digitS'
Garden Master
We are still adjusting to the downsized gardens and not driving off to enjoy almost nearly unlimited space 
. "Vigorous" and "holding" caught our attention in the seed catalogs this Winter and I ordered three new veggies that may be able to keep up with our needs.
I grew Tasty Green cucumbers for several years and was happy enough. It is a Japanese variety that the U of NC Cucumber Cooperative says was introduced in the mid-60's. I had my own "personal" gardens in the mid-60's but it was probably about 20 years later that I began to grow it. Well, this new Summer Dance with descriptions and photos in several of the seed companies that we usually order from was just too hard to resist. I will be counting on Muncher but would appreciate something that can compete for space with the Winter squash plants and this one might be able to do that.
Starving for Winter greens this off-season, it seemed obvious that we should go back to something done earlier in the cabbage patch and could be grown with our very early Tiara cabbage. I'm not really expecting a storage variety, that hasn't worked well for me in the past but if it can hold up for awhile in the carport fridge, that would be nice. "Superstar" has a nice sound to the name, don't you think? It isn't a late variety but the claim is that it has good holding qualities during cold weather.
The other Winter green that is quite lacking at this time is kale. That has a lot to do with our habit of harvesting leaves right through the growing season. The dozen kale plants are still out there and will be back but the leaves were pared down to only a few by the time the growing season had come to an end for them. Westlandse is a Dutch variety that sounds as tho it may stay ahead of us. If we have plants of both a regular Scotch and this one –– maybe we can leave the leaves alone in sufficient numbers so that the harvest season can be extended. I mean, we can hardly make a soopermarket visit without coming away with their broccoli and it just gets embarrassing for gardeners to have to do that for months on end
!
What do you have on tap for your 2026 gardens that is new and untried?
Steve
. "Vigorous" and "holding" caught our attention in the seed catalogs this Winter and I ordered three new veggies that may be able to keep up with our needs.I grew Tasty Green cucumbers for several years and was happy enough. It is a Japanese variety that the U of NC Cucumber Cooperative says was introduced in the mid-60's. I had my own "personal" gardens in the mid-60's but it was probably about 20 years later that I began to grow it
. Well, this new Summer Dance with descriptions and photos in several of the seed companies that we usually order from was just too hard to resist. I will be counting on Muncher but would appreciate something that can compete for space with the Winter squash plants and this one might be able to do that.Starving for Winter greens this off-season, it seemed obvious that we should go back to something done earlier in the cabbage patch and could be grown with our very early Tiara cabbage. I'm not really expecting a storage variety, that hasn't worked well for me in the past but if it can hold up for awhile in the carport fridge, that would be nice. "Superstar" has a nice sound to the name, don't you think? It isn't a late variety but the claim is that it has good holding qualities during cold weather.
The other Winter green that is quite lacking at this time is kale. That has a lot to do with our habit of harvesting leaves right through the growing season. The dozen kale plants are still out there and will be back but the leaves were pared down to only a few by the time the growing season had come to an end for them. Westlandse is a Dutch variety that sounds as tho it may stay ahead of us. If we have plants of both a regular Scotch and this one –– maybe we can leave the leaves alone in sufficient numbers so that the harvest season can be extended. I mean, we can hardly make a soopermarket visit without coming away with their broccoli and it just gets embarrassing for gardeners to have to do that for months on end
!What do you have on tap for your 2026 gardens that is new and untried?
Steve
