Park Seed Garden Journal

Delicious Heirloom Tomatoes

These tomatoes are the reason most people prefer to grow their own vegetables. The difference in flavor from the supermarket varieties is so striking that many people may not even know they like tomatoes until they try one from a home garden -- the perfect balance of sweet and tart that makes your mouth tingle as soon as they touch your tongue. Ripe tomatoes range in color from green to gold to bright red to deep purple -- you will never see these in cellophane on the supermarket shelf.

There are hundreds of heirloom tomato varieties, ranging in size, shape, color, and flavor, allowing gardeners to grow exactly what they need. Some are better for sauces, and others make great sandwiches. Some slice large enough to cover an entire hamburger bun, and others are small enough to pop into your mouth whole.

Tomato Costuluto Genovese is a strong-flavored heirloom variety that is perfect for sauces and salads, adding that extra culinary dimension that you can't find in stores. Big Rainbow is a beautiful striped tomato that produces two-pound fruits -- a fruit so large and tender that it would be a storage liability for most grocers, but keeps easily in your home, providing some of the best tomato sandwiches you can imagine.

Grampa's Dill Pickle Recipe

I just wanted to share a delicious, quick-and-easy dill pickle recipe mostly adapted from one my grandfather used. Most of the ingredients can be grown in your own backyard in bulk -- so you'll have plenty of pickles to share.

This recipe makes 3 quarts of Grampa's Pickles.
Items link to our site where you can purchase the seeds and grow your own.

Ingredients:

• Fresh Pickling Cucumbers: 12-15 depending on the size (usually 3"-4")
• A pile of fresh dill sprigs from your herb garden
• About 6 cloves of fresh garlic
  
• 1 pint of vinegar (white or cider)
• 1 quart of water
• 2/3 cups of pickling salt

1. Wash your cucumbers well and set them aside.
2. Combine the garlic, salt, vinegar, and water in a large pot and bring to a boil.
3. Place a few sprigs in the bottom of each of your pickling jars, pack your cucumbers in tightly, and put another sprig of dill on top.
4. Remove your brine from the eye, and spoon out a clove or two of garlic to place in each jar.
5. Pour the hot brine into each, leaving about 1/2 inch at the top, and seal.

Pickling like this works to preserve food because the low pH of the brine and the antimicrobial properties of the garlic combine to prevent growth of any dangerous micro-organisms. I love science!

Dahlias: Great Flowers for Warm, Dry Climates

Dahlias are the perfect perennials for those warmer, drier zones. They love full sun and prefer sandy, well-draining soil. They are also fairly versatile in the landscape, ranging in size from the short little border plants to the towering stems and full blossoms of the larger varieties that make great colorful backdrops to the rest of your flower garden.

Park Seed offers a huge variety of Dahlias online, including mixes and collections. Dahlia 'Dark Angels Dragon Ball' is a customer favorite with a really unique look. 'Dragon Ball' has a very surreal look -- the brightly colored geometric blooms really stand out against the dark foliage. This is a more compact Dahlia, perfect for containers. Another top seller, Dahlia 'Lucca Johanna', is billed as the "perfect cut flower." The long stems reach up to 4 feet, topped with big beautiful double blooms that gradient from a pink edge to white to a deep primrose center.

Great Pumpkin and Squash Seeds Available Now!

If you are a subscriber to the Park Seed newsletter then you no doubt received yesterday's edition of Know Before You Grow (or KBYG as we call them around the office), a wonderful and entertaining series that provides helpful information about the plants that we sell. This week's KBYG focused on the greatest of things, one of the few vegetables that is tasty enough and filling enough to regularly headline dinner entrées -- the lovely, savory-sweet squash.

Squash Contender Hybrid, one of the featured items, is possibly the best zucchini you will ever grow. It produces huge amounts of thick, tasty fruit, and it matures in an amazing 43 days! The organic white squash, Eastern Delight, is delicious, disease resistant, and yields generous amounts of fruit throughout the season.

If you are looking for great pumpkins for Halloween and the fall season, try Pumpkin Big Moon, which often produces fruit of 150 pounds or more -- this is one you can take to the state fair! Or, if you are just looking for that perfectly shaped 7-10-pound Jack-o-Lantern with the perfect stem try Pumpkin Autumn Gold!

Plant Blackberries and Blueberries For Great Summer Treats!

I have always been a fan of berries, particularly Blueberries and Blackberries, probably as a result of all the pies, homemade ice cream, milkshakes, and jams that came out of my great-grandfather's yard when I was young. As soon as the air warms a little and the trees start to bud, I start dreaming about the multitudes of sweet possibilities growing in the garden.

Blackberries and Blueberries, two of my personal favorites, are both native to North America, and they grow vigorously in the wild. Here in South Carolina, thorny patches of wild Blackberry can be a real nuisance if it gets out of hand, and wild Blueberries are often too small and a little too tart.

But Park Seed offers the spectacular, thornless Blackberry 'Navaho' -- you won't have to get out the first-aid kit to make your favorite pie!

And the most popular Blueberry bush this year is the Blueberry 'Spartan' -- I promise, some of the biggest berries you've seen, with some as big as a quarter. Spartan also has big white blooms and beautiful, showy fall foliage. This sweet and tangy fruit is perfect for one of my favorite treats, Blueberry Cream Pie! And if you are a health nut, Blueberries, full of antioxidants and vitamins, make delicious, immune system-boosting, low-cal smoothies.

Grow Sweet Melons for a Cool Summer Treat!

Summer is coming fast, and there is nothing better than sweet, cool fruit right off the vine. I remember growing up here in South Carolina, my great grandfather would hoist a huge ripe watermelon from his garden and split it on the picnic table under the apple tree next to his garden. Every white t-shirt I owned had a red stain around the neck.

Melons are some of the easiest and quickest fruits to grow, making them one of the few fruits that give you a strong return the same year you plant them.

A few old-timer hints about melons:

• Don't move the vines while they are growing. Melon foliage grows slowly towards the light, and if moved, it may set back the fruiting process, leaving you with smaller melons.
• If you are trying to grow record-sized melons, remove a few from the vine to allow your plant to focus on fewer fruits.
• (This one is a little more controversial) If you have a noticeable problem with your melons splitting open towards the end of the season or after a strong rain, you might want to cut about half-way through the stem to hinder the flow of sap to the fruit. Of course, we always just assumed that splitting was nature's way of saying, "You deserve a break, go ahead and eat this one."

Park Seed has a wonderful selection of beautiful, colorful, tasty melons this spring. The big favorite among the staff here is Melon Lambkin, which is also an AAS Vegetable Award Winner! My personal favorite is Watermelon Yellow Crunch, sweet, crisp, and up to 20 pounds apiece, just the way I like 'em.

What can you tell us about Victory Gardens? (Plenty!)

  For the past few months, Walt in PR has been getting more than the usual calls from newspapers and major national publications for articles being written for print or online.  So what does everyone want to know about this year?  "How are gardening sales in this economy?" "What's selling?" and of course, "Can you tell us about this Victory Garden trend?" 

The good news?  It's not just a trend, it's a movement!  And sure it's hitting the news this year but really, the signs were all there last year.  Thanks to blogs and email we had some great conversations with YOU, the Park customers and readers, and you told us what was important to you in the coming months/years.  Naturally we're glad to point those publications to our previous discussions of the "trend," letting them know that Park gardeners are at the forefront.  (In linking to newsletters sent to Park Gardeners this past year, my apologies if not all links in those old newsletters work!)

Starting with Know Your Food last March we had so much fun talking about home veggie gardening with you after we saw an upswing in early seed sales.  People shared their sharing their gardening memories with Claire all year long, we introduced the budget seed collections, and how amazing that right after our discussion of the New Victory Gardener we found the Garden for Victory woodcuts in the attic. (Sorry, those first t-shirts are no longer available, but these are!)

Late in the season after a great 2008 for Victory Gardeners, Hope did a wrap-up in November describing the Victory idea and calling others to the cause.  The Eat the View group has rallied people together asking the Obama family to put a Victory Garden on the White House lawn, and even the Garden for Victory desktop wallpaper Audra made (from the same woodcuts as the shirts) was one of the top downloaded wallpapers.  Todd had these fun plaques made up that really sport a gardener's pride. 

Right now we have more people veggie gardening than we've seen for a long time.  First-timers, people returning to it after a spell, and let's not forget all those who've been doing it all along.  There are as many reasons for home veggie gardening as there are people doing it.  Whatever the reason, get out there and get dirty!

We have Updated our Website!

ParkSeed.com has been redesigned--we've got a new look for the new season. Hopefully the new site will help us serve our customers better, and make things run a little more efficiently. If you like the new design, feel free to email me and let me know what you think. Our people love people love to get a little positive feed back every now and then. Also, if you run into anything that seems glitchy or broken, feel free to pass that on as well. Our design people have been working really hard on this for a while, so I'm sure you will love it!

Grow A Novel Garden With Wonderfully Weird Vegetables!

People grow their own vegetables because: growing in bulk is cheaper than buying individual units, gardening is fulfilling, both physically and intellectually, and because you can grow anything you want in your garden, even if you can't find it in stores.

Here are some of the most delicious weird vegetables on the market. This is the place to start if you want to have the most interesting garden and dinner table in the neighborhood.

	Chocolate Cherry tomatoes! These super-sweet purple cherry tomatoes will make your salads pop with color. Add the bright yellow Tomato Ildi and the deep red Tomato Sugary for a really festive, colorful mix of cherry tomatoes.
	Brussels Sprouts Falstaff is a deep red to purple sprout with a delicious nutty flavor. This is one of the most delicious varieties of Brussels Sprouts you can grow.
	Pak Choi Toy Choi is a crunchy little single serving Pak Choi. This tiny delicious exotic vegetable is the perfect size for garnishing those gourmet dishes.
	Pumpkin Big Moon is the pumpkin variety that you see winning ribbons at the county fair. If you are looking to replicate Cinderella's carriage, having one of these in your garden would be a good start.
	Carrot Purple Haze Hybrid is the perfect vegetable for wowing those dinner guests and making beautifully colorful dishes. This is a sweet Nantes carrot - it tastes just like you would expect a carrot to taste. Purple is the natural color for most wild carrots - the "normal" orange color is an artifact of breeding and domestication.
	Romanesco Veronica cauliflower is an internet star already. Many garden bloggers are sharing photos of this beautiful plant, often tagged "Fractal Cauliflower" or "Fractal Broccoli." This cauliflower is as delicious as it is interesting, and it's easy to grow yourself. Grow it in your garden, and you can share your own photos online.