It's fascinating how changes in gardening attitudes and milestones in plant breeding are reflected in this year's seed catalogue vegetable offerings.
For instance, organic seed is becoming so much in demand that Veyseys is itemizing all its organic catalogue seed in an extra 150-item listing. Our local Saltspring Seeds has always offered organics, but seeing organics getting attention in mainstream catalogues too is heartening.
Heirloom seed is more often featured and now gets more prominent attention in catalogues. These include top performers such as the hardship-tolerant and prolific squashes Table Queen and Waltham Butternut. Another favourite is Cylindra beets, which over the years remain easy to grow, a snap to slice and quick to harvest since they tend to push themselves up out of the soil.
Saltspring Seeds has always focused on organic heirlooms. However, in Canada-wide catalogues, it's good to remember that just because something is heirloom doesn't mean it will do well in your particular region unless it was developed there.
For instance, warmweather crops from areas back east (heirloom or not) can fail miserably here in B.C. Our summers are mostly cool. Theirs are very warm indeed.
One of the most exciting developments in the last few years is the advent of blight-resistant tomatoes.
The Mountain Magic large cherry tomato, which tastes good and was so successful for me last year, is available in many catalogues now.
Veyseys has hit the blightresistant jackpot for me this year with Mountain Magic, Defiant and Plum Regal.
The needs of container gardeners are getting more attention with development of compact-size vegetables.
These include the hybrid Cucino cucumber from Dominion and from T&M, which is said to be ideal for containers, as is the Patio Mix of tennis-ball-size eggplants white, deep purple and violet.
For people with no garden space whatsoever, seed-sprouting is one of the few ways of growing fresh salad material. Dominion Seeds has devoted two whole pages to seeds for sprouting plus a sprouter said to produce sprouts in 72 hours.
Runner beans are always a great, flowerful and edible privacy screen, which can be grown in containers for balcony gardeners. But they do need bees (wild or domestic) for pollination, whereas pole beans don't.
William Dam offers three diverse pole beans: the purple Blauhilde, the yellow Neckargold and the green-podded Blue Lake.
More shallots are gradually becoming available from seed. T&M are offering three this year: Eschalion Zebrune is said to store well, and so is the red-skinned Camelo. The third is the Prisma F1 hybrid.
T&M also have an interesting squash. The Hooligan F1 hybrid is just 7.5 x 5 cm. Apparently one can slice off the top, remove the seeds, replace the top, microwave for four minutes and eat. Good for small appetites.
Send garden questions to Anne, [email protected].
