Hello!

Gees, I’m so really glad to be here – and so very glad that you could make it today too! After all of those high hurricane winds we had last Wed. I am really quite surprised we didn’t all end up in Oz on top of the wicked witch of the south!

Instead, I suppose that we could say that our very own Mother Nature is that wicked witch, what with all of this crazy wicked weather! All the way up to the 60’s, way down to -20, 3 feet of snow, 3 feet of water, 3 feet of mud! And winter is just beginning….

At any rate, let’s not think about this wicked weather right now; let’s think about all of the really great stuff that we are going to plant in our gardens this spring. That ought to get Mother Nature to cooperate more! (Either that, or we’ll really tick her off and she’ll do something even meaner and more wicked!)

Now in one segment of HGIMG a few years back, we talked about something called AAS - All-American Selections. Every year AAS winners are selected from many new flowers and vegetable varieties, based on performance in the garden, as well as in the greenhouse. Although no plant offers a guarantee of success in an individual garden, the AAS winners have proven themselves worthy over a broad range of growing conditions. New, innovative varieties are trialed in test gardens all over the United States – north, south, east, and west. These AAS people have been around testing new varieties since 1933!

Some past AAS winners include Big Beef and Celebrity tomatoes, Thumbelina, a round golf ball carrot, Derby snap beans, Wee B Little, a miniature pumpkin, Straight 8 cucumbers, and Ruby Queen beets. There are hundreds upon hundreds of AAS winners, although most of those AAS winners of yesteryear are not in use any more. (So much for proving themselves worthy over a broad range of growing conditions!)

There were only three new garden plants were chosen for All America Selections (AAS) 2008, based on superior performance in many AAS test gardens all over the country. There is a cape daisy called “Asti White”, this year’s bedding plant winner. And there is a Viola named “Skippy XL Plum-Gold” that takes the cool season bedding plant award.

The only vegetable variety they deemed worthy of AAS status is an eggplant called Hansel” (as in Hansel and Gretel). “Hansel” has finger-like clusters of 3-6, dark purple, glossy miniature eggplants that can be harvested early for baby eggplant at 2-3 inches or allowed to grow up to 10 inches, while still remaining tender and non-bitter. These compact plants reach up to only 24 inches, making them ideal for container and small space gardens. I definitely have got to try these in my garden this year.

And there are more new varieties of veggies that I am going to try this year, even though they are not AAS winners. I’m going to see if they will be winners in my garden. A few of these are mentioned by Charlie Nardozzi, an expert gardener from National Gardening.

There is a potato-leaved, Russian heirloom tomato, called “Japanese Black Trifele”, go figure! This mixed up Japanese-Russian tomato produces 6-ounce, pear-shaped, jet-black fruits only 74 days after transplanting. The tomatoes are meaty, have a complex flavor, and are one of the blackest colored tomatoes ever invented. Hmm – black tomatoes!

The “Pearl” cucumber has meringue white cucumbers with white spines. It produces fruit 65 days from direct seeding and is more productive than other pale-colored cucumber varieties. Hmm – what’s wrong with regular green skinned cucumbers? Most people peel off the skins any way. And another Hmm - I wonder if “Pearl” cucumbers are burpless?

Here is a really strange one that is guaranteed to satisfy all the broccoli and kale lovers out there. “Purple Peacock” broccoli is a cross between “Green Goliath” broccoli and two different kale varieties. “Purple Peacock” features a small, loose broccoli head on a plant that's totally edible. Yes, you heard me, totally edible! You remember the commercial – “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!”? Well, you can eat the purple head, the purple stems, the purple leaves. No, actually, the leaves are a pretty green with pretty purple veins running through them. So for those of you who like broccoli and kale and the color purple, “Purple Peacock” is a must try.

Then there is a really tempting pepper variety called “Red Popper”. What makes the “Red Popper” pepper (say that one 10 times fast) really unique is that all of the “Red Popper” peppers are mini-bell peppers. These cute little “Red Popper” peppers are really small – 1 to 2 inches in diameter. They are red, sweet, delicious, and early, only 55 days after transplanting. And, to make them even more unique and appealing, the cute little peppers hang on the plants like cute little Chinese lanterns.

I hope you will consider trying some of these weird, kinky vegetables that we’ve talked about today. Do take the time to go through some of those mail order seed catalogs out there. Let Mother Nature do her weird, kinky thing outside while you search for weird, kinky new varieties to plant in this year’s garden. That’s exactly what I’m going to do!

Hey – Remember – Eat Smart New York! Yes, even with weird, kinky vegetables.

And – Bye – Talk to you soon!
D