We grow a lot of cut beets for Local Harvest CSA, probably 800 pounds a year.  We plant Red Ace.  Red Ace beets are delicious and high-yielding, and every beet is beautiful and the tops are delicious, too.  Early Wonder Tall Top is great for beet greens.  The tops tend to be greenish/reddish, rather than the reddish/purplish tops that most other red beets have.  Also, they grow fast and tall.  The beets are nice too.  So, if you are after the beets, go for Red Ace; if you want the greens more, go for Early Wonder Tall Top.  Also, if you really like beets, try direct seeding some.  That is good trick to do with a lot of crops.  Transplants, or seedlings, give you a guaranteed first crop.   Then three or four weeks after putting out your transplants, try direct seeding some of the crop.  This way you will get an extended harvest.  For something interesting, and especially sweet (yellow varieties of everything, from beets to tomatoes, seem to taste sweeter), try Touchstone Gold.  If you are using beets in your salad, the gold beets will really spice up the visual effect.  We used to believe in only direct seeding beets, but beets have become one of our top selling vegetable seedlings.  It is a great way to get a head start on eating healthy greens.

The key thing with broccoli is that it is very responsive to the weather. A single plant can go through multiple phases in one year: tremendous start with a nice head, horrible stretch with hardly any side-shoots and then back again for a huge bumper crop of side-shoots in the fall.  It depends a lot on which varieties you grow and when we have our hot and wet stretches of weather.  Since you cannot predict the weather, a good strategy is to try a few different types each year.  So, instead of getting three six-packs of one type, get one six-pack each of three different types.  If you want just one type of broccoli, I would recommend Belstar, as it makes a nice head and also keeps producing side shorts.  Another tip is to provide broccoli plants in your garden with lots of water.  The side shoots will go from being little marbles to being mini-sized 2” heads if the plants have enough fertility and moisture.  Also, be sure to harvest the side shoots all summer long – just like zucchini.  If you do, you will have a steady supply of small broccoli that will keep you in salads and stir fries for months.  A new item we are offering is a Broccoli x Gailon called Happy Rich, also called Chinese Kale in the seed catalogs.  This seems like an easy way to get lots of mini-broccolis – they come early and keep coming.

The question we hear the most is: should we chop off the tops or not? From our experience and what I have read, it does not seem to matter a whole lot.  But the key is to start picking the large sprouts from the bottom of the plant as soon as they are ready.  This way the plant gets the message to devote its energy into the next sprouts up the stalk.  Usually you can get at least three or four good pickings off of one plant if you do this.  This past year, with the incredibly mild December, Linda went out around New Year’s Day, before we had some really cold nights, and harvested our remaining entire plants.  We kept them in the refrigerator for a few weeks.  It is a nice winter night treat to have Brussels sprouts and garlic sautéed with butter and white wine.

This little vegetable has grown in popularity every year.  We sell more and more each year.  Our farmer friends grow large sections of their fields to celeriac.  More and more customers are asking for it.  If you have not tried celeriac, give it a try.  It’s ugly, but delicious.  How to use it?  Mix some with potatoes when making mashed potatoes, grate some into a salad, or put in your soups.  It will last all winter in a root cellar.

Some people say: why bother with corn from transplants?  After watching the crows march down the row and eat up our corn seeds year after year, we decide to try transplants.  No going back.  Instead of a row with skips, every spot is filled with a plant.  Corn takes up a lot of room in the garden, so maximizing that space with successful plants is important.  We grow Luscious(bicolor) for our mid-August crop and then Silver Queen (white) for late-August and early September eating.  Painted Mountain is a nice ornamental corn – you can make your own bunches to hang on your front door or give away to your friends, teachers or relatives.  Robust is great popcorn.  There are few things more fun than eating your own popcorn on movie night.  We use between one to two ears per night. You will get one or two ears per plant.  So a six pack of seedlings would get you several home-grown popcorn nights.  Wait until October to harvest the popcorn.  You want the kernels to be hard.  Store it in the husk in an open container in your basement or cupboard for a month or six weeks to let it cure.  Then you can either rub off the kernels from all your corn and put the kernels in a glass jar with a lid, or keep the ears with the husk on, and open the husks and rub off the kernels one ear at a time as you want it.

If you have never tried a Beit Alpha type (bitter-free) cucumber, it is worth a try.  They taste kind of mild and sweet, compared to regular slicing cucumbers.  We have Green Finger for that type.  If you like regular slicing cukes, Marketmore 76 is an old tried and true variety that farmers and gardeners have good luck with.  The two biggest problems growing cucumbers are cold soil and bugs.  As for the cold soil, wait until the night temperatures are warm before putting your plants in the garden.  Depending on the weather this year, you may have to wait a week after bringing home your seedlings before planting them out.  Also, don’t water them in with cold water – that will really set them back.  You can use warm water from a jug for the first week or two until the weather warms up.  As for the bugs, in particular the striped cucumber beetles, you have two strategies.  First is using transplants.  According to some university vegetable specialists who I have talked with, a plant with 4 to 5 true leaves is strong enough to fight off the wilting diseases that these beetles spread.  There is another strategy that will help you with the cold soil issue as well.  If you can put row cover/reemay over the plants for the first few weeks, you will keep off the bugs until your plants will be strong enough to withstand the attack.  The reemay also will keep the plants warm; the day time temperatures under reemay are quite a bit warmer and the night temperatures will be at least a couple or few degrees higher.  We are offering Lemon Cucumbers again this year.  Our old friend, Farmer Tim, used to grow them for his CSA and his customers loved them.  Emma wanted to try them in her garden, so we are offering them as seedlings this year. 

If you love eggplant, there is nothing like growing your own.  They are a heat-loving crop and will benefit from everything you can do to help them get and stay warm.  Just like cucumbers, a reemay covering for a few weeks will do wonders.  If you don’t use reemay, then it would be best to wait until early June to put your plants in the ground.  Save planting your cucumber, eggplant and melon plants until the very last thing.  It is working with nature. If you like large Italian style, we have Nadia and if you prefer the long thin Oriental style, we grow Pingtung Long.

There are so many wonderful and delicious types of kale.  Linda likes Winterbor the best for her kale/black bean soup.  It is hardy, high yielding and lasts well into the winter.  Many people like the flavor or Toscano/Lacinato/Dinosaur kale.  This is an heirloom Italian kale.  The yield is probably half of Winterbor, but its flavor is tender and small leaves can be used in salads.  A new variety, bred by an Oregon farmer, and introduced a couple of years ago, is called Rainbow Lacinato.  It is a mix of Lacinato (green) and Redbor (which is a red version of Winterbor).  The result is the nice mild and tender leaves of Lacinato with the high growth/high yield of the Bor types.  The plants are big and strong, the leaves are large and a beautiful mix of reds, blues and purples.  Red Russian has tender, large, red and purple leaves which come on strong plants.  It has great tender flavor.  The one thing farmers don’t like is that it wilts after harvest, but in a home garden if you wash it after harvesting, it does fine.  White Russian is similar to Red Russian in leaf style, but with green leaves on plants that last well into the winter.

We grow our leeks, onions, and shallots in an open six-pack tray.  The reason is that we are able to get you several dozen plants per “six-pack.”  When you get ready to plant them in the garden, moisten the plants and gently separate them.  Plant them in the garden so they average a couple of inches between plants.  If you separate them into individual plants, then space them every 2-3”; if you separate them into clumps of two, then space them every 4-6”; and if you separate them into clumps of three, then space them every 6-9.” King Richard is the classic summer leek – thin and tall.  Tadorna is a fall/early winter leek – it is beautiful, large and can withstand frosts.  Bandit is a new leek to us, but it is advertised as an extra thick, winter-hardy leek.

See leeks for general comments on planting.  Copra has been the classic storage onion for many years.  It makes hard onions, which taste great and are perfect size for kitchen use all winter long and well into the spring.Cortland is a relatively new organic seed hybrid onion (note: most organic seed originally were all open-pollinated varieties, now as the organic seed business is growing there are more and more organic hybrids, which give organic gardeners and farmers more choices).  Cortland is a little larger than Copra and almost as good of a good storage onion.Both will last through the winter with reasonable care.Redwing is a good red, storage onion.  It will be the last onion to mature in the garden.  So, wait two weeks after harvesting your yellow onions before you bring in the Redwing.  If you want some early, large, mild onions, try Ailsa Craig.  This makes huge onions if let go until its final maturity.  Even if harvested early (e.g. August) it will still make large onions.  Farmers sell these as “green onions” in summer.  Some people say they store their Ailsa Craig until Thanksgiving or New Years.  Our last offering is Parade, which is a bunching, mini-onion.  Parade can fill in that summer gap for onions (July and August) before your storage onions come in.

If you want a dependable pepper that will give you fruit every year, then Ace is the one to pick; it is a three-lobed bell pepper that starts green and turns red.  It sets medium size fruit, in all kinds of weather.  Lady Bell is a traditional four-lobed pepper.  Lady Bell also starts green and turns red.  I think the most beautiful peppers we have ever grown were from Lady Bell plants.  If you really love red peppers, then Carmen is the pepper to pick.  The fruit go from green to red very quickly and reliably.  Carmen is a “bullshorn” type of pepper, it is 6”” long and 2 ½” wide. Johnny’s Seeds won an All-America Selection (AAS) for Carmen. We found a new yellow bullshorn pepper last year called T-100.  They changed the name to Yellow Crest.  Last year, each plant made several yellow fruit.  The walls of the fruit were nice and thick and the taste was excellent.  We have been looking for a yellow pepper that works well in the home garden.  We look forward to growing Yellow Crest again this year and hope we have found a keeper. 

Ambition is a shallot that we start from seed.  Shallots can handle being planted in clumps with 3 to 5 plants per clump.  Put the clumps every 6 to 9 inches apart.  Harvest them like onions in the fall.  The shallots will last all winter and spring and even into the following summer if stored in a cool place (basement).  They taste great and you get tremendous yield from a six-pack.

These plants love warmth and fertility.  Nonetheless, you can plant them the fourth week of May.  They seem to be OK with some cold nights – of course, if there is a frost, cover them at night.  As with cucumbers, a transplant helps you get a jump on the harvest and also gives you a plant that will, in most years, be big enough to withstand a mild insect attack.  Once they start making fruit, keep them picked on a regular basis and you will be rewarded with a continuous harvest.   A lot of farmers grow these crops on black plastic, which warms up the soil, maintains even levels of moisture in the soil, and fights the weeds.  Put the plants about 1 foot apart in the row, or in groups of 2 or 3 plants every 2-3’.  For yellow summer squash, we are going with Success PM Straightneck from High Mowing Seeds, which they developed along with Cornell University.  They claim to get as much as three months of harvest from one planting.  That may be a bit on the optimistic side.  Another strategy to prolong your harvest is to use transplants at the end of May, and then in mid to late-June put in another planting by direct seed.  That way you will be sure to have summer squash/zucchini all summer and into the fall.  We have two types of zucchini seedlings.  Midnight Lightning was developed by High Mowing Seed and they say it has sturdy plants and good disease resistance. There are so many zucchini and summer squash varieties to choose from; we decided to go with the efforts of High Mowing Seeds, which is a local (Vermont) organic seed company that has done a great job.  Also, we are offering Costata Romanesco, which is an heirloom variety that has a different look with grayish-green skin and ribbing, but has the best flavor.  Like many heirlooms, the yield is lower, but with something like zucchini, quantity is usually not a problem. 

Johnny’s Seeds won an AAS award for Bright Lights swiss chard.  This is the variety that has gold, pink, red, white and purple stems and green to bronze leaves.  If you plant your seedlings every 9” apart, and pick the outer leaves as you go along, you will be rewarded with a continuous harvest throughout the entire summer.  Very few things go wrong with swiss chard plants.  One of the best ways to eat swiss chard is to enjoy swiss chard pie.  Sauté onions and swiss chard stems in a cast iron frying pan.  Then add in swiss chard leaves and let them steam down.  Next add grated cheese and a few beaten eggs and bake in the oven until set.

We offer Athena and PMR Delicious 51 melons.  We have grown Athena melons for many years, as have many farmers we know.  The variety is reliable producer of large (5-6 pound) melons in the Northeast.  PMR Delicious 51 offers disease resistance and an early crop of smaller 2-3 pound melons.  The key thing with melons is that they love warmth.  As with cucumbers, wait to plant them in the garden until the soil warms up and the night temperatures are not cold.  We usually wait until June 5th-8th to plant our melons in the garden.  Also, planting into black plastic mulch and using row covers/reemay on top is probably the most reliable way of helping melons grow in New Hampshire. As for watermelons, for a change of pace we are switching from Sugar Baby to Sweet Favorite this year.  They are both reliable producers of sweet red watermelons.  Sugar Baby is round while Sweet Favorite is oblong shaped.  Sweet Favorite is an AAS winner and will produce 10-12 pound watermelons.  You should get 1 or 2 melons per plant.

We have four varieties of pumpkins.  We tried Kakai pumpkins this past year and they were tremendous.  They are green and orange striped and seem to last forever.  We have had several of them on our front porch, looking good, straight through New Year’s Day.  As an ornamental they are spectacular.  Check out the picture in High Mowing Seeds.  They make hull-less seeds for snacks too. You can expect 2 to 3 pumpkins per plant.  This year, Emma asked us to grow Polar Bear, a white pumpkin that weighs 30 to 60 pounds.  Imagine the art projects with a super large white pumpkin!  You should get one pumpkin per plant.  For tradition, there is Howden, the classic Jack O’Lantern.  It is a reliable producer of 20-25 pound pumpkins, with strong stems.  You should get 1 or 2 pumpkins per plant.  It was bred by a farmer in Massachusetts, so we know it works in New England.  Lastly, we have Jack Be Little pumpkins.  These are little 3” pumpkins that are fun.  Each plant should produce at least 8 pumpkins.  Treat pumpkins like winter squash for growing.   

Think ahead to fall when you can enjoy your own winter squash.  If you can keep them somewhere cool and dry, most varieties will last several months.  Buttercup, which may be the tastiest squash, usually last through Thanksgiving, while Acorn and Delicata will usually last until mid-winter, and Butternut will often last until the following spring.  To extend their storage life, harvest and cure (i.e. - put them in a warm dry place for a few days) and then find them a place in your house or garage that stays around 55 degrees.  If they are exposed to repeated temperatures below 50, they will only keep one or two months.  There are a multitude of ways to cook winter squash – bake it (face up or face down and add butter or maple syrup), cut into pieces, boil and make mashed squash (like mashed potatoes), or puree it into soups (we love curried squash soup).  As for growing squash, they are similar to cucumbers and like warmth.  Wait until early June to put out your plants.  If you can, use black plastic and row covers/reemay to keep them warm.  Transplants are especially helpful at letting your plant get big (to the 5 leaf stage) so they can withstand an attack by insects.  Many farmers that we know start half of their winter squash by transplant and half by direct seed.  In a bad year, the bugs will completely destroy a new crop of just-germinated direct-seeded winter squash.  By the time, that happens and you realize it, given the 3 months it takes to grown winter squash, it is often too late to start a second round of squash by direct seeding.  If you really like winter squash, transplants are a worthwhile way to make sure that you get a good harvest. 

We have two Acorn varieties. The traditional green acorn is Honey Bear.  It is an AAS winner bred at UNH.  It makes small squash (a little over a pound each) and the plant is bush size, good at saving space in the garden.  It makes 3-4 fruit per plant.  Also we have Jester, which is an ivory-colored acorn squash with green stripes.  It makes 5-7 fruits weighing one and half pounds on short vines.  Our buttercup is the standard Burgess. The fruit have a button on the bottom.  The fruit weigh 3-4 pounds each and you will get an average of 3-4 fruits per plant on vines that spread.  We have two butternut varieties.  If you want large butternut squashes, then grow Waltham.  This variety is an AAS winner that was bred at the Waltham Extension Station in suburban Boston in the 1960s and is the most commonly grown butternut squash in the US.  It makes 5-pound plus fruits on long vines, and usually produces 4-5 fruits per plant.  It you want something a little smaller, we offer Metro PMR.  This makes 4 to 5 fruits per plant also, but they only weigh 3 pounds each.  Also, they have powdery mildew resistance (if you see PMR on any seed variety it means powdery mildew resistance) and a more compact vine, if space is an issue in the garden. For Delicata, we have Johnny’s Delicata.  These are great tasting little squashes.  They weigh 1 pound or a little more, and can yield 6 fruits per plant.  You can tell they are ready to eat by their color.  Let them become cream colored with green stripes.  Lastly we are offering Sweet Dumpling, with its sweet rich flavor.  Make sure they are ripe – look for the deep ivory color and green stripes.  They weigh 1 to 1.5 pounds and are round tea-cupped shapes.  They are high yielding per plant.  One last note is about the number of squashes you can expect to harvest per plant.  I take these data from the seed catalogs.  These are just guides and in most cases the seed catalogs are right. But when it comes to winter squash, I find their estimates to be overly optimistic.  In a good year, these numbers are true, but there are some years, like 2011, when winter squash don’t do well due to all the late summer rain.  To increase your yield, give them a little extra attention.  Winter Squash are an easy crop to ignore in the garden as they don’t do anything for a few months, but they are worth the extra effort.  Make sure they stay watered in a drought period and do all you can to promote bees visiting your garden. 

The trick to salad greens is to keep them watered and to keep picking the leaves.  When salad greens are fresh from the garden, they taste their best.  There are two different ways to grow lettuce and fortunately, both work!  One option is to grow a “head” of lettuce, cut it, put it in the refrigerator for a week of lettuce, and then plant something new in that garden spot.  Another option is to harvest the lettuce in stages as it is needed for eating.  This can be done either by constantly picking the outer leaves of a head lettuce, or cutting the lettuce plant while it is small and letting it regrow.  Either way is a great way to make your own salad mix and keep one planting going for a long time.  This method of continual harvest encourages the plant to keep producing.  Note: If cutting the lettuce, cut it an inch or so off the ground.  If you cut it too short, you may kill the plant.

Step two is to incorporate more crops to go with the lettuce. A little lettuce, spinach, mizuna, baby beet greens, baby swiss chard, a few miscellaneous Herb pinches (basil, parsley, arugula, dill), and some edible flowers (nasturtium, gem marigolds) make a top flight salad mix.  If the leaves that you have harvested are too big, just rip them into small pieces.  We have ten different types of Lettuce for you to choose from.  A lot of commercial growers will mix up their lettuce types to add more variety to the texture and color of their salad mix, as well as take advantage of their differing maturity dates.  In addition to lettuce, we offer Tyee Spinach, Mizuna, twenty Herbs and a number of edible flowers.

If you really are a salad lover, you will want to start another crop by direct seeding in late June or July. That will keep you in fresh lettuce for many months.  You can either start it in rows or broadcast over an area.  Just sprinkle the seed on the soil and keep it moist.  If you cover the seed with soil, don’t bury it too deep as lettuce seed needs some light to germinate.  Also, while lettuce seed usually germinates quickly, it will go dormant if the soil it too hot.  It will eventually come out of dormancy and germinate when things cool off, when we get a rainy or cloudy stretch. It is fun to see how long you can make your lettuce last into the fall.  If you cover it with reemay, it will take you into November or even December in a mild year.

Tomatoes seem to be the favorite garden vegetable of all.  First, a few general thoughts about tomatoes, and then we will go into the varieties.  The key to growing tomatoes organically is to grow healthy plants and keep them free of disease.  Healthy plants start with a good seedling.  We try our best to grow them short, strong, and stocky.  Also, having an organic compost-based potting soil means that the root ball is full of nutrients and can withstand the rigors of being transplanted.  Tomatoes like warm soil, so you can bury them a little bit but not too deep (the soil is quite a bit colder down deep in the early summer).  Give them warm water the first week to help them along.  Also, your tomato soil needs to be really rich in nutrients and organic matter.  Add compost, aged manure, leaves and so forth to the ground each year.  Every crop will appreciate a rich soil -- tomatoes in particular. As for diseases, the best thing you can do it is to keep the leaves from getting splashed from the soil (don’t let diseases get started) and keep the leaves dry (create an environment that discourages disease from spreading). 

What specifically can you do about diseases?

First, if you have to water your tomato plants do it either by drip irrigation or if you use a garden hose and wand for overhead watering, do it in the morning.  That way the leaves have all day to dry off.  Watering tomato leaves in the afternoon will just leave them wet overnight and encourage disease. 

Second, use mulch.  The best option is to put your plants right into plastic mulch and then put hay mulch in the rows between the plastic.  That way there is no exposed soil and no chance of soil splash.  The soil is where the early blight lives.  It gets onto the plant when it gets splashed upwards from the ground onto the leaf.  If you do not want to use plastic mulch and prefer to use only hay or straw mulch, then wait until the end of June or beginning of July before putting down the straw or hay mulch.  Why? Straw or hay mulch cools the soil.  It is reflective of sunlight and some books say it will cool the soil by as much as 5 to 7 degrees.  The soil is not warm enough in the beginning of June.  If you lower that early June soil temperature by 5-7 degrees, the roots of the tomato plants won’t be happy, and plant health depends on the roots. 

Third, stay out of a tomato patch when the leaves are wet.  Especially in the summer when the dew is heavy, do not go into the patch in the morning.  Wait until 10 am, at least.  In the afternoon, try to get out of the tomato patch well before the dew sets. 

Fourth consider staking your tomato plants (especially if you don’t use the plastic and hay mulch combination mentioned above – one way or another you want to get the tomato plants off the ground).  There are all kinds of ways of getting your tomatoes up in the air.  Simple tomato cages are probably the easiest way to do it.  If you can find extra-strong cages, they are worth the investment.  They will last you a long time and won’t fall over when your plant is loaded with tomatoes.  You can mulch and use stakes at the same time.  That combination keeps the fruit from getting soil splash, evens out the moisture, keeps down the weeds and makes it easy to pick the fruit.  It is a lot of work in the beginning, but probably less work over the long haul, easier to keep up with all summer long, and a good system to get a reliable yield.  Some people prefer some kind of trellising system and some farmers use the “basket weave” system.  Both of those ideas require a lot of labor keeping up with the job every week during the summer.

Fifth, is the question: should you prune or not prune?  There is no simple or easy answer to that question.  If you are growing a determinate variety, then do not prune.  Determinate varieties only grow so much to begin with and you don’t want to cut down their potential.  If you are growing an indeterminate variety (one that keeps growing on and on), and you have some kind of a trellis system in place, then pruning can be a great idea.  But it is not something to do unless you have the right type of tomato, have a system in place that is set up to maximize the benefits of pruning, and are willing to keep up with maintaining that system on a regular basis.

Lastly, a word about late blight – which is different from early blight.  Early blight is the disease that usually makes tomato plants look bad by sometime in mid-late September (it is called early blight because the fungal spores start their work early in the summer, even though the results don’t usually appear until the end of summer).  By contrast, late blight can attack at any time and can wipe out a tomato or potato patch in a couple of days.  Late blight is what caused the great potato famine in Ireland in the 1840s.  Late blight has not been a major issue with tomatoes in New England until a couple of years ago.  It came to New England a couple of summers ago (they believe that it came from tomato plants that were trucked in from down south) and wiped out many home gardens and commercial tomato fields alike.  Most people will not get late blight.  If you think you have it, contact www.usablight.org/ - a USDA funded program to track late blight and prevent its spread. One thing you can do to prevent late blight is to get rid of rotten potatoes (they may have late blight).  Do not leave them out on top of the garden soil in the winter or in a compost pile that does not reach a high temperature throughout.  They have to be completely destroyed, as do any tomato plants that do have late blight.

On to varieties!

We grow cherry tomatoes in three colors.  Black Cherry is becoming very popular at farmer’s markets.  The flavor is considered excellent, so we are giving them a try this year.  Sun Gold cherries are delicious gold-orange fruit that are our most popular tomato. Red Sun Cherry tastes more like a regular tomato, just a little sweeter and in a cherry tomato size.  They make masses of fruits, up to 20 per truss.

Early Tomatoes.  If looking for an early tomato, we have five choices.  New Girl is a small-medium sized tomato, which replaced old-favorite Early Girl.  It is indeterminate, so not only is it the first tomato to ripen, it will keep producing all summer.  Another option is Juliet, which is a small saladette tomato.  It comes in clusters of over 12 plum-shaped fruit per cluster. They are delicious and perfect for fresh eating right off the vine.  They are also indeterminate and keep producing cluster after cluster throughout the season.  A third option is Honey Bunch Red Grape. These grape tomatoes are a lot like cherry tomatoes – they start early, the fruit are small and sweet (although grape-shaped, instead of round) and the plants make many clusters. Fruit should ripen by early July.  In the early-heirloom category, we have Moskvich and Mountain Princess, both of which are determinate varieties.  Moskvich makes fruit the same size fruit as New Girl, but what makes it popular is its rich heirloom taste.  The fruit have a soft skin, but they resist cracking.  It is a good choice for an early tomato. It comes from Russia/Siberia and not surprisingly is tolerant to cool weather.  Mountain Princess ripens at least a week later than Moskvich, but is fairly early for a producer of large fruit.  It comes from the mountains of West Virginia.

Heirloom Tomatoes.   What’s an heirloom? Heirlooms are varieties that are at least 50 years old.  People love heirloom tomatoes because of their special flavor and good looks.  It is like having a different fruit to eat.  However, heirlooms generally are less productive than more modern tomatoes.  The compromise that most gardeners and farmers make is to grow a mix of both heirloom and modern tomatoes.  That way you have a plentiful supply of tomatoes to eat and to cook with, and at the same time have something special to brighten up your table.

We have seven main season heirloom tomatoes.  Brandywine is the most famous heirloom tomato, for both its large size and good flavor.  It makes huge tomatoes that weigh a pound each.  As they are indeterminate and will keep producing, Johnny’s recommends staking or caging these fruits – which also helps keeps the fruit off the ground.  Brandywine has the potato-leafed plants.  Cherokee Green makes medium-plus sized green to orange-green fruit.  This is a nice pick for an heirloom slicing tomato that is different.  Japanese Black Trifele makes pear shaped fruit that are burgundy in color.  The fruit are small to medium sized.  Like Brandywine, Japanese Black Trifele also has potato-leafed plants.  Pruden’s Purple is a lot like Brandywine: the fruit are huge – weighing a good pound each, the leaves are the potato leaf type and the plant is indeterminate.  The major difference is that the fruit ripen about two weeks earlier than Brandywine.  Rose de Berne is from Europe originally, where it is considered the best flavored tomato.  It produces medium-sized fruit that have soft skins, but are not fragile like some heirlooms.  It is an indeterminate variety.  Rutgers is a variety that we have been asked to grow and has turned out to have a good following. It makes medium-sized fruit with rich red interiors and good old-time tomato flavor. This is an indeterminate variety.  It comes from New Jersey, the Garden State.  Lastly, we have Striped German.  This is an amazing tomato. Each fruit weighs ¾ to 1 pound.  The fruit are marbled yellow to red.  Matching its marbled looks, it has multiple tomato flavors all rolled into one.  The fruit are a bit tender and you need to be careful when harvesting the fruit off the vine.  If you pick them a little bit before they are completely ripe it will help keep them in good shape.  

Main season tomatoes.  We have five varieties of main season tomatoes.  Big Beef is an AAS winner and has been one of the most popular tomato varieties in the US for many years. It makes large fruit (3/4 lb.) perfect for sandwiches.  The fruit are firm and at the same time have great tomato flavor.  They will last for a few days in the kitchen which also attributes to their popularity.  For a large tomato, it ripens early in the season.  It is an indeterminate variety, so they will keep growing and would benefit from staking.  Bobcat is a new beefsteak tomato with large (3/4 lb.) fruit.  It should ripen in mid-August. This is a determinate variety with strong plants.  So you can stake, but not prune or trellis this variety.  Celebrity was an AAS winner in 1984 and has been a favorite ever since.  It makes medium-sized fruit and has been called a vigorous determinate. Celebrity is a tomato that is dependable, whether the year is one of rain, drought, sun or clouds.  While other varieties may have their ups and downs, Celebrity makes a good crop of beautiful fruit every year.  Defiant PhR was bred at North Carolina State University in response to the concerns about blight affecting tomatoes.  This variety has resistance to both early and late blight (which is astounding!).  The fruit are very good flavored, mid-sized (somewhere in between New Girl and Celebrity for size) and the plant is determinate. If we have another round of late blight this year or next year, I think this tomato will take off in popularity.  Jet Star is an old dependable making a comeback.  For fresh market farmers, it was one of the top tomatoes to grow in the early 1980s. It is an indeterminate variety that has very high yield of medium-sized smooth fruit that taste great.  For farmers, the percentage of marketable fruit is high.  It is called a low-acid fruit.

Paste Tomatoes.  While any tomato can be used to make tomato sauce, many people prefer a true paste tomato because they are meatier and have less juice.  This makes the canning/cooking process a lot quicker and some people find the flavor to be even better when using a true sauce tomato.  We offer three varieties, all of which are plum shaped fruit – despite their differing sizes. Amish Paste is an heirloom paste tomato that comes from Wisconsin Amish farmers in the 19th century.  The fruit usually weigh about 8 oz. each.  They come in clusters of two to four and the fruit ripe late in the season.  This is an indeterminate variety, so it grows vigorously.  Grandma Mary’s is an heirloom with a couple of different lineages.  Our seed comes from FEDCO, who is getting their seed from a woman who farms in western Maine.  This farmer is selecting seed each year for earliness and size.  The FEDCO catalog advertises 6-10 oz. fruit that ripen two to three weeks ahead of Amish Paste.  Grandma Mary’s is an indeterminate variety.  Also we have Mariana, which is a standard plum sized paste tomato that weighs about 4-6 oz. This plant is a determinate variety, so it has a smaller and more compact plant than the other paste tomatoes.  This is a hybrid variety which is bred for good disease resistance, uniform fruit, good flavor and thick walls.  This is comparable to Bellstar; we just wanted to get one hybrid paste tomato into our lineup.

Also we have Fargo Yellow Pear.  These are special little fruit that remind you of cherry tomatoes, perfect for a salad or a snack.  They have that great flavor you find in all yellow tomatoes. We also have Toma Verde Tomatillo for making salsa.