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2009 Vegetables
(subject to availability)
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Arugula is an aromatic, peppery salad green. It can be sautéed or cooked in many other ways. A good source of vitamin A.
Potato Arugula Salad Recipe
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Green Beans
Green Beans with Shallots
Red Potato Salad with Green Beans
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Broccoli – a good source of vitamin C and vitamin K.
Broccoli with Orange Sauce |
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Cauliflower
Roasted Cauliflower
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Green Cabbage A great source of vitamin C. What is cole slaw without cabbage?
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Red Cabbage |
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| Red Acre Cabbage Small, compact plants. |
'Bright Lights' Swiss Chard An All-America Selection Winner in 1998 and recipient of the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit. Grown as an “edible ornamental”, it is an attractive plant for gardens. |
Yellow Corn – Yellow sweet corn is a good source of lutein which is good for healthy vision and a healthy cardiovascular system. Corn also adds folate to our diets.
For companion planting, plant with beans, beet, cabbage, parsley, cantaloupe, cucumber, pea, potato, pumpkin, squash. |
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| White Corn |
Bicolor Corn – Excellent flavor. |
Cucumber Straight Eight – A Popular Home Garden Favorite, Known for it's Abundant Fruit Bearing Dark Green 8" Long Straight fruits that are excellent for slicing with a mild flavor, also good for pickling. A multiple disease resistant cucumber.
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Marketmore – A cucumber that has a good flavor. It is also suitable for culture in large pots. Marketmore has good resistance to powdery and downy mildew.
Cucumber Salad with Mint and Feta
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Burpless – Very productive with 12" long slender fruit. Very mild flavor. Spreads 5-6 ft. Sun.
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Bush Pickle – Unbelievably compact vines get only 2' long. White-spined fruits have classic pickle look, deep green with paler stripes. Up to 4-1/2" long, 1-1/2" across at maturity, but use them at any size. Very productive. Tolerant to powdery mildew and cucumber mosaic.
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| Black Beauty Eggplant – Introduced in 1902 as a dependable producer for decades. Fruits are dark purple, high-quality, and of fine flavor. Produces about up to 15 fruits per plant. are 6-1/2" long by 5" diameter and may weigh up to 3 lbs., but best harvested when smaller.
Excellent flavor. |
Japanese Long – This is a popular Japanese eggplant variety growing up to 14" long. The fruit is slender with purplish-black color and a purple calyx. Early and productive variety. Stir-fry, grill or use in tempura. |
White Tango Eggplant –
This is a high yielding white eggplant. It is a strong plant that bears beautiful, 7" x 2", cylindrical white fruit. Outstanding variety. The White Tango is excellent for grilling and pickling. |
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Whopper – These beautiful, mild-flavored fruits mature 3 weeks sooner than Black Beauty, and are an incredible 50% more productive. Vigorous, easy-care plants are ready to harvest just 2 months after setting out, with shiny, deep midnight-purple fruits, elegantly teardrop-shaped. Harvest them at 6 inches long for tender, succulent flavor. Yields are improved by this Whopper's great resistance to Tobacco Mosaic Virus!
Artichoke and Eggplant Salad |
Kale – one of the healthiest foods around. It's full of vitamins A, C and K, and it is a great source of manganese, calcium and iron. It also has no cholesterol and offers a nice serving of fiber and protein. Cook Kale like you would spinach, chard or any other green.
Roasted Kale with Sea Salt
Spinach with Sesame & Garlic |
Kohlrabi – A little sputnik-shaped vegetable. Kohlrabi is related to cabbage and cauliflower but is a root vegetable. Eat them raw, just peeled, sliced and added to a salad, but they are also delicious cooked and are often used in Indian cuisine.
Scalloped Kohlrabi
Roasted Kohlrabi
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Bibb – Bibb Lettuce is a butterhead variety of lettuce that produces small, 3 1/2 inch, loose heads of a dark green color. The interior of the head blanches into a nice golden yellow color. Features a distinctive flavor and is an easy lettuce variety to grow.
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Butterhead-Esmeralda – Esmeralda is an improved butterhead lettuce, manifesting a larger frame and broader disease resistance. The larger frames means more lettuce with each plant. Crisp, light green, firm 1 pound heads are resistant to tip burning, downy mildew and lettuce mosaic virus. Excellent in salads and garnishes. |
Romaine – Romaine or cos lettuce is a variety of lettuce which grows in a long head of sturdy leaves with a firm rib down the center. Unlike most lettuces, it is tolerant of heat. The American Institute for Cancer Research includes Romaine Lettuce in its list of foods that fight Cancer. |
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| Red and Green Leaf – The most popular of the garden lettuces, these vegetables are a loose-leaf variety of lettuce that can be grown as a flat, smooth, rough, round, frilly or oak shaped leaf. Use in salads, sandwiches, garnish. |
Clemson Spineless – Okra it is easy to grow and has so many uses. It is commonly known as the thickening agent in gumbo, but it can also be baked, broiled, fried, roasted, steamed, canned, or pickled. The crunchy and tasty pods are high in Vitamin A. Plants are 4’-5’ tall. Related to the hollyhock, the beautiful flowers alone make it worth growing in your garden!
Baked Okra with Lemon
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| Summer Squash |
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Sunburst Patty Pan– Sunburst is a beautiful butter yellow scallop-type squash. Each squash is accented with a small dark green ring. Mild, white flesh remains tender and firm. Best used when around 3 inches across.
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Summer Crookneck – Crookneck squash is a variety of summer squash with bumpy, yellow skin and sweet flesh. The taste is closer to winter squashes than to summer squashes. The squash taste best when harvested at around 6 inches. |
Vegetable Spaghetti Squash – Fruits average 9" long, and turn from buff to pale yellow when mature. Keeps well. Flesh is pale yellow and breaks up into spaghetti-like strands. Boil fruit for 20 to 30 minutes and remove flesh with a fork. Flesh is tasty and may be used like spaghetti, topped with your favorite sauce. |
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Yellow Straight Neck – Straight neck squash has smooth, yellow fruits on bush vines that won't run all over the garden. Bush-like plants supply large crop of uniform, lemon-yellow, slightly rough, club-shaped fruits that are generously produced on vigorous, semi-open plants. For best flavor and tenderness, harvest at 4-7 in. Steam, pickle, stuff, bake or use raw in salads.
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Aristocrat Zucchini – 1973 All-America Selections Winner. Plant produces good yields of 8" long dark green zucchini squash. One of the best zucchini squash varieties on the market. It is very smooth and slender. |
8-Ball Zucchini – The plants produces 3- to 4-inch round fruits that are dark green. Plants grow about 3 feet wide. Fruits are round with an attractive shiny, speckled dark exterior. It is the perfect size for a single serving or use a few to serve up to your family. This zucchini can be used in any recipe that the normal long zucchini can be used in. Excellent sliced, fried, pickled, fresh relish, steamed, or baked. Use in salads, omelets and ratatouille. |
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| Revenue Zucchini – Revenue Zucchini has medium light-green skin, and a slight bend to it. This is a fast growing bush type |
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Winter Squash
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Acorn ‘Table Ace’ – This semi-bush plant produces good yields of real black-green Acorn type squash. The squash has delicious bright orange flesh. The finest, tastiest acorn you'll ever grow! Stores well all winter.
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Butternut – Butternut is a type of winter squash. It has a sweet, nutty taste that is similar to pumpkin. It has yellow skin and orange fleshy pulp. When ripe, it turns increasingly deep orange, and becomes sweeter and richer. It grows on a vine. Butternut squash is a vegetable that can be roasted and toasted and also be puréed or mashed into soups, casseroles, breads, and muffins. |
Pumpkin ‘Howden’ – Howden is an improved Connecticut Field type. It is larger, more uniform & symmetrical with a rich orange hard rind and thick flesh. These pumpkins grow 20-25 lbs. They have large spreading vines and are Black Rot tolerant. |
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| Pumpkin ‘Spirit’ – 1977 All-America Selections Winner. Spirit is a semi-bush plant that produces good yields of 12" diameter rich orange pumpkins. Excellent for carving and decorations. |
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| Melons and Strawberries |
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Hale’s Best Cantaloupe – This muskmelon became widely popular because it combined excellent flavor with earliness. Developed by a Japanese market gardener in California around 1920, this muskmelon became widely popular because it combined excellent flavor with earliness. Hale's Best is a beautiful oval melon deep green skin with golden netting. The flesh is an appealing salmon color, aromatic and sweet.
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Crimson Sweet Watermelon – Excellent quality, crisp, deep red flesh is sweet and juicy. Bright green rind with alternating light and dark green stripes. Melons average 12” x 10”, around 25 pounds. Eight foot vines produce 3-6 fruits. Resistant to wilt and anthracnose. All American Select 1964 Winner. Resistant to fusarium wilt and anthracnose. |
Sugar Baby Watermelon – Sweet tasting "Ice Box" watermelon. Fine-textured, medium-red flesh. The round, 12 lb., dark green skinned melons grow 8 in. across. A delicious, fast maturing watermelon. |
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| Tiger Baby Watermelon – Icebox type, rounded fruit average 7 to 10 lb. Green striped melons have rosy-red crisp dense flesh that is refreshing and sweet. |
Berries Galore – This cultivar is an excellent dual-purpose edible and ornamental selection noted for its wild berry taste and glossy foliage. Normally the plants will not runner so each plant diverts its energy into berry production. Flowers are produced above the foliage. Medium-sized strawberries ripen in early summer and a second smaller crop produced in the fall. Productivity increases with the age of the plant.
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Quinault – A great tasting, heavy everbearing strawberry developed by Washington State University. It is well on its way to being the greatest performer ever. Quinault Strawberries have been tested in 13 states and Canada and have an excellent performance record for size, taste and plant growth. It was found to be the most disease free everbearer we have ever tested. Quinault Strawberries appear to have all the properties to make it a very popular – if not the most popular variety of everbearing strawberries. |
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| Sweet Peppers |
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Banana – Sweet banana peppers are popular garden-variety peppers. The banana pepper is a very productive plant producing sweet, long, tapered, yellow and banana-shaped, hence the name. Sweet Banana peppers may be fried or sautéed, used raw on relish platters, in salads, sandwiches or stuffed.
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Better Belle – Better Belle is an early great-tasting variety with very blocky and thick-walled four-lobed peppers. Better Belle pepper plants maintain large fruit size and good production all season. Better Belles are also Tobacco Mosaic tolerant. This 1-1/2' to 2' tall bushy plant requires little care. Pinch off early flowers to encourage plant growth. |
Big Bertha – A huge 7" x 4" green pepper with thick walled, glossy fruit. This is an abundant grower. The fruit is tender and great for stuffing and roasting. Adds color and flavor to salads and cooked dishes. Great for garden beds and large containers. |
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California Wonder Bell Pepper – An excellent stuffing pepper that is a sweet, flavorful, and a heavy producer of large bell peppers. This pepper can be grown easily in containers, making it ideal for the gardener with little space who still wants an abundance of magnificent bell peppers.
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Chocolate Bell – Prolific yields of uniform, medium-large fruits of rich, mahogany color. This unusual fruit is ideal for use in the home vegetable garden or large containers. Perfect for use in salads, sandwiches, snacks or cooked in a stir fry. |
Golden Bell – Large, bell shaped, golden fruit. Ideal for us in the home vegetable garden or large containers. Perfect for use in salads, sandwiches, snacks or cooked in a stir fry. |
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Golden Cal. Wonder – The plants are upright, strong, and produce fruits that are mostly four-lobed, blocky, and 4 by 4½ inches with thick flesh that is mild and sweet. Peppers are a bright gold, changing to orange-red when mature.
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Gypsy – All-America Winner. Very prolific frying pepper that goes great fresh and in salads. Tapered fruits grow 4 1/2" long by 2 1/2" wide, and mature yellow to orange to red. |
Purple Beauty – A compact plant with very meaty, thick-fleshed, sweet, purple peppers. It is unlike most peppers which start out green, this one starts out purple and provides color early on. |
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Red Beauty – These plants produces good yields of 4" long by 4" wide sweet bell peppers. Peppers turn from green to red when mature. Excellent for salads, stuffing and gourmet dishes.
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Red Knight –
This variety has good disease resistance. Large blocky peppers are about 4 1/2" square. Starting out green, the sweet peppers mature early in the season to red. This is a very sweet early pepper.
Red Bell Pepper and White Bean Soup with Arugula |
Valencia Orange – This pepper is a blazing orange color. The plant produces 4-1/2 inch fruits that maintain firmness even when ripe. Vigorous, heavy bearing, plants are ideal for use in the home vegetable garden or large containers. Perfect for use in salads, sandwiches, snacks or cooked in a stir fry. |
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Hot Peppers
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All about hot peppers...
Scoville Test For Capsaicin--A Thermal Richter Scale
(Margen, S. et. al (1992).The wellness encyclopedia of food and nutrition: How to buy, store, and prepare every variety of fresh food.)
"All hot peppers contain capsaicinoids, natural substances that produce a burning sensation in the mouth, causing the eyes to water and the nose to run, and even induce perspiration. Capsaicinoids have no flavor or odor, but act directly on the pain receptors in the mouth and throat. The primary capsaicinoid, capsaicin, is so hot that a single drop diluted in 100,000 drops of water will produce a blistering of the tongue.
"Capsaicinoids are found primarily in the pepper's placenta--the white "ribs" that run down the middle and along the sides of a pepper. Since the seeds are in such close contact with the ribs, they are also often hot. In the rest of the vegetable, capsaicinoids are unevenly distributed throughout the flesh, so it is likely that one part of the same pepper may be hotter ot milder than another. You can reduce the amount of heat in a chili pepper by removing the ribs and seeds, but you must wear gloves while doing so.
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"Capsaicinoid content is measured in parts per million. These parts per million are converted into Scoville heat units, the industry standard for measuring a pepper's punch. One part per million is equivalent to 15 Scoville units. Bell peppers have a value of zero Scoville units, whereas habaneros— the hottest peppers—register a blistering 200,000 to 300,000.Pure capsaicin has a Scoville heat unit score of 16 million."
Peppers and Health
(Margen, S. et. al (1992).The wellness encyclopedia of food and nutrition: How to buy, store, and prepare every variety of fresh food.)
"Are hot peppers bad for you? Proably not, according to recent studies. A common concern is that hot peppers or other spicy foods cause ulcers, but there's no evidence that they do. Studies of areas where hot peppers are used extensively in cooking, such as Brazil and Thailand, have found no higher incidence of stomach ulcers among their populations. And in a study conducted at a Veterans Administration hospital, researchers ground up about an ounce of jalapeno pepper and injected it directly into the stomachs of volunteers. Follow-up observation showed no damage to their stomach linings. Nor do hot peppers aggravate or cause hemorrhoids, as has often been claimed, since capsaicinoids...are broken down before they reach the lower intenstine.
"Actually, evidence has shown that peppers may have some beneficial properties. Capsaicin--the predominant capsaicinoid--has been found to work as an anticoagulant, thus possibly helping prevent heart attacks or strokes caused by blood clot. Small amounts of capsaicin can produce numbing of the skin and have a slight anti-inflammatory effect. In some countries, peppers are used in salves.
"Moreover, peppers are high in vitamin C, which, in turn, may be effective in protecting against cancer. Vitamin C is an antioxidant, a chemical substance capable of removing the threat from free radicals, which can cause cells to mutate."
"By weight, green bell peppers have twice as much vitamin C as citrus fruit; red peppers have three times as much. Hot peppers contain even more vitamin C, 357 percent more than an orange. And red peppers are quite a good source of beta carotene."
Remedies For the Pepper's Bite
(Berkley, R. (1992). Peppers: A Cookbook. New York)
"There are several remedies for the effects of eating a pepper that is too hot for you, something that is usually discovered when it is too late. (Eventually, you can build up tolerance to the heat of peppers, and will be able to eat hotter and hotter chilis without having to resort to these cures.) Many people recommend drinking tomato juice or eating a fresh lemon or lime, the theory being that the acid counteracts the alkalinity of the capsaicin. Some people won't begin eating hot peppers without a pitcher of cold water handy, though this is not the best idea. The capsaicin, which is an oil, does not mix with the water but is instead distributed to more parts of the mouth. More useful solutions include drinking milk (rinsing the mouth with it as you sip) or eating rice or bread, which absorb the capsaicin. My own favorite retaliation against attack by hot chili pepper is to simply eat another. And if that doesn't work, eat another one."
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Cayenne Long Slim – Long slender hot peppers grow 5-6". A very productive variety and good for drying.
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The Habanero is the hottest chile pepper you'll find, and they are very, very hot. The oil in the habanero, as well as many other hot chiles, can be very painful if you get it in your eyes or on open wounds on your hands. Wearing gloves while handling is your best bet. Unripe habaneros are green, but the color at maturity varies. Common colors are orange and red. Most habaneros rate 200,000 to 300,000 Scoville heat units. That's hot!!! |
Hot Hungarian Wax Pepper is a hot version of the sweet banana pepper. 'Hungarian Wax' has about the same heat as a 'Jalapeño'. These medium-hot peppers are especially good for pickling. Canary yellow, then bright red at full maturity. They are 6 to 8 inches long and 2 inches across. Plants are 20 to 24 inches tall.
Scoville Heat Index: 1000 |
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The Jalapeño pepper – varies from mild to hot depending on how it was grown and how it was prepared. The heat is concentrated in the seeds and the veins, so if you want it on the milder side, remove the seeds.
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Joe E. Parker – It is thick fleshed and dagger shaped. These peppers are only mildly hot. Grilled and peeled, the fruit are delicious for stuffing or using in salads, sauces and stews. The color changes from green to red as they mature, and they are a culinary treat at either stage of maturity. Peppers are produced on medium-sized plants that could, if given enough support, be container grown. |
Manzano Red – Very hot peppers to 2" long and 1" wide, often resembling miniature bell peppers. Manzano peppers have distinctive black seeds and mature green to red. |
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| Pepperonicini – Greek 2" pepper with a slightly hot flavor that is pickled for the best flavor but can be used fresh also. These grow prolifically on large plants |
Poblano – Bushy, pendant-type plants with dark green leaves grow to 3 feet and bear fruit until frost. Medium-sized, 4 inches long, and dark green with a mild to medium heat level. These peppers are superb roasted and peeled, then preserved by canning or freezing.
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The Serrano chile peppers have thin walls. They don't need to be steamed or peeled before using, making it the easiest chile pepper to use for salsas. the serrano chile is green in color at first, and ripens to red, brown, orange, or yellow. The serrano is said to be about 5 times hotter than the jalapeño.Most serranos rate between 10,000 and 20,000 Scoville units. |
