Garden Tips: New vegetable varieties to consider when planning garden

With all this snowy cold weather, you might think gardeners have nothing to do, but you would be wrong. Now is the time gardeners should be planning next season’s vegetable garden, researching new varieties and ordering their seeds.

The first step is to study seed purveyors’ catalogs and websites to check out the new and improved varieties available this year. One thing I look for when deciding what to plant is an All America Selection (AAS) designation. These AAS varieties have been trialed in test gardens around the country and have proved to be better or more unique than what is on the market for gardeners.

The first group of AAS winners for 2017 were announced in July. One of these is a butternut-type squash called Honeybaby. Like so many newer varieties, Honeybaby is especially good for gardeners with limited space. Unlike the space-hogging vines of traditional winter squash, it has vines that grow only 2 to 3 feet in length, with a semi-bush habit. The beige 4- to 8-ounce fruit are about 6 to 7 inches long and have orange meaty flesh with a sweet nutty flavor. Its compact habit makes it suitable for container growing. (Seeds are available from parkseed.com or farmerseed.com)

Mini Love is a watermelon and 2017 AAS winner. It is also a compact grower with vines that are only 3 to 4 feet long, definitely a space-saver in the garden. Mini Love is an Asian watermelon that produces mini, personal-sized fruit with sweet, crisp deep red flesh and few seeds. The 7- to 9-pound fruit have a strong, thin rind and are resistant cracking or splitting. Each plant typically produces four to six fruit. (Seeds are available from parkseed.com, stokeseeds.com, totallytomato.com, and others.)

Yet another 2017 AAS winner and garden space-saver is Patio Pride, a compact snap pea that produces “sweet, uniform 2 to 3 inch pods that are tender when harvested early.” The plant grows to a height of only 6 to 8 inches and produces about 30 or more pods per plant. Plant these peas as one of your first spring crops, and it will be one of the first you harvest because it only needs 40 days to mature. AAS points out that it is great for succession planting and also works well in containers. They even suggest planting it in pots along with cool-season flowers. Patio Pride was a southeast regional winner, meaning it performed especially well in southeastern states. (Seeds available from parkseed.com, bountifulgardens.org, and jungseed.com.)

Another edible 2017 AAS winner is Antares, a fennel that produces uniformly round, pure white 4- to 5-inch “bulbs.” The plant is bushy and grows to 2 feet tall. Fennel does quintuple duty in the garden. It produces sweet anise flavored bulbs, leaves, and seeds. Its green fernlike leaves are very ornamental. The leaves also provide food for the caterpillars of swallowtail butterflies. Some gardeners also harvest the roots for eating, like parsnips. One of the challenges of growing fennel is its tendency to bolt or produce flowers when warm weather arrives. This stops bulb from development, a problem if that is the part of the plant you plan to harvest. Antares is slower to bolt, about seven to 10 days later than other comparison varieties. (Seeds available from jungseed.com.)

Next week, we’ll talk about new tomato varieties. By the way, now is the time to buy your seed-starting supplies if you plan to grow your own tomato transplants.

This story was originally published January 15, 2017 at 7:29 AM with the headline "Garden Tips: New vegetable varieties to consider when planning garden."