vegetables that represent some different nationalities perform here in WNY under our wildly fluctuating weather conditions and also to see how growers can market these new vegetables, how customers respond to them at the market, and what is needed to reach targeted communities perhaps.

A written overview of the trial is provided below, a list of ethnic vegetable names and seed sources, as well as a presentation providing photos and information on the different greens featured in the trial.


Ethnic Greens Trial Overview (pdf; 312KB)