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Vegetables: New Varieties

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It is always interesting to try new varieties to see if you like them and if they have some advantage over the varieties you have grown before. This is not easy to determine in just one year, and decisions shouldn’t be made on just one year’s experience.

Here are a few ways to compare established and new varieties:

The vegetable varieties listed here and designated as “new” have been introduced by seed companies in recent years. Some have been evaluated on a limited basis only; others have not yet been grown in Mississippi.

Seeds of many of these varieties are available only through mail order catalogs. New varieties are introduced because they offer some advantage over an established variety, such as earliness, higher yields, improved disease resistance, color, or something unique. Try a couple of these new varieties in your garden. You may be pleasantly surprised by their performance.

Tomatoes: The biggest news in varieties for gardeners is the availability of tomato spotted wilt virus tolerance. This insect vectored disease can be moved from weeds, flowers, or other infected vegetables to the tomatoes in the garden, and the only “treatment” is to remove the diseased plant before it can serve as a source to damage other plants. Varieties marketed to home gardeners include Amelia, BHN444, and BHN 640. Top Gun has both TSWV tolerance and will set at higher than normal temperatures. Many other varieties have been introduced to commercial growers that will grow well in Mississippi gardens but are not sold in small enough quantities to be considered for the home garden.

Southern Pea: QuickPick, frequently called Louisiana Quick Pick, is now available to home gardeners. These pink-eye, purple-hull peas bear above the foliage and are resistant to virus.

Snow Pea: A couple of new varieties compete with Oregon Sugar Pod II. Atitlan are an afila (no-leaf) type that can brow without support. Snow Sweet stays tender at later ages and can have identifiable seed at harvest and still be tender enough for stir frying.

Pumpkins: There have been many, many developments in pumpkins in the last few years. Jarrahdale is a blue-skinned pumpkin with traditional orange flesh. Full Moon is a large, white pumpkin. Lil Pump-Ke-Mon is a white miniature pumpkin with orange stripes in the sutures. Bat wings is a miniature pumpkin that has a splotched rind of dark green and orange.

Lettuce: Fans of Lolla Rosa red leaf lettuce should try Antago or Blackhawk. Fans of black seeded Simpson who want a darker green should try Green Star.

Beets: A new golden beet is named Touchstone Gold. Golden beets have the traditional purple-red skin, but the interior is a golden yellow. If you want to have some fun with your gardening friends, plant some Blankoma beets and some White Lady turnips side by side and challenge them to tell the roots apart without tasting them.

Sweet Corn: Bodacious growers should give Applause a try. If sweet is the most important aspect of sweet corn, order Mirai 301 or Mirai 130. These are just a couple of several corns that blend shrunken-2 and sugary enhanced genes on the same ear.

Jalepeno Pepper: The standard jalepeno is from 2½ to 3½ inches long and an inch in diameter. Much Nacho is 4 inches long. Conchos and El Jeffe are both longer and wider than Mucho Nacho.