Hello! Here we go again with Mother Nature and her menopausal flashes! Not hot flashes, mind you, but cold, frigid flashes! Is there an end in sight? Hey, it’s almost the end of February, and March may live up to its reputation – in like a lion and out like a lamb. We shall see! In the meantime let’s continue with our terrific trek through some of those seed catalogs with more unusual vegetable varieties to consider for our gardens.

Tyria is a new F1 hybrid cucumber with a 56 days maturity. What is so unusual about this one? Tyria is seedless! These delicious cukes are 14 inches long, slightly ribbed, dark green and bitter-free. Tyria is called a Dutch greenhouse-type that can be grown indoors or outside. The blossoms on this baby are all female and parthenocarpic. This is a good thing, since the cucumbers can set without pollination.

You have heard of the problems with honey bees, right? Lots of folks were complaining about their veg plants not setting any fruit. Well, there is a shortage of bees, and if you can grow parthenocarpic plants, there is no need for the bees to do their pollinating thing. So you might want to trya Tyria!

Also, many people are really going out big time for those long English cucumbers that are sweet and bitter-free. Well, Tyria sounds like a stand-in for those long English cucumbers. Just be sure to trellis these plants so that the cukes will grow long and straight, not long and curvy!

There is another kind of cucumber on the other side of the size spectrum. This shorty is called Picolino, with crisp, juicy half-length 'mini cukes' that are ideal for slicing and used up in one meal with no waste. Picolino has all-female flowering, so produces many fruits and requires regularly harvesting to maintain production.

Now let’s jump from different cucumbers to a different kind of cabbage.
This one is named Caraflex. What makes this one so different is that it is an almost dangerously pointed mini-cabbage, not round like your typical kind of cabbage. These small-headed pointy cabbages are extremely uniform, with good outer wrapper leaves for insect and sun protection. The inner leaves are tender and have an excellent, rich cabbage flavor. Caraflex is perfect for summer salads, slaws or cooked dishes. Just be careful out in the garden if you decide to plant these Caraflex cabbages. If you slip and fall, you may be impaled by these pointy cabbages! Get the point?

Now let’s take a really short pointed look at a couple of different pumpkins that you may want to try.

American Tondo is a new, old, Italian variety of pumpkin. New . . . Old . . . Well, at least this one isn’t pointy! It’s round and pumpkin-shaped. But what makes this new old variety so different is that, at maturity, this beautiful ornamental pumpkin has deep orange skin with green stripes between the heavy ribs. At maturity it weighs in at 6-14 lb.

However, when the American Tondo fruits are young and small, they are more of a two-tone speckled green and they can be eaten like squash. So American Tondo – a new old variety of pumpkin/summer squash.

Continuing in this confusing oxymoronic vein, you have to check out Summer Ball, another summer squash/pumpkin variety. This one isn’t a new old variety, but a new, novelty variety of pumpkin for patio containers and small gardens. And Summer Ball is great for setting out tons of small, round, bright orange pumpkins. There can be up to 20 fruits per plant, each little pumpkin averages 3 -3½ pounds.

The early fruits can be harvested and used as round, yellow summer squash or they can be allowed to mature to form small ’pumpkins’.

So there you have more new, weird, kinky, unique, different stuff to consider for your new, weird, kinky, unique, different spring garden. You remember the old slogan – keep the faith? Well, I’m gonna say – Keep the sanity!

Remember – Eat Smart New York!

And – Bye – Talk to you soon!
D