The Great Tomato List of 2015

Feast your eyes, the list is out! A more "visual" representation of these varieties to follow. I'm going to choose about 18 varieties to graft and a few extras for here and there in the garden. Also, let me count them for you...98 varieties in total. I could probably part with a dozen or so, but rationality is hard to grasp in the hands of a " tomato farmer". Many of these varieties are from seasons past, but I'm welcoming about 25-30 newcomers. I always strive for a blend of taste, size, colour and shape. Stay tuned for more tomato-epic adventures!

Amethyst Cream Cherry

Ananas Noire

Anthro Striped Dwarf

Barry’s Crazy Cherry

Beautiful Dreamer

Beauty King

Beauty Princess

Big Cheef Striped

Big Sun Gold Select

Big White Pink Stripe

Big Yellow Zebra

Bing Cherry

Black & Brown Boar

Black Krim

Black Shadow

Blonde Boar

Blue Ambrosia

Blue Beauty

Blue Berries

Blue Fruit

Bordo

Bosque Blue

Cafe Brulee

Cherokee Purple Variegated

Chocolate Stripes

Christmas Tree Dwarf

Colossus

Copia

Damascus Steel

Dancing with Smurfs

Dark Galaxy

Dark Tiger

Delta Diver Red

Esmeralda Golosina

First Mate

Garden Peach

Golden Tiger

Green Copia

Gypsy

Hippie Zebra

Humboltii

Indigo Rose

Irish Stripes

Japanese Black Trifele

Kaleidoscopic Jewel

Kamatis na Ligaw

Lucky Heart

Michael Pollan

Micro Tom

Mr. Tartar

Mushroom Basket

Orange King

Ozark Sunset

Painted Pink

Pastel Sleeves

Pearls of Wisdom

Piedmont Pear

Pineapple

Pineapple Blues

Pink Furry Boar

Pink Grapefruit

Pit Viper

Potato Leaf Variegated

Primary Colours

Red Boar

Red Zebra

Reisetomate

Royal Purple

San Marzano (Paste)

Siberian Tiger Pink

Silvery Fir

Snow Cherry

Snow Prince

Starfire Isis

Strawberry Leopard

Streak Legal

Striped Roman

Stripes of Yore

Submaine Blush

Super Snow White

Sweet Water

TC Jones

The Thong

Tim's Black Ruffles

Tlacolula

Topaz

Val's Striped Rib

Variegated

Vintage Wine

Violet Jasper

Wapsipinicon

White Queen

Wildcard Blues

Wonder Light

Yellow Radiance

Yellow Vernissage

Zapotec Pink Pleated

Zebra Rita

"Ozark Sunset" 2014
A nice plum-like sweetness and saladette texture.

More tomato photos in the next post!

Peppers for this year - 2015 Season

I'm really excited to be growing some peppers again this year. They're on of the more pricey items I could be buying this season from the market - so growing as many as I can to suit my needs is both functional and sustainable. Then again, my family goes through tonnes of peppers, between grilling them, adding them to sauces and stir-frys, nachos, chopped in wraps and dips, we love our peppers. Below is a list of this year's peppers - however I might be adding a plant or two of jalapeno and mixed sweet bell peppers to meet our needs.

White Lakes

Yellow Monster

Lilac Bell

Midnight Dreams

Fish

Chocolate Beauty

Purple Beauty

Violet Sparkle
Monzano Chile

Most of my pepper seeds were purchased from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. I have saved seeds from my fish peppers last year and some unique seeds collected from Cuba. 2015 will only really be the 2nd year I gave any spoiling to my peppers, last year's harvest was pretty great, so I can only imagine this year will be leagues better. Each plant - it's own support cage and stake. Mulched to perfection and placed in the sunniest-hottest bed in my garden.

Chocolate Beauty

Chocolate Beauty Bell Pepper - A classic auburn-chocolate pepper with average sweetness and both fresh eating and cooked qualities. I thought it would be a nice mix to the pepper basket and definitely something you can't find at the vegetable stand or market!

Midnight Dreams 

I really love the oddities of the edible world, blacks, deep purple, variegated, a strange colour always gets me. Midnight dreams is so cool, I knew I just had to try it! Oily-black purple skin and high anthocyanin - evidence of purple colouration through-out the stem and leaves. A great sweet pepper for fresh purple salsa!

Violet Sparkle

More of a novelty then anything else, I decided to throw-in Violet Sparkle peppers. Smaller flavourful sweet peppers with a curved pointed end and almost a water-colour stained outer skin with a yellow interior. Not only do they look like small blown-glass ornaments, they are visually very unique from the rest of my pepper selection. Could be a neat cross with the Fish pepper.

Yellow Monster

Yellow Monster seemed like another cool novelty, but it's also just a massive great tasting pepper with the ability to serve an entire plate of nachos with one fruit. These plants will certainly need some extra staking and water! I could also be a neat show piece at the fall fair displays! Maybe I'll make a record breaker!

Lilac Bell

Another beauty, Lilac bell is a smaller sweet bell pepper that I will mostly be growing for it's looks. It could also be a great freshly chopped addition to fresh salsa or purple veggie omlettes! Purple beauty on the other hand is essentially a green bell pepper, but I purple form. In the past I let one keep ripening on the bush to see what would happen, and it did in fact fade into a nice reddish colour. With fancy peppers it's a waiting game to see when it's nicest colour form will appear - at the same time, you also want to taste it. In my experience they taste sweeter the longer you leave them on the plant, but the colour you grew them for is long-past.

Purple Beauty 

White Lakes

So far my white-lakes pepper seeds have had the poorest germination, the seeds have gotten mouldy before they get the chance to sprout. A shame, but I'm determined to try anyways because these are such interesting peppers. The goal is to pick them when white-cream coloured, but you can also wait and get tints ranging from the cream to orange and red. A nice ombré mix of peppers all from one plant. Small peppers perfect for pickling or grilling on the BBQ!

Fish Pepper

Finally I have one of my old-new favourites - the Fish pepper. An edible variegated pepper out of the southern United States - rumoured to be developed by slaves in Louisiana and later established as a classic soul food and bayou pepper. It's flavour really does suggest that origin. I read that it's best picked a bit early to avoid the stronger heat and spice that rolls off this pepper. They are well suited to being finely chopped into bisks and soups for spice and flavour or added to sauces for heat. The colours ranged from highly striped and variegated to very little. They also turn from yellow to orange and red when left longer to ripen. A real rainbow of colour and contrast - practically ornamental - the foliage alone is stunning.

More pepper updates as the season progresses! It's a long ways away before I get actual fruit, but I'm excited non-the less. The key for now is the space them in the garden and not crowd them to fit more - plant hoarding is a real thing. Happy spring!

Happy Easter! Throwback - Eggs, Bulbs and Bunnies

Our spring season seems to be a bit delayed this year, thought I would share some photos from seasons past. As long as I can plant my veggies by the end of May, I'm happy!

Grape-Hyacinth Bulbs

Last year I forced a few painted pots of grape-hyacinths and I had a huge

amount of bulbs. I probably picked them up at Costco for 10$. I also had one of the school 

garden clubs make little forced bulb pots, a great craft.

A few days later you can see them coming to life.

I ended up missing Easter by a few weeks and they bloomed later in May, still very cute and spring-y. I need to read more about bulb forcing in the future, it would also be nice to use some grow-lights to speed up the process.

Last year on April 18th these tulips were up, considering it's snowing this Easter - the tulips have a long way to go. Another cheap and bang-for-your-buck mix bag of tulips from Costco.

A baby wild rabbit I rescued out of the pool, "She" was very sweet and curious. Unfortunately I think she hangs around our place now and eats everything she shouldn't despite being released at the park down the street - I wish I could have that conversation "Please eat the weeds, I'll leave you fresh water and carrots" Nope. Eats all my precious corn shoots, test nibbles everything.

All the nibbles, worth this adorable photographic moment.

No need to dye my eggs! Beautiful pastels and earth-tones!

Happy Easter! Garden On!