Gardening

include winter squash, tomatoes, beans, peppers, onions, garlic and zucchini.

For winter squash, I'm growing rampicante squash (Baker Creek Seed Co). I tried this for the first time this year and am hooked. I put it on an arched cattle panel, and foolishly put in five starts. Two starts is more than enough. Because of all of the construction in my garden area, I couldn't get things planted until late. I was only able to harvest a few fully matured squash to store, but ended up with oodles and oodles of immature squash. The nice thing about this squash - aside from its ridiculous production rate - is that the immature squash can be eaten just like zucchini. And letting it fully mature on the vine - well, let's just say you get massively long squash with lots of "meat" in the neck and few seeds at the very end. My biggest one is probably 3+ feet long. And they apparently store for most of the year at normal house temperatures, which means I don't have to fight to find cold storage space. I'm testing the longevity by holding one of the squash until May. Oh, and for 2025, I'm confining myself to two starts and they'll be put along the back fence. The plants overtook the arch - it just needs more room. Very aggressive growth.

I'll also grow some sweet meat squash from saved seeds. I didn't grow it this year (again with the construction activities in the areas I was going to plant it in). I did end up buying one from a local farm. If you haven't grown them, they're massive. And the flesh is super sweet when roasted. When I was working at the office, I'd go buy a quarter of one at the weekly farmers market across the street. Anyway, I cut up the one that I bought this year and pressure canned the chunks. I ended up with 16 pints. I probably should've canned in quarts, but oh well. The chunks will be pureed and used in pumpkin breads, pumpkin pie (including the one I'll make tomorrow for Thanksgiving) and for use in making squash tortillas and soup.

I may throw out a butternut squash seed or two as well, but I feel like the rampicante covers that pretty well.

For my main production (canning ) tomatoes, I'll be planting out Nova tomatoes (Territorial Seeds). It is a variety that I have grown most years, and it is unfussy in my climate. It keeps on producing until very late summer, and is the first tomato plant to die off. I'm usually grateful for that, as I can only pressure can so many jars of marinara sauce and whole tomatoes.

I'll also grow my three favorite dwarf varieties - Speckled Heart, Wild Fred and Big Green. I've grown Speckled Heart for years, since I was graciously given some seeds from DU's very own tomato guru. I tried Wild Fred and Big Green this year and am hooked. The Big Greens were super productive and delicious slicers. I just used my last one last week (I picked a few very green ones at the end of this season as I was pulling out the plants and topping off the beds with compost and chicken yard material and the green tomatoes have been on my enclosed unheated back porch slowly ripening). The Wild Fred was not quite as productive for me, but really a beautiful big tomato with plenty of flavor. The three of these are mostly for slicing, but I'll also dehydrate some and powder the slices as I need them, and I may throw some in some fresh (not canned) sauce.

I also have to have a sungold tomato plant, so I'll start one of those. I do grow Aurora tomatoes, which are a basic red slicing tomato. They're good in salads and such, just a reliable tomato. New varieties I'll be trying this year include Emalia, Principe Borghese (hopefully for sundried tomatoes), Rebel Star Fighter, Lemon Plum and Cane Torre. I'll only grow one of each of those, just to see how I like them. I tried a bunch of purple tomatoes this year and found they just take way too long to mature. All of the different varieties of purples were delicious, just too risky to grow such long season ripening tomatoes here in my yard.

I mostly grow bush beans nowadays, as my vertical space is committed to rampicante squash, a couple of northern melons and cucumbers (beit alpha and lemon for fresh eating and various pickling varieties for my picked cukes.) I grow black beans, coqaine and Rosso di Lucca for dry beans though I'm trying Hungarian Rice beans too this next year. For fresh eating, I grow a yellow wax bean (no idea where I got the seeds from but I save them each year), Desperado green beans and a purple bean that I've also lost the variety name of but have tons of saved seeds.

Sweet peppers are a tough one for me to grow, so I'm always searching for the perfect one. I find that Doux peppers grow fine here, so I'll be growing some of those. I'll be trying Jimmy Nardello, Doe Hill and Little Bells.

For hot peppers, I always grow Fireball (for hot sauce), jalapeños (for pickling, freezing and pressure canning) and Cayenne (for simply hanging/drying and using as red pepper flakes). I grew Bhut x Neyde this year and I'm debating growing one next year. It is a cross of a ghost pepper so it is apparently super hot. I have it hanging and drying and plan on powdering and adding to salt and then trying. It is a lovely purple-leafed/stalk bush and the peppers are deep dark purple until they ripen to an orange with some stripes that make it look like it has been grilled. It thrived in my yard, so I'm likely to grow it again even if I'm not brave enough to eat one. I'll be trying Serrano peppers this year too.

For onions, I'm trying Yellow of Parma as it is a good northern onion that apparently stores really long. I'm kinda meh on growing actual yellow onions in general, because I can buy a 50 lb bag for 15 bucks at the local restaurant supply place. But I'm a sucker for growing my own, so I'll try this one and see how it does. I also grow leeks, and I just reintroduced Egyptian walking onions to one of my beds. I always have clumps of chives grown here and there, and I try to plop in a few green scallion seeds now and then. I am also trying shallot bulbs this year.

I had to re-establish my garlic this year. We'd moved some raised beds to a different location in our yard last fall and I'd planted out the garlic. Of course the bed needed to be moved before the garlic was even close to mature. So I started over again this fall.

For zucchini, I grow a gray Mexican zucchini from Territorial Seeds. I also grow a gold variety called Goldini, which dehydrates well and tastes amazing in soups when rehydrated.