Best Seeds for a Bigger, Better Garden
(Page 3 of 7)
December 2008/January 2009
By Barbara Pleasant
5. Single Serving Sizes
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A growing number of gardeners want space-saving varieties that produce personal-size squash, broccoli or even chard. Fast growth in the garden coupled with kitchen convenience helped ‘Honey Bear’ acorn squash win a 2008 All America Selections award. Scaled-down versions of chard (‘Pot-o-Gold’), lettuce (‘Little Gem’ and ‘Garden Babies’), broccoli (‘Small Miracle’) and other vegetables perform as well in containers as in beds, so they’re real problem solvers if the only place you have to grow food is your deck or balcony.
6. A Rainbow of Colors
Just when you thought tomatoes couldn’t get much prettier than ‘Green Zebra,’ one look at Burpee’s purplish-red ‘Razzle Dazzle’ tomato will make your eyes pop. ‘Redventure’ celery blushes crimson where the ribs are touched by the sun, ‘Purple Plum’ radishes really look like plums, and you can’t miss the pink pods of ‘Tanya’ pole beans when you’re filling your picking basket. Be bold — try that ‘Cheddar’ cauliflower that’s haunting your dreams. The seeds may cost you 25 cents each, but you can recoup the cost of a packet with one head of organic cauliflower. As a bonus, your cheese-colored head will have 25 times more beta carotene than a similar head of white cauliflower.
7. Productive Open-Pollinated Varieties
Many seed companies are working with vegetable breeders and seed growers to improve the quality and uniformity of open-pollinated varieties, which are preferred by gardeners who want to save at least some of their own seed.
“There is no reason why open-pollinated varieties bred to perform well in organic systems can’t be of equal quality to hybrids, for certain crops,” says Jodi Lew-Smith, vegetable breeder at High Mowing Seeds. Lew-Smith is in the early stages of developing better resistance to septoria leaf spot in tomatoes, but is farther along selecting higher quality open-pollinated zucchini, butternut and acorn squash.
In addition to working with “public” breeding lines, for example one of the parents Brent Loy at the University of New Hampshire used to create award-winning ‘Sugar Dumpling’ acorn squash, Lew-Smith uses varieties from Seed Savers Exchange, and often picks up interesting varieties when visiting growers of organic seed. “These people put an extraordinary amount of effort into growing seed, which can be a jackpot crop for everyone when things turn out well,” Lew-Smith says.
8. Herbs From Seed
The idea of an instant herb garden has inspired many products that look good but don’t work very well, because new gardeners have trouble working with tiny herb seeds. A new solution from Johnny’s Selected Seeds — properly spaced herb seeds embedded in a paper disk — was so wildly successful last year that more are planned for 2009 including basil, cilantro, chives, marjoram, parsley and thyme. Each disk plants a 6-inch pot, and requires nothing more than a pot, a bit of potting soil, and some water to get it started.
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