Tip for more productive edible garden-try something new

Seed catalogs have many options for the same vegetable type

Sunday, December 18, 2022

Every year, I have my standbys and I try something new in the edible garden.  I am always trying to optimize time, space and production from the garden.  I look at descriptions of new varieties to see if they may perform better than the ones I have been growing in my climate and garden conditions.

For productivity, I look descriptions that share terms like "prolific", "thrive in hot and humid conditions", have "disease resistance to" xyz that I have had issues with in our Midwest/Upper South garden.  A few examples of how trying new things have made my garden more productive by crop type follow.

Sweet Peppers:  I like snacking on and putting away for winter salsa sweet peppers.  I first tried sweet bell peppers in the garden since these are the ones you see in the grocery stores most commonly.  I moved to smaller fruiting sweet peppers, trying different varieties until getting one that does very well all summer in our garden.  Only one or two are needed.  

Snap Beans:  We love the large flat "Roma" type of green beans.  I first grew the bush type then tried the vining type which produced much more.  Finally, I found Blauhilde purple podded vining beans have the best resistance to disease and pests in our garden so that is my standby for snap beans.  I recently tried winged beans and they start producing at the time that Blauhilde is winding down as well as having beautiful blue flowers.  The winged bean will be a standby from now on.

Back of seed packets give growing instructions and helpful description of the variety 

Summer Squash:  I started out with zucchini which did great for the first couple of years.  Our area started seeing more squash bugs in recent years which lead to disease in summer crops.  My zucchini was only staying productive for a few weeks.  I tried Trombetta squash which when harvested young is very similar to zucchini plus you can leave them on the vine or bring in and the skin will harden so you can use and store like a winter squash.  It is a large vining plant that seems impervious to squash bugs and disease in the garden so is now on my annual garden "must grow" list.

Salad greens:  I started out growing spinach and lettuce for salads.  In our hot, humid summers, both would bolt in May and I wanted to be able to harvest salad greens at least spring through fall.  So looked for descriptions like "heat tolerant", "bolt resistant", "maintains flavor in heat", etc., to find varieties that lengthen the harvest.  My latest standbys for lettuce are Red Sails, Butter King, and Royal Oakleaf.  I've added other sweet tasting greens that actually thrive in hot conditions and maintain their flavor all summer  for salads like Hilton Chinese cabbage, orach, amaranth, and Giant Leaf mustard.  For spinach, I haven't found a variety that can last through summer, but I have found substitutes that have a similar taste as spinach-Red Malabar spinach and New Zealand spinach.  Red Malabar is also a beautiful vining plant with pretty magenta flowers as a bonus.

Eggplant:  I started with the popular Black Beauty eggplant.  The drawback was when the temps started getting up around 90, the taste would become more bitter.  Looking at descriptions and trying them in our garden, my latest standbys are Casper, Rotanda Bianca, Shiromaru or Amadeo.  Just a couple plants provides all we can eat. 

Tomatoes:  I try new varieties every year.  The last couple of years, our tomatoes are not doing as well as they had in the past, even the ones that were prolific before.  The ones that do the best are Cherokee Purple and Chocolate Pear.  I first thought that maybe there was a disease burden, but I grew them in a different part of the garden that had never had tomatoes grown and that did not seem to make a huge difference.  I do have alkaline soil.  This year, I am going to add sulfur to get the pH back in the range that tomatoes prefer to see if this brings back the productivity.  This year, I am trying some winter storage tomatoes, too, Evil Olive and A Grapple D'Inverno.  In addition to my 2 standbys, I'll grow True Black Brandywine for its resistance to disease and the large paste tomato Italian Red Pear for sauce.

 It is fun to try new things.  It makes it interesting and over time makes the garden that much more productive and harvests more tasty.