February 7, 2010 by KerryAnn Foster.

Here’s the varieties I’m looking into planting this year in my garden.  I’m trying to pick  high-yielding veggies appropriate for our zone, which is 6a/7a.  My seeds come from Fedco, Bountiful Gardens and Baker Creek.  I also do some trading with friends.

• Kale- dwarf Siberian, red Russian and white Russian.
• Broccoli- calabrese and rapini
• Cabbage- Brunswick
• Chinese cabbage- extra dwarf pak choy, ching chang, yod fah, Chinese kale, gailan
• Cauliflower- Violetta
• Cantaloupe- Jenny Lind
• Cowpea- Six-week pinkeye purple hull
• Tomato- my cold weather tomato will be Crnkovic Yugoslavian.  Amish paste is my standard canning tomato.  I will also grow Rutgers and Homestead and try Tomato Spear’s Tennessee Green, Roma and royal chico for the first time.
• Carrot- Autumn king, Atomic red, tonda di parigi, Amsterdam, and cosmic purple.
• Beet- early wonder and cylindra
• Winter squash- bush buttercup, table queen bush and sugar loaf delicata
• Summer squash- black beauty zucchini and yellow crookneck
• Fennel- zina fino
• Garden pea- sugar ann
• Cucumber- sweet marketmore for slicing and Boston for pickling
• Beans-provider snap bush, cannellini, king of the early, Tennessee greasy grits
• Peppers- Leutschauer paprika, Anaheim, tam jalapeno, long thin cayenne, California wonder, Toppo rosso
• Radish- daikon and white icicle
• Turnip- purple top white globe.
• Spinach- bloomsdale and winter giant
• Lettuces-anuenue, little gem, parris island cos romaine, winter bibb, mangetaspreen, dandelion, stinging nettle, deer tongue, pirat butterhead, black seeded simpson, tango, winter marvel, majestic red, pablo, strawberry spinach (which really isn’t spinach) and anything else I can seed swap for.  We like a wide variety.
• Chard- five-color silverbeet
• Onion- Texas early grano
• Okra- Clemson spineless
• Leek- musselburgh
• Kohlrabi- gigante
• Potatoes- Kennebec
• Sweet potatoes- I’m not sure yet, but I have until May to decide.
• Garden berries- ground cherries and huckleberry

I’m not doing corn this year due to space limitations as compared to yield.  Collards are one of the few veggies I will not eat.  I think I’m going to leave out the rutabagas, too.  I also decided not to grow another monster Candy Roaster squash plant this year due to the space, as well as any grains.  Now I must plot the garden out then pick both culinary and medicinal herbs based off of how much space remains once I fit all of the veggies in. Then I will make a list of how many plants to start and on what date.

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January 12, 2010 by KerryAnn Foster.

Our 2009 Garden

The week before Christmas, we had 15 inches of snow unceremoniously dumped on us. We had a half-white Christmas. It still hasn’t completely melted. And we’ve had more snow repeatedly fall since then, more times than I care to count or remember. The end result of the white blanket was a total collapse of my garden structure. Today, it started snowing again. We chose to live in North Carolina, in part, because while it does get cold here for a few weeks a year, it normally doesn’t dump snow like this. Where’s that global warming we were warned about? It’s not here, because this is the coldest winter they’ve had in Asheville since before I was born!

The end result of all of this white mess? Garden Fever.

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