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 First, prepare a list before placing your
catalogue order or making that first trip to the garden center.
Without a bit of preplanning our carts end up filled with more seeds
and plants than space available or varieties that are not suited to
our growing conditions or our family’s taste.
Make sure each plant you select provides the greatest return on
investment by including winning varieties with a visit to the
All-America Selections (AAS) website (all-americaselections.org).
This non-profit trialing organization has test sites across the US
and Canada that trial and select winning varieties for their taste
and garden performance.
Review your favorite recipes and consider growing the ingredients
you need on a regular basis. Salad lovers may want to plant a
container of greens that can be harvested daily. Sandy Lettuce and
colorful mild flavored Red Kingdom Mizuna are slow to bolt,
extending the harvest into warmer months. Add some super nutritious
Prizm kale for your morning smoothies and salads. Prizm’s stemless
stalks releaf quickly after harvest so you’ll have a continuous
supply.
Fill a corner of the garden or container with a small-fruited tomato
or two for salads, snacking and other daily treats. Red Celano grape
tomato (a determinate for containers) and the light-yellow sweet
Firefly tomato (an indeterminate for vertical or staked gardens) are
attractive and very productive, ensuring more than enough for your
whole family to enjoy.
Add a bit of crunch and color by growing Roxanne radishes. And don’t
forget the cucumbers. Green Light cucumbers are seedless, sweet and
prolific – great for salads or a refreshing summer drink. Keep a
constant supply of these ingredients by making small plantings
throughout the season. Grow several
containers of tasty and attractive Delizz strawberries. These
everbearing plants will provide a pretty pot of fresh strawberries
throughout the summer for your morning oatmeal or afternoon glass of
wine.
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Plant unusual vegetables you can’t purchase at the
grocery store. Roulette pepper has the look and citrusy flavor of a
habanero without the heat. And you won’t find anything like Yellow
Apple tomato at the store. It has small unique apple-shaped fruit
with a citrusy sweet flavor that’s perfect for snacks or stuffing
with cheese.
Dedicate some space for those vegetables that are more expensive to
buy than grow. Green peppers are a bargain in the summer, but the
yellow, orange and red ones can cost two to three times more. Reduce
the wait time and increase your enjoyment with early maturing
colorful peppers like Orange Blaze or the yellow sweet peppers like
Cornito Giallo, Escamillo or Just Sweet.
If you plan to freeze, dry or can your harvest, make sure to reserve
some time during harvest season for picking and preserving. Select
disease resistant productive varieties like Early Resilience Roma
Tomato so you’ll have plenty of produce to preserve.
This is your year to produce a garden filled with just enough family
favorites and unusual varieties that are less expensive to grow than
buy.
Melinda Myers has written more than 20 gardening books, including
Small Space Gardening. She hosts The Great Courses “How to Grow
Anything” gardening DVD series and the nationally syndicated
Melinda’s Garden Moment TV & radio segments. Myers is a columnist
and contributing editor for Birds & Blooms magazine and was
commissioned by AAS for her expertise to write this article. Myers’
web site is www.melindamyers.
com.
[photo credit: All-America Selections]
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