Here it is the 2010 Plant List

These are the plants that we have ordered and a brief comment from the seed supplier.

1.   Provider Bush Green Bean (50 days) Nothing provides like Provider. For highest early yields, even under adverse conditions, and rich beany taste, old reliable Provider can’t be beat.

2.   Multicolored Pole Bean Mix (60-72 days) Open-pollinated. Multiculturalism in the bean patch. Pick a pole of polychromatic pods! We combined green, yellow, purple and striped varieties of staggered maturity into one packet. Great for those wishing to try all our varieties but with room for only one or two poles, and for CSAs who want to put a whole rainbow into each box. Varieties, our choice, will vary from year to year according to availability.

3. King of the Early Bean (85 days) Open-pollinated. Beautiful mottled red baking bean. Seed propagated from a sample sent to us years ago by seed-saving customer Linwood Ware. King’s ability to ripen early, its capacity to swell enormously when soaked, its utter dependability through hot summers and cool, and its robust flavor won our hearts. We’ve found King easy to grow and heavy yielding year after year. Seed grown in Maine.

4.   Detroit Dark Red Short Top Beet (60 days) “New varieties come and go, but the Detroit Dark Red, year after year maintains its popularity and holds its place right at the top of the list of good midseason varieties,” asserted Stark Bros. catalog in 1921. Introduced 1892 and still the standard late variety for home gardeners and canners. Globular smooth uniform beets with tender oxblood-red flesh.

    Early Wonder Tall Top Beet (48 days) Open-pollinated. Selected for earliness from Crosby’s Egyptian and introduced in 1911. Quick emergence in cold soil and attractive purple tops make Wonder the choice for early beet greens and bunching beets.

5.  Green King Broccoli (85 days) F-1 hybrid. Exceptional tenderness made it the best-tasting of 23 varieties in our trial. King also scored high for its consistent yield of large high-quality 8" heads. Market growers appreciate its uniform ripening. Vigorous plants bear thick blue-green domed heads with rather large beads.

6.   Golden Acre Cabbage (62 days) Open-pollinated. Suggested by a couple of customers who presumably wanted an early open-pollinated cabbage that’s not a pointy-headed intellectual from Jersey. Billed as new, “the earliest of the round-headed cabbages” in the 1928 Jerome B. Rice catalog, a selection of the Copenhagen Market type.

7.   Super Red 80 Cabbage (80 days) F-1 hybrid. Super Red 80 ripens well before Ruby Perfection, with smooth tight round medium-dark red 3–5 lb. heads. Splendid appearance will please market growers. Resists splitting. Tender and crisp with a pleasing flavor.

8.   Scarlet Nantes Carrot (68 days) This old-time favorite Nantes variety with bright orange roots averaging 6–7" proves that good quality is not always expensive.

9.  Over the Rainbow Carrot Mix (48-75 days) If there’s a better carrot mix than this one, it must be somewhere over the rainbow, way up high. We took a good formula called Rainbow Mix, especially strong in the lighter shades of yellow and orange, and boosted it with our own choice of dark orange, purple and red varieties. In doing so, we sacrificed some of the uniformity that our European supplier was careful to maintain, so not all the roots are perfectly slender and tapered. But oh the colors!

10. Sugarsnax Carrot (68 days) F-1 hybrid. A 14" Sugarsnax? If you have the tilth, we have the carrot. Henri C. Jean of Chicopee, MA, boasted of growing one that long and we saw a plate of three of similar size on exhibit at the Common Ground Fair. An Imperator carrot with flavor? We thought that was an oxymoron until we met Sugarsnax, a fresh-market standout with long slender beautiful deep orange roots ideal for bunching. In average conditions more likely to grow 9" than 14. Outstanding in trials and taste tests, it has a tender sweetness that keeps you coming back for more.

11.   Snow Crown Cauliflower (70 days) F-1 hybrid. Nothing comes close to Snow Crown for the second-early slot. Makes cauliflower a cinch to grow.

12.Double Gem Bicolor Sweet Corn (76 days) A classy bicolor sugary enhanced hybrid for the all-important second-early slot, Double Gem’s blocky 8" ears fill well to the tip for a lot of good eating. Rarely have we encountered such sweetness and tenderness in this early a corn.

13.Golden Bantam Yellow Sweet Corn (85 days) Open-pollinated. Upon its release in 1902, Golden Bantam changed sweet corn preferences, overcoming popular prejudice against yellow corn (once called “horse corn”) and ending the dominance of white varieties. By 1934, Bantam had so captured the market that U.P. Hedrick wrote in The Corns of New York, “This has been for several years the most popular sweet corn for all purposes. The name has become so thoroughly impregnated in the minds of the growers and consumers that many of them will not accept anything else.” Graced Burpee’s 50th Anniversary cover in 1926 and Johnny’s cover in 1980.

14.Marketmore 76 Slicing Cucumber (63 days) Dr. Henry Munger’s classic open-pollinated cucumber for the ages, long the leading slicing variety in the Northeast.

15.Swallow Eggplant (51 days) F-1 hybrid. Don’t believe you can grow eggplant in this cold part of the world? Swallow could make you a believer because it is early, producing glossy purple-black tender fruit of the elongated (1-3/4x7") oriental type without the bitterness often associated with larger eggplants.

16.Black King Eggplant (79 days) F-1 hybrid. A fine hybrid eggplant from Takii in Japan that looks good for the main crop. A vigorous grower and high yielder suitable for both greenhouse and open-field cultivation. 7" shiny bulging oval fruits outperformed Diamond in Adam Tomash and June Zellers’ trial.

17.Richmond Green Apple Slicing Cucumber ECO (70 days) Open-pollinated. What’s refreshing and juicy, lemon-shaped and comes from Australia? These hard-to-find heirloom cucumbers. I feasted on them in my 2004 trials and have been wanting to offer them ever since. Beautiful lime-green, they grow slightly larger than lemons with sweet mild flavor that really satisfies on a hot summer day.

18.Small Ornamental Gourd Mix (95 days) Cucurbita pepo var. ovifera 8 kinds of early maturing types, with small spoon, bicolored pear, and small orange most prevalent.

19.Lollo di Vino Lettuce OG (56 days) Open-pollinated. Called by its originator Frank Morton a “distinctive little frizzlehead,” di Vino stands out for its extreme dark purple color that originated somewhere in the Merlot stock seed. Has the beautiful ruffles and classy curls of vintage lollo, but a mildness uncharacteristic of deeply pigmented lollos. Its distinctive lack of bitterness allows the harvest to extend longer into summer than any other lollos we have tried. That and its extreme beauty assure it a place in my patch.

20.Merlot Lettuce (32 days baby, 60 mature) William Woys Weaver believes that this lettuce is destined to become a classic. Wherever he has planted it “every single visitor has stopped to comment (and when my back has turned to pull off leaves to eat).” Always a standout in our trials, its intense burgundy color the richest we have ever seen. The Dutch company who bred it named it Galactic, but Cook’s Garden trumped them by calling it Merlot. This merlot adds as much to your baby salad mix as a good wine adds to your dinner, providing incredible color, excitement and full-bodied flavor.

21.Tom Thumb Lettuce (46 days) Miniature butterhead makes an early small tightly bunched head. Outer leaves light-medium green, centers creamy white with a pleasant buttery taste. Very attractive for early markets. Can be spaced quite closely as the heads seldom exceed 5" in diameter. Introduced in England by H. Wheeler & Sons in 1858, it came to the States ten years later courtesy of James J.H. Gregory.

22. Sweet Valentine Lettuce OG (56 days) Open-pollinated. A real sweetheart of a lettuce, Valentine combines magnificent beauty with a mild sweet taste. Beginning as a large spreading bronzed butterhead with rounded veined leaves, Valentine matures into a romaine shape. Has been very slow to bolt even in hot dry conditions. Flavor is more delicate, soothing and less bitter before it assumes Romaine configuration.

23.Hyper Red Rumple Waved Lettuce OG (50 days) Open-pollinated. If you are drawn to really deep red lettuces, consider Hyper. Selecting from a cross between Valeria, a very red cold-tolerant lollo rossa, and Wavy Red Cos, an undulating savoyed red romaine, Frank Morton bred Hyper to accentuate pigmentation and ruffling. The stunning result tastes good with a pleasing texture.

24.Olga Lettuce OG (66 days) Open-pollinated. Elegant lime-green Olga won our hearts in our 2006 lettuce trials. Big upright 8" oval heads with big hearts, big flavor, and slightly fringed leaves. So sweet, crisp and buttery that Frank Morton thinks she must have some butterhead in her background. Stood considerable heat before developing slight tipburn and bitterness in August.

25.Bright Lights Chard (56 days) Open-pollinated. Johnny’s Selected Seeds won its second All-America award for making swiss chard commercially available in a rainbow of colors. Bright Lights bathes stems, midribs and secondary veins in a panoply of gold, yellow, orange, pink, intermediate pastels and dazzling stripes. The AAS judges were impressed by the tenderness of its dark green to bronze leaves and the mildness of its chard flavor. Young seedlings respond to cut-and-come-again culture, ideal for mesclun. Bright Lights was developed by John Eaton of Lower Hutt, New Zealand, who found the parent plants, a red one and a yellow one, in a small home garden in 1977 and crossed them to standard green and white varieties, selecting for color and flavor over the next fifteen years. Johnny’s worked the following years to preserve the strength and range of the individual colors.

26.Arugula (47 days) Eruca sativa Also known as Roquette or Rocket. It has come a long way, baby! since 1980 when I added it to our selection because my father liked it. Few people are indifferent to arugula: most of us love it, a few despise it.

27.Athena Muskmelon (80 days) Ripens early with nice orange interior color, good sweetness and not a hint of muskiness.

28.Schoon’s Hardshell Muskmelon (94 days) Open-pollinated. Slightly ovoid with greyish yellow rope-like netting, these rugged 4–5 lb. muskmelons can stand handling, even mild abuse, and keep well. Slow to ripen but sweet and tasty with rich salmon-red flesh, well worth the wait. This New York State heirloom, introduced by F.H. Woodruff & Sons of Milford, CT, in 1947, bears such a close resemblance to Bender’s Surprise (the 1900 cultivar that ruled the Empire State’s markets for many years) that they may be synonymous.

29. Sweet Dakota Rose Watermelon OG (82 days) Open-pollinated. 30 years ago David Podoll (of Dakota Dessert Squash fame, see #1630) crossed the small early maturing Early Canada with the enormu late maturing Black Diamond to create this intermediate 8–12 lb delight. A star in my 2007 trials, it matured early and produced 2–3 fruits per plant. One of the sweetest open-pollinated watermelons we know, it has a thin skin, few seeds and stores longer than most others. A strong watermelon flavor augments its sugar rush.

30.Sunsweet Watermelon (85 days) Though it loves warm locales, Sunsweet is adapted almost anywhere. Our melon trialers in central Maine have harvested two 20 lb. fruits per plant.

31.Evergreen Hardy White Scallion (65 days) Open-pollinated. Also known as Nebuka, a perennial bunching onion. A welcome treat in April, one of the first fresh foods. Heirloom from Japan originated in the 1880s.

32.Prisma Shallots (100 days) F-1 hybrid. Hillary Nelson of Canterbury, NH, lauds Prisma: “fabuloso easy…big and yummy…and really keep.” Dependably early and red to the core. That’s Prisma, a delicious long-day shallot with a strong onion flavor.

33.Lincoln Leek (75 days) Open-pollinated. A leek with a dual purpose, Lincoln may be sown thickly like scallions, harvested in 50–60 days and bunched as finger-thicks for upscale direct markets and discerning chefs. Or, transplanted more conventionally, they may be allowed to grow another three weeks to full size. Shanks even longer and sleeker than King Richard’s, with delicate sweet leek flavor. Ready in late August,

34.White Wing Onion (97 days) F-1 hybrid. We’re not really sure why this has yet to take wing. We think it is a good replacement for Seminis/ Monsanto’s Superstar. Round, good-looking and 4–5 days earlier and better adapted to our climate, though not quite as sweet and a little more pungent than its predecessor. Its first bulbs were usable as early as July 26.

35.Red Marble Onion (95 days) F-1 hybrid. When the Cipollinis are down this hard red variety is the best of its kind. When she grew them side-by-side in 2008, our trialer Donna Dyrek found them to be bigger and redder than the open-pollinated Red Cipollini we’d been offering. While they can be closely spaced to grow 1–2" baby red pearl onions, they can also be spread apart to make full-sized onions 2–3" across with the characteristic Cipollini flat bottoms and thin necks. A few will grow as big as 4" in fertile conditions. Dark red penetrates deep into the rings. They are excellent keepers, storing till February or March. Long-day type for northern latitudes above 40°

36.Mammoth Melting Sugar Snow Pea (72 days) The standard climbing snow pea. Vines grow 5–7' but can reach 10'.

37. Oregon Giant Snow Pea (60 days) Open-pollinated. This Oregon State University release bred by Dr. James Baggett is one of our two most popular snow peas. A giant selection from a giant breeder, Oregon Giant is distinguished for its sweet rich green fat wide 4–5" pods good for stir fries, steaming, and eating out of hand. Retains sweetness so may be picked a little plumper than the thin-podded varieties. We recommend staking the intermediate 3–4' vines.

38.Oregon Sugar Pod II Snow Pea (62 days) Open-pollinated. This short-vined snow pea from Oregon State University features 4" pods on 2–2-1/2' vines. Difficult to pick because fruit tends to set within foliage. Good choice in sandy soils or under dry conditions.

39.Purple Top White Globe Turnip (50 days) Open-pollinated. Brassica rapa Popular variety with purple tops, white bottoms and white flesh can attain 6" in diameter. An heirloom from before 1880. Starks claimed in 1921 that “other varieties are good, but this one stands in a class by itself.” Sometimes used to feed livestock, some people  like them in soups or eat them up to golf-ball-sized with the greens.

40.Gustus Brussels Sprouts (99 days) F-1 hybrid. It was the perfect year to grow brussels sprouts. Faced with the daunting task of replacing Oliver, I set out 76 plants representing 7 different varieties, most on May 27. All loved the cool temperatures and 23 days of rain in June, and thrived in my sandy loam, growing enormous and disease-free. While nothing can match Oliver’s ease of growing, earliness and huge production, Gustus made a valiant effort and by late September boasted lovely sprouts. They were medium-sized, slightly oval, remarkably uniform (perfect for market) and grew large further up the stalk after I topped the plants Sept. 7. Unlike Oliver, they showed not a hint of rot, even after our two hurricane rains. A representative sample of ten weighed six ounces, a little more than half the size of humungous Oliver. Best of all, they won our taste test, with a smooth texture and none of the cole-ish aftertaste that disqualified Dimitri, their closest competitor. Enjoy them with gusto!

   

41. Revolution Sweet Pepper (72 days) F-1 hybrid. For when you want more than just “change.” We thought Fat ’n Sassy would be the hardest Seminis/Monsanto variety to replace in our catalog. We were wrong because we weren’t counting on a Revolution to arrive in our peppers. Revolution bests Sassy in earliness and substance. It turned red in early October for Donna Dyrek, several days ahead of its rival. Juicy and delicious, it boasts the stoutest square walls imaginable, squarer than the Boy Scout motto, and fatter than the proverbial Fat Lady. Superb yields of “nice hefty thick-walled fruits.”

42.Lady Bell Sweet Pepper (68 days) F-1 hybrid. An early elongated bell (a bit reminiscent of Vidi) that looked good in our trials as a replacement for North Star. 3- to 4-lobed fruits ripen from rich green to attractive bright red. A good producer of 3x5" bells, juicy and sweet with a hint of spiciness.

43.Ho Chi Minh Hot Pepper ECO (68 days) Open-pollinated. Longtime Minnesota co-oper Steven Schwen sent us seeds for this beautiful shining cayenne pepper from Southeast Asia. He got it in the 1980s when the first wave of boat people landed in Minnesota and came to his farm looking for chickens and ducks. He named it Ho Chi Minh in honor of the Vietnamese revolutionary who defeated all the colonialists who invaded his country. According to Schwen it has a bite that says “run home to your mama!” We enjoyed its prolific production (up to two dozen fruit per plant), its heat and good flavor in the trials. Peppers 4-5" long on 3' plants grow like large fingers turning from bright yellow to crimson in late August. They are excellent dried.

44. Peacework Sweet Pepper OG (65 days) Open-pollinated. This exciting sweet early red bell pepper bred by Molly Jahn and George Moriarty has King of the North and Early Red Sweet in its parentage. The small plants in our observation plot were loaded with six peppers each on average. All vine-ripened, their medium-thick walls had good flavor and full-bodied sweetness. A product of farmer-breeder collaboration starring CSA-grower Elizabeth Henderson and her team at Peacework Farm in cooperation with the Organic Seed Partnership, the California Pepper Commission and university breeders, Peacework is a stabilized open-pollinated variety. Seed from this variety is sold under license and a portion of the proceeds goes to support public vegetable breeding at Cornell University.

45.Jalapeño Hot Pepper (75 days) Hot, hot, 3x1" sausage-shaped blunt fruits mature early. Characteristic brown netting appears as fruit ripens from dark green to dark red.

46.Flavorburst Sweet Pepper (75 days) F-1 hybrid. Citrus flavor comes to the world of sweet peppers! A Burpee taste-test winner, the 4-6" blocky bells begin the color of Granny Smith apples and ripen to a lovely shade of goldenrod. Thick-walled crisp and juicy, the expected peppery bite overlaid with a zesty surge of lemon. Great appetizers, salad enhancers or stuffers.

47.Big Max Pumpkin (120 days) Open-pollinated. Cucurbita maxima These are big pumpkins. Not big enough to compete in the giant pumpkin contests (you’d need Dill’s Atlantic Giant, not offered by us) but certainly sufficient for exhibiting in your county fair or for displaying as an awesome jack-o’-lantern. Or perhaps, in the wrong hands, could serve as weapons of mass destruction. Typically weighs 50–100 lb. and measures up to 70" in circumference!

48.Autumn Gold Pumpkin (98 days) Cucurbita pepo F-1 hybrid. Even northernmost growers can vine-ripen medium-sized pumpkins with 1987 AAS Autumn Gold. Commercial growers love its “precocious yellow” gene which ensures no green pumpkins at harvest. Instead, immature fruits are yellow, ripening to a deep orange, ribbed, with good handles, 10–15 lb. average.

49.Fiero Radicchio (66 days) F-1 hybrid. A beautiful elongated upright radicchio. Deeply ribbed leaves with a branching pattern off the central vein reminiscent of a tree.

50.Cherry Belle Radish (25 days) Open-pollinated. A good smooth red-skinned bunching radish making uniform balls 3/4" across with firm white flesh.

51.Green Meat Radish (55 days) Open-pollinated. Unique miniature daikon radish with striking lime-green flesh grows 6–9" long and 1–3" thick. The above-ground exposed shoulders blush a deep green while the tips remain white. Fine-grained, crisp and sweet. Clayton says it has a “distinct green apple flavor.” Asians use it for salads, cooking and pickling.

52.Bordeaux Spinach (21 days baby, 32 days mature) F-1 hybrid. A rapid-growing early maturing first spinach for garden and greenhouse. Arrow-shaped smooth dark green red-veined leaves often are used in mesclun. Stems are also red, but turn green when cooked. Our trialer preferred Bordeaux’s sweet and delicate flavor over all her other varieties and kept nibbling off leaves.

53.Olympia Spinach (38 days) F-1 hybrid. Olympia our Senator loves to keep us in suspense. Will she support the public option or not? How will she vote on the final health care bill? Olympia our spinach never keeps us in suspense. No Snowe job here, Olympia spinach is an outstanding performer for the fall crop. She grows fast, producing enormous yields of mostly smooth leaves up to 5x6" almost entirely lacking in oxalic acid taste so her mild flavor goes down easily.

54.Tyee Spinach (44 days) F-1 hybrid.  Tyee is the only spinach that has any chance when the heat comes on fast, outperforming other savoyed types both in yield and holding ability. This dependability has long made it our favorite crinkled-leaf spinach and accounts for its widespread appeal among both home gardeners and commercial growers. A spinach for all seasons.

55.Eight Ball Zucchini (40 days) F-1 hybrid. Eight Ball has the sweetness and squash flavor previously missing from round zucchinis. Yes, the attractive shiny speckled dark fruits are mature when they’re just a little bigger than pool balls.

56.Jackpot Zucchini (42 days) F-1 hybrid from Hollar. In our trials to find a replacement for Seneca, we hit the Jackpot. Looks similar to Seneca with a bit more ridging near the stem. Produces high yields of long medium-dark-green slightly speckled fruits.

57.Saffron Summer Squash (42 days) Open-pollinated replacement for Seneca Prolific. We’re just mad about Saffron, a 4–6" yellow semi-crookneck that excelled in our trials. Less warty than straightneck squashes.

58.Table Queen Acorn Winter Squash (90 days) Cucurbita pepo 1-1/2–2 lb. black-green ribbed fruits good for baking. Dry flesh is best eaten within 3–4 months after harvest. Introduced by the Iowa Seed Co. in Des Moines in 1913, once known as Des Moines, Queen began a trend away from monster squashes in favor of smaller fruits. A similar squash was grown by the Arikara tribe in North Dakota. Seedsman Henry Field claimed that Table Queen “makes a better pumpkin pie than a pumpkin.”

59.Burgess Buttercup Winter Squash (95 days) Cucurbita maxima New England’s favorite winter squash, enjoyed for its sweet deep-orange flesh. Fruits, with acorn-shaped buttons on the blossom end and flattened shoulders.

60.Waltham Butternut Winter Squash (105 days) Cucurbita moschata Elegant 9" tan fruits weighing 4–5 lb. Orange dry flesh has a sweet nutty flavor. Excellent keeper. Bred by the Massachusetts Agricultural Extension Service by crossing New Hampshire Butternut (a 1956 Yaeger/Meader development) with a neckless moschata from Turkey, and introduced by Bob Young of Waltham, MA. The most important squash in Virginia and the Carolinas because more resistant to squash vine borers than others.

61..Blue Hubbard Winter Squash (100 days) New England strain Cucurbita maxima Introduced in 1909 by famous seedsman James J.H. Gregory as Symmes Blue Hubbard, in honor of S.S. Symmes, a gardener who worked for his company for many years. Gregory considered it his best introduction, praising its flavor, productivity and storage qualities. In his 1917 catalog he said “close your eyes…and you would think you were eating cake.” Bright yellow-orange dry sweet flesh. Each squash will feed a large family because fruits average 15–20 lb, sometimes exceeding 30 or 40 lb.

62.Burgess Buttercup Winter Squash (95 days) Open-pollinated. New England’s favorite winter squash, enjoyed for its sweet deep-orange flesh. Fruits, with an acorn-shaped button on the blossom end and flattened shoulders, average 3–4 lb. with about 4 per hill. Stem is well dried when ripe. The original buttercup strain showed up in 1925 as a chance cross between Quality and Essex Hybrid in the trial garden at North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station.

63.Blue Hubbard New England strain Winter Squash (100 days) Open-pollinated. Introduced in 1909 by Gregory as Symmes Blue Hubbard, in honor of S.S. Symmes, a gardener who worked for his company for many years. Gregory considered it his best introduction, praising its flavor, productivity and storage qualities. The 1917 Gregory catalog said “close your eyes…and you would think you were eating cake.” Bright yellow-orange dry sweet flesh. Each squash will feed a large family because fruits average 15–20 lb, sometimes exceeding 30 or 40 lb. Vines crawl all over the garden. Traditional New England Thanksgiving favorite. Prized also for its large white sweet seeds—delicious roasted.

64.Seminole Winter Squash ECO (110 days) Open-pollinated. Creek-speaking Seminole Indians gave it the name chassa-howitska, meaning “hanging pumpkin.” Rated one of the ten most endangered American foods by RAFT, these buff-colored 7" teardrop-shaped squashes were cultivated by the Seminoles in the Everglades region of Florida in the 1500s. The seeds were sowed at the base of girdled trees, so that the irrepressible vines, which grow in excess of 30', climbed the trunks, allowing the fruit to hang from the bare limbs. The deep orange flesh is sweeter than butternut, superb for pies, soup and baked treats, and the key ingredient in delicious Seminole pumpkin bread. Rated third among 21 varieties in Restoring Our Seed’s 2005 fall taste test, and was co-star with #1609 Paydon in our February 2006 warehouse feast. Resistant to vine borers. Extremely hard rind must be cracked like a coconut. Stores nearly forever.

65.Bright Lights Chard (56 days) Johnny’s Selected Seeds won its second All-America award for making swiss chard commercially available in a rainbow of colors. Bright Lights bathes stems, midribs and secondary veins in a panoply of gold, yellow, orange, pink, intermediate pastels and dazzling stripes. The AAS judges were impressed by the tenderness of its dark-green to bronze leaves and the mildness of its chard flavor.

66.Harris Model Parsnip (120 days) Sweet-flavored smooth tapered roots average 10".

67.Kolibri Kohlrabi (45 days) F-1 hybrid. The best purple kohlrabi we’ve found. It is quick growing, very uniform, purple on the outside, crisp and white on the inside. Michigan grower Jim Sluyter says, “I can imagine growing no other variety for its reliability, good taste, speed of production.”

68.Verde Puebla Tomatillo (77 days) Physalis ixocarpa Open-pollinated. To make salsa verde, harvest golf-ball-sized green fruits when their papery husk splits. Or allow them to turn slightly yellow for a tangy nutty raw snack. They will split before becoming fully ripe. Verde stood out as having the sweetest flesh in our trials. Plants up to 3' put out a huge crop of 1-1/4-2" green balls. Ready for salsa in mid-August.

69. Amish Paste Paste Tomato (85 days) Ind. 30 seed savers can’t be wrong! That’s how many listed Amish Paste in the 2008 Seed Savers Yearbook, making it one of the most popular items in the Exchange. Their comments tell it all, “the ultimate sauce type,” “wonderful flavor and production,” “my favorite paste tomato for the past eight years,” “large, meaty, heart-shaped fruit,” “prolific, good in drought and wet weather.” Ranked as the 2nd best-tasting variety at the 2006 Heirloom Tomato Tasting at Decorah, IA.

70.Juliet Tomato (60 days) Ind. There will be no lack of Romeos who want to nibble on these and no lack of the delectable little plum-shaped fruits for them to adore. They come in clusters everywhere, 12–18 1–2 oz. grapes to the cluster and an astounding 50–80 per plant. The glossy red fruits have an engaging sweetness that will make you want to keep popping them in your mouth. They are good stewing tomatoes and excellent salad tomatoes, but we thought they had too much juice for paste until we stuck them into our 2005 test. To our surprise, we found their sauce to be tangy with a diverse complex richness and full sweet tomato flavor.

71.Soldacki Tomato OG (80 days) Open-pollinated. Ind. You won’t find a better sandwich tomato than Soldacki, a heavy producer of meaty tasty 14 oz. pink globes with a good mix of sweetness, tartness and real tomato flavor. Tall potato-leaf vines. “Vigorous, strong and pretty even in a poor tomato year,” reports Anne Elder. Originally from Krakow, Poland, brought to Cleveland, OH, around 1900, then to Albany, NY.

72.Early Girl Tomato (60 days) F-1 hybrid. Ind. This girl is well-loved by commercial growers who need heavy yields of good-looking slicing tomatoes early in the season when the market commands high prices. It was the highest yielder among 12 cultivars in a 2006 New Jersey trial, averaging 9.7 lb. per plant. Early Girl delivers fairly good flavor for such an early tomato—sweet, meaty with a hint of tartness. The slightly flattened bright crimson globes average 4–6 oz. with firm texture, blemish-resistant skin and a long production period.

73.Buffalo Tomato (72 days) F-1 hybrid. Ind. Despite averaging 220" of snow, not seeing bare ground most years from Dec. through March and sometimes still being able to make a snowball June 21 (methinks a bit of hyperbole, this last), Martha Dewey of Perrysburg, NY, (just south of Buffalo) grows delicious tomatoes. This is reassuring to those of us who wonder why the Dutch named this beefsteak tomato for one of the snowiest places on Earth. Despite its name, Buffalo is the greenhouse tomato for our growers. Its globe-shaped very firm red fruits ripen uniformly. Tomatoes average 8–9 oz. with some variability. Vigorous tall vines, loaded with disease resistance, make a nice package.

74.Yukon yellow-buff skin, yellow flesh Yukon Gold has good flavor, good storability, and drier texture than most yellows. Tubers are oval and slightly flattened with small pink eyes that distinguish it from other yellow-fleshed varieties. With excellent name recognition, it is often the only yellow potato on supermarket shelves and in gourmet catalogs.

75.Dark Red Norland dark red skin, white flesh Norland has long been the standard early red, delicious for those first tubers of the year. Excellent for boiling and good for baking. Dark Red is a selection from Norland for its brighter skin color.

76..Russet russet skin, white flesh Most widely grown potato in the world, especially in Idaho, so it’s known as the Idaho Potato.

77.Laurentian Rutabaga (95 days) Open-pollinated. Brassica napus Popular Canadian variety with deep purple crown and cream yellow base. Uniform 5–6" almost neckless roots suitable for winter storage, larger and sweeter than American Purple Top. Pale yellow flesh has refined texture and taste. “Like a mixture of a tender potato and the flavor of sweet cabbage,” says Anne Elder who bakes them into sweet cubes that she grates into veggie burgers or with flour to make a delectable quiche crust.

 

 

 

 

 

This being the first season of growing at Edible Acres, you may find that we may add or subtract from this plant list, due to seed supply.  We appreciate your input and ideas and will try our hardest to indulge you in the veggie of your choice.  If you have any plant requests/comments please email Bud@edibleacres.com.  For more information about Edible Acres, please contact mailto:Karen@edibleacres.com.