favorite seed companies/garden vegetables

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

What is your favorite seed company?  What are your favorite varieties of garden vegetables?  Ever try planting something entirely new only to wonder why you didn't do it sooner?

I like Johnny's Seeds...really good customer service and nice folks.  Never got anything from them that hasn't done well... I even got watermelon seed that did really well in Wisconsin (who'd have thought?)

My favorite varieties:
I like the flavor of Matt's Wild Cherry tomato, even though they're really delicate and tiny, they taste phenomenal.  I also found that growing patty pan squash rather than crooknecks or zucchini seems to work better here... powdery mildew is a really big problem, though applying milk seems to keep it at bay long enough to harvest.  We grow Kakai pumpkins for the dark green, hull-less seeds.  I grew really gorgeous nasturtiums this year called "Empress of India" that produce dark green leaves and blood red flowers, really pretty.  We are trying Korean sweet potatoes this year, which are called kogoma in Korean (have no idea what they are called in English) that are really delicious... they don't need butter because they already taste buttery from the get go; you can just eat them like dessert.  The watermelon that did so well in this cold climate was called Little Baby Flower.  The first one that we grew split open because we didn't realize it was ready yet!  They are really tiny, about 5-6" in diameter, perfect for dessert, and produce several melons per vine, even in less than ideal conditions.  The lettuce variety we usually grow is Asian red curl, seed bought from the Korean market.  Produces all summer and is very slow bolting and non-bitter.  

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Oh, and Jerusalem artichokes are one of those things that I finally tried and wondered why I never planted them sooner.  If nothing else, it was fun to watch them turn into an inpenetrable 10' tall forest of flowers, but the pickles made from them were unique and crunchy, and they were good in stews and stuff.  

I still really want to try to grow a Charentais melon... the past two years i've tried, but the doggone chipmunks apparently like them as a before-dinner salad.  Maybe after we move??

[Sassy]

Years ago, before Jerusalem artichokes became popular, I did home care for a paraplegic.  He grew Jerusalem artichokes to convert to ethanol for engines.  This was 25 yrs ago - he was pretty creative.  No one even thought about eating them - at least to his or my knowledge...

We haven't had too much success with watermelons.  Had quite a few heirloom cantaloupes but the ants really liked them  :-/ .  We've planted several types of heirloom tomatoes - this year the Cherokee purple & Brandywine did really well.  Lots of varieties of squash, Armenian cucumbers.  My brother-in-law custom farms sweet potatoes - he has an Asian variety that you grate & fry in butter or coconut oil - really good!  They're Glenn's favorites.  We had several varieties of peppers.  I've tried growing nasturtiums here but they don't seem to like the heat real well - I used to have beautiful ones in Washington state.

Your daughter is so cute - the things she comes up with!  I bet she amazes the adults when she says this stuff!  My granddaughter is almost 5 - her dad (my youngest son) planted a pretty nice garden this year - had lots of peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, onions & melons.  So she talks about that.  My oldest son was very active while my youngest was very relaxed, laid back when he was young - they were like night & day.  

[glenn kangiser]

We  like Seed Savers Exchange for the odd and heirloom seeds.

Cherokee Purple tomatoes is a favorite of ours.  I really like the Brandywine tomato flavor but they seem to be more susceptible to cracking from water problems - or maybe other reasons -- looks ugly but tastes good.

http://www.seedsavers.org/

[glenn kangiser]

Link to Johnny's Seeds here.

http://www.johnnyseeds.com/home.aspx?ct=HG

Note that I recently read a report that said some seed companies sell up to something like [highlight]66% bad seeds [/highlight]and if you fail to get plants from the seed , it is likely not you but seed companies packaging dead seed even if it is for the current year crop.

[Sassy]

Oh, we also have planted parsnips, turnips, beets, swiss chard, spinach, lots of kinds of lettuce (an heirloom variety)-they've all done well & reseed themselves every year - also broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower - didn't have much success with beans this year, though.

[MountainDon]

My favorite seeds are sunflower and pumpkin. I like lightly salted tho' I do particularly love a spicy pumpkin mix the Whole Foods store carries. I'm roasting some pumpkin seeds right now, soaked them in salted water for a few hours with a couple drops of Tabasco added.   Oh, wait a sec... you meant something a little different didn't ya'?   :-/  

Never mind.

[glenn kangiser]

I remember when my mom roasted us some seeds years ago.

We let our excess vegetables go to seed and either reseed themselves or pick handfuls and broadcast them in various places.  We don't till the garden - at most we mat work the top a little with a rake or something then replant.  I have lots of seedlings out there that I need to transplant so they have room to grow.  Those good old winter vegetables.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

In Oklahoma, I gardened all winter.  I built a $10 "greenhouse" on one of my straw raised beds (PVC and some visqueen) and grew lettuce, chard, kale, spinach, parsnips, carrots, radishes, garlic, onions, endives, burdock, salsify, and I forget what all else all winter long.  Here I don't think it would work.  I am a lazy gardener, so I like things that reseed themselves... probably the reason I'm so crazy about those wild tomatoes... those things come up everywhere because the chipmunks drag them around the yard.  I let the volunteers grow.  The Asian varieties of sweet potatoes are so delicious.  I'm sure the ones that are more orange in color are probably healthier, and I like them too, but the Korean ones are like candy.  One of my favorite memories is the first time I ever ate them in Jolla-namdo province (the deep south of South Korea) on Christmas night.  We'd been to the sea on an extremely bitter cold Christmas day and sat in a frozen restaurant eating raw, still-wriggling fish , and when we got back to aunt and uncle's house, they'd left some sweet taters on the coals while we were gone, and aunt pulled them out and we all sat under blankets in the main room of the house waiting for the floor to warm up and eating those delicious sweet potatoes from her garden.  I must've eaten half a dozen of the little ones.  Then one of my husband's cousins came in with a cake and a small piece of American style steak (he must've paid a fortune for it.)  He was hoping to make it more like home on Christmas for us.  He grilled that little steak and we split it between about 10 people and all had a piece of cake.  It as a really memorable Christmas.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Well, what are some new plants/veggies you'd like to try to grow?

I have this dream of making a Korean garden apart from my regular garden and want to have all sorts of stuff in it... a persimmon tree and Asian pear (if you've never eaten these, they're great).  Under the shade of the trees, I want to plant ginseng.  I'd like to have a little koi pond/water garden as well, and a lot of Korean vegetables...young-pa and chok-pa (two varieties of onions), napa cabbage, bok choi, spinach, potatoes, sweet potatoes (kogoma), Korean pumpkins, zuchinni, fiddle head ferns, red and green lettuces, perilla, sesame, and of course, lots of garlic.  I'd also like to plant some hot chilies, garland chrysanthemum (suke), Korean radishes, and a lot of other vegetables that I don't know English names for.  The really experimental part is that I'd like to attempt to grow a few specimen rice plants in the edge of my water garden because rice is such a graceful plant.  Barley and millet could also be elsewhere in the garden as they're important in Korean food.  I'd also like to experiment with growing mushrooms... there are so many kinds of mushrooms used in Korean food, and I'm not sure I could even order/grow them here, but I'd like to try.  My favorites and these long, stringy ones that grow together in tight clusters.... they're great in beef and onion stew.  IFF hubby gets the job in OK, there is a large enough Korean population to have a market for those veggies, besides the fact that we enjoy eating them.  Oh, one more thing... lotus flowers, for the roots, which are used as both food and medicine.  And in the midst of this garden, a beehive, because I learned a long time ago that real honey is an expensive and treasured commodity in Korea.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Sassy, when you grow parsnips, how do you prepare them?  I love them fried in a little butter with either cinnamon or maple syrup...  they were one of those veggies I don't think I ever tried until adulthood but just love the sweet spicy smell when they're cooking.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

My favorite seeds are sunflower and pumpkin. I like lightly salted tho' I do particularly love a spicy pumpkin mix the Whole Foods store carries. I'm roasting some pumpkin seeds right now, soaked them in salted water for a few hours with a couple drops of Tabasco added.   Oh, wait a sec... you meant something a little different didn't ya'?   :-/  

Never mind.

Don, try soaking them in a mixture of water and tamari sauce and then coating them in cayenne before toasting them (the pumpkin seeds).  They're really good and taste a lot like the spicy mix from the whole foods stores.  If you use straight tamari sauce, it's too salty.

[Sassy]

Your future garden sounds wonderful, Homegrown!  I love Napa cabbage - you know, I've never thought about how sesame seeds were grown  :-? ...

We like to fry our parsnips in butter or coconut oil.  I get organic, cold pressed coconut oil from Dr. Mercola.com - it's rather expensive, but the smell is intoxicating, tastes great & is also very nice on the skin.  He has some good info on how coconut oil went out of popularity - during WWII it was almost impossible for the US to get coconut oil so the big manufacturers developed the technology for getting oil from other sources - then the propaganda that coconut oil was bad for you spread & when it was once more available, no one wanted it.

Coconut oil also has the highest heat tolerance before breaking down to carcinogenic, poisonous chemicals.  I'll have to look up the link & post it http://products.mercola.com/coconut%2Doil/

Also, you mentioned honey - here is a link to organic, unpasturized, unfiltered honey from a friend of mine http://www.honeygardens.com/ .  

We have a nice pond in the valley - used to have Koi but it got so cold one year that the pond froze & they died.  Now we have big gold fish that seem to do just fine no matter what.  We want to eventually put in a pond in our "uphill" patio/greenhouse, with a waterfall & have fish - we were wanting talapia but I think they are illegal to grow in the states - something we could raise & eat but would also add ferilizer to the water - we'd circulate the water in our hydroponic garden.  One of these days - there is always so much else to do...

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

It's one of those daydream gardens, Sassy, but someday I really do want to plant it.  My four-year-old likes the idea too.  I forgot to mention the Korean cucumbers, too... they're really good (comparable to the variety Asian jade).  When I go visit my in-laws, I always try to bring them honey.  One time I got some from an apiary near my hometown that had three flavors of honey, and that went over really well.  Another time, I just bought them a big jug of honey with the honeycomb, and even though I know my MIL will just take half and sell it, I still do it because they get so excited over it.  The half that is left, she splits with her brothers and her sister.  Do any of you grow ginger root?  I hadn't thought about it, but that's another necessity if I'm growing a Korean garden.  Argh!  Trick-or-treaters are already showing up!!!

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Sassy, the fish pond and waterfall sound really nice... my FIL keeps telling my husband that when he comes to visit us he wants to build a "fish farm" on our land.  He first started saying this when we were in Oklahoma, and I asked my husband, "Well, how much land does he think we have???"  Turns out he meant just a pond.  To him, that is a 'fish farm', not in the commercial factory farm way that we automatically think.  Hopefully we can buy land with a stocked pond before FIL comes to visit (tentatively next August) because he'd be thrilled to death to get to fish while he was here.  If not, there are a lot of lakes around, and if we can just get him to understand the slot limits and catch limits we'll be doing well... had a foreign friend who was cleaning a fish that he wasn't supposed to have and offered some to the game warden when he came walking up.  He later told me that $200 fish was the most expensive he'd ever eaten.

I really like the taste of tilapia, too, but everytime I see them in the grocery store, they're marked "Product of China" so I just can't bring myself to buy them...if I buy fish, it is usually a product of the US, unless I buy myeolchi (tiny anchovies from Korea) or choggi (I think it is called croaker in English) from Korea.  Most of the time we eat bass or catfish we catch ourselves... and the occasional crappie or other panfish.

[Sassy]

My son fishes in a nearby lake for trout & bass.   He also fishes for catfish in the sloughs.  I think I've only had talapia in Mexico - can't remember if I've ever had it in the states.  Right across from the hospital is a fish market.  I think Vietnamese or Hmongs own it - they have the been fish & shrimp - salmon, bass, talapia - if I get the fish, I get the non-fish bass  .  They shell & de-vein the shrimp, have some type of batter, doesn't cover the shrimp, just gives it some crispiness - I get the spicy that has jalepenos & green onions - wonderful.  They're very reasonable.

One of the nurses I worked with bought land in Missouri - 180 acres with 3 huge man-made stocked ponds, a custom house - not real large, around 1200 sq ft, for I think $260,000.  They hunt right on the property - lots of deer, lots of fish...  

I've never grown ginger or a lot of the things you mentioned.  One of these days we'll have to diversify more.

[glenn kangiser]

I raised trout in a hatchery with ponds when I was in grade school - worked for a friend evenings and weekends

I keep thinking about building a few ponds around here, but all except the spring pond would be rainwater retention ponds.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

I think part of the interest in the Korean garden (aside from the fact that my husband is Korean) is the fascination with agriculture in Korea in general.  Of course, they import most of their beef from us, and they are moving more and more toward big commercial farms like in the US, but there are still a lot of small family farms.  Even in Seoul, a lot of people fill their balconies with vegetables... my FIL grows hot peppers and lettuce and sometimes tomatoes in old styrofoam crates (like the kind electronics are packed in... he fills them with potting soil and composts his kitchen waste to fertilize them.)  Sometimes the market vendors sell things bought at the wholesale agriculture markets, but as often as not, there will be little old ladies sitting on a stoop shelling peas grown in a pot on their balcony and selling them a few handfulls at a time, as well as things like peppers or lettuce, and when they sell their four or five bundles, they go home for the day.  At the beach, when the tide comes in, little kids scamper around picking up tiny anchovies that wash ashore by the thousands and drop them into coke bottles.  When they fill up their bottle, they run home to spread the fish out on a screen to dry for later use or to sell.  These are the same fish my kids absolutely love... their favorite Korean food bar none.  One of my favorite Korean vegetables is perilla... the leaves are used to wrap around rice and meat and hot pepper paste.  It tastes kind of peppery, but the best part is that nothing bothers it in the garden... it gets tall and bushy and pretty (can be invasive if not kept in check) but always guarantees a harvest.  The leaves can also be pickled to preserve them for winter use, and when it goes to seed, the seeds are very good for seasoning things like goat, lamb, or venison.

[StinkerBell]

The only thing I have ever grown is the gray hair I have......

I want to learn to grow veggies, have a great desire. I also have a fear of failure.

My backyard does not lend itself to growing anything but moss.

What do you all suggest for the first time veggie gardener to plant this spring?

I like pumpkins, speghetti squash, most squashes. Should I start with them?

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Stinkerbell, most squash is easy to grow... if you have a  lot of moss in your yard, though, I'm wondering what kind of drainage you've got...  If you want to start with squash, try something like acorn squash first... it is tough and seems more resistant to powdery mildew (something I'd never encountered until moving to Wisconsin)  One year some sprouted in my compost bin and grew halfway across the yard.  I must've got ten squash off that volunteer, not including the ones the dog picked for me and ate (seems he likes them to chew on, too.)  Pattypan squash are also easy and more resistant to powdery mildew than a lot of summer squash...and they take up less room (they're more like a bush than a vine... mine took up about 4 sq. ft. per plant this year.)  Another easy plant for first-time gardeners is potatoes...  of course some years there are bugs, drought, or floods that destroy them, but the funny thing I've found is that the blue potatoes always have SOME production, no matter what the weather or pests have done...  of course, they look a little weird in mashed potatoes or in fries, but they taste like any other potato.  To plant them, just cut up some old potatoes that are starting to sprout with one sprouting eye at least on each piece.  There are lots of ways to do it, but I always plant them very early in spring about 3" under the soil and then put up some plastic netting or mesh with 2' fence posts around them.  As the green part emerges, I add a mixture of compost or leaves or grass clippings or whatever...and just keep adding until the pile is nearing the top of the little fence.  Then when I want potatoes, I don't have to dig them so much as knock over the pile of dirt/straw/compost and pick them out of it.  You can grow a lot of potatoes in a really small spot that way.  Salad greens are another easy vegetable... and it's nearly instant gratification because they sprout and grow so fast that you can be eating them within a month.  I like leaf lettuce and spinach, and sometimes we grow it indoors in the winter, too.  Back home we grew it outdoors all winter, but we just covered it when it got cold at night. Bright lights swiss chard is another... pretty and can be worked easily into the landscaping, and it is good for you.  It grows really easily.

[glenn kangiser]

The only thing I have ever grown is the gray hair I have......

I want to learn to grow veggies, have a great desire. I also have a fear of failure.

My backyard does not lend itself to growing anything but moss.

What do you all suggest for the first time veggie gardener to plant this spring?

I like pumpkins, speghetti squash, most squashes. Should I start with them?

Have no fear, Stink.  If they are dead they can't hurt you.  (Although some have been known to bite a person the next day even after their head was cut off.... oh.... no... that was a ratllesnake... not a squash.  Nevermind).

The summer squash -- Zuchini or Yellow Crookneck usually produce pretty well too, although they won't keep for several months like the winter squash.  The Spaghetti squash is kind of in between as a keeper - a bit thin shelled but some of them will last for a few months.  It is one of our favorites.  

Do you have full sun in the growing season in your back yard, Stink?  What am I asking --- it's the PNW. :-?

[Sassy]

We've had really good crops of swiss chard (rhubarb, green, yellow), spinach, turnips, beets, carrots, cherry tomatoes... we've also grown lots of different squashes - we got the red spider mites in some of the squash this year.  Peppers always do good, also - we've grown several different kinds.  You just have to use trial & error - our potatoes have not done well, the plants get really nice, bloom & then something eats the leaves & there's no potatoes.  Cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage all do well - in fact we have some cauliflower plants that are several years old - one put on 6 cauiflowers last year!  The only thing we have a problem with are the aphids.  I planted an heirloom lettuce variety - several different types - got lots & lots with now work at all.  Strawberries have done well.  We planted artichokes - got 5-6 artichokes per plant, but the ants had a heyday with them.  They are blooming again & there's 2 nice artichokes about ready to pick.  Our corn did well this year.

Here at the underground cabin we mix the composted horse manure in with the clay - the ground is still pretty heavy but most things do well.  In the valley the ground is all sand - my son grew tomatoes, peppers & onions-also tried squash, melons & pumpkins but the spider mites got to them.  His broccoli did well but he had to spray it daily to keep the aphids off.

When I lived in Washington state, I mixed steer manure into the dirt - had carrots, lettuce, turnips, tomatoes (only they never turned red, didn't know about fried green tomatoes then  :'( ) beets, corn, I know there was more stuff but don't remember.

It all [highlight]depends[/highlight] where you live - the climate, soil & drainage... there's no harm in trying & failing - it's fun to see the plants grow & even better to be able to harvest the fresh veggies or fruits & know that they aren't full of chemicals or void of nutrients  

[StinkerBell]

Shade, that how my back yard is....

[Sassy]

What's your front yard like? There are veggies that have nice leaves - the artichoke, squash, although they'll grow all over... not much grows too well in shade  :'(

[glenn kangiser]

Gardens don't like shade, Stink.

How about making a mini garden some where in the sun.  It could be small to get started -- maybe a little raised bed jammed full of vegetables -- French intensive gardening it is called.