Our Vegetable Wish List for 2025

The farther we travel into the future, the more fruits and vegetables we get. Five years ago, had you ever heard of kale raab? Kale sprouts? Limequats? Probably not! Does their existence make you feel excited about the future of vegetable husbandry? Maybe!

While the following may all be completely impossible given the laws of food science, we’ve drafted a few ideas for vegetable/fruit hybrids we’d be very happy to see at 2025 farmers markets. Be sure to share your own hopes and dreams in the comments, too!

Broccolettuce

Just like broccoli, only instead of little nubbins sprouting out from each stalk, it’s little leaves. Basically like kale, but more time-intensive to prep, and softer. Perfect for a light snack of microsalad! Most importantly, extremely fun to say.

Tomato peppers

Okay, really not sure why this isn’t a thing yet, but it’s just a mashup of tomatoes and peppers. Red and sweet and they’re around in July. Would make classic ratatouille a whole lot easier.

Celerychokes

These are the adorable offspring of celery root and sunchokes. They come around in October, and they’re small, light green on the inside, and adorable. Local gastropubs will be gratin-ing the heck out of them. They have the vegetal sweetness of celery and the earthiness of sunchokes, and they don’t make you fart. Your mom thinks they are great in soups, and she’s right.

Summer Potato Squash

Summer squash is great! But it can turn to mush if you don’t treat it right, and then you’re left with a pan of watery yellow mush. These summer potato squash look like fingerling potatoes, only they’re yellow and their flesh is a bit softer. But they will still hold their own in a sauté. Great on pizza.

Caramatoes

Tomato skins filled with carrot juice. Now that’s a pop of flavor if I’ve ever tasted one!

Parsley Cucumber

A godsend to tabbouleh-makers and anyone averse to the process of washing herbs. These are long, slim, parsley-flavored cucumbers with green leaves at their tips that are precious and delicate like zucchini flowers.

Fava Peas

Basically these are fava beans but each bean doesn’t have that pesky extra layer of skin around them, so they are far easier to cook and prep, and therefore guaranteed to become everyone’s favorite spring vegetable.

Rampheads

Fiddleheads married with ramps. No idea how this would actually work since both are wild, but hey, who knows. Every food publication is required to write ten articles about them between April 1 and May 15 of each year. Very rare and expensive. Tastes like a tiny sweet baby leek that you threw a clump of dirt on.

Eggplant Parm Sprouts

Okay, get this: They’re like alfalfa sprouts, only at the end of each little stalk is a bite of eggplant parm. Revolutionary for catering companies across America. Quickly co-opted by Trader Joe’s.

What vegetable hybrid do you want scientists to get to work on right away? Share with us in the comments!