How To Choose Vegetable Varieties That Really Perform

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Among pumpkins, the variety to choose for sheer bulk is Big Max, a breed which—with proper care and feeding—regularly produces fruits that weigh more than a hundred pounds. If you want even heftier pumpkins, however, all you have to do is attend the nearest pumpkin-growing contest in the fall and ask to buy seeds. (In our local—Newtown, Pennsylvania—pumpkin festival, farmers start with seed obtained from the previous year's winner, so that the next Grand Champion always has a chance of being a bit bigger still.)

The variety of tomato with the best chance of breaking the current world record of four pounds for an individual fruit is the one called Delicious. (In addition to prodigious bulk, this variety also delivers great flavor . . . a hard-to-beat combination.)

At ten to twelve pounds per fruit, Thompson & Morgan's aptly named Zeppelin cucumber is one of the largest cukes you're likely to grow . . . and one of the best tasting. Fact is, the monster's flesh retains its crisp, clean flavor even after the fruit's bright green skin has turned yellow.

There are two records you can go after with sunflowers: head size and stalk height. Burpee's Mammoth excels in both departments: Head diameters of two feet and overall heights of twelve feet are not uncommon with Mammoth . . . and—as a bonus—you get an extra-heavy yield of nutty seeds.

HIGH NUTRITIONAL VALUE

Thanks largely to the health food movement that's now sweeping America, a few of the more progressive seed companies have begun to market vegetables (carrots, tomatoes, and beans in particular) of exceptionally high nutritional value.

An example of this is a carrot variety known as Juwarot, which has twice the vitamin A content of regular carrots (and—consequently—an intensely reddish orange color). I'm told that in Europe the very best carrot juice is made exclusively from this variety . . . no doubt because of Juwarot's unique combination of superior food value, rich color, and sweet flavor.

Perhaps the most nutritious new vegetable to come along in years, however, is the Swedish-born Fiskeby V soybean. I first heard of this remarkable bean a few years ago while sipping ale in a London pub with a British garden editor and two British seedsmen. I'd just told the group that—in my opinion—a tremendously large market existed for a high-nutrition garden vegetable . . . when my editor friend (Ray Edwards of Practical Gardening ) began to describe a Swedish soybean he'd heard of that seemed to fit my specifications exactly. The new bean, he said, was called the Fiskeby V Original.

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