Viewing comments posted by Newyorkrita

Spring Swallow was a new cucumber variety for me this year. I grew my plants from seeds I started myself. Seeds had good germination and the baby plants grew quickly. I thought the cucumbers themselves were excellent.

The nice-looking, deep-green cucumbers were just the right size for slicers. I love to eat a nice cucumber and tomato salad in the summer, and Spring Swallow supplied me with plenty to use.

This is the first year I have grown Sweet Success. I tried it because I had heard great things about this variety. Sweet Success did make really nice and delicious slicing cucumbers. Just the right size for eating and cutting into salads. Also, the vines seemed to be relatively disease free.

I tried Double Yield late in the season last year and decided to plant them again this spring. The seeds germinated quickly and the plants grew well. The cucumbers are small, but I ate them fresh just like my slicer varieties. I had to remember to pick them small as they never were meant to grow large.

I liked the Lady Bell variety so much last year that I looked for seedlings again this spring and was happy to have found them. In my opinion, the best green bell type I have ever grown. Nice plants set peppers just the right size for stuffing or anything else one might like to try. I always pick mine green, so I really can't say anything about them when they're red.

Another year of growing the Italianelle Sweet Frying peppers, and this year they are doing even better than they did last season. More production, and still that marvelous sweet taste.

I have my pepper plants growing in a better location this season than last, so that is the reason for the increased production. I do like this variety, my favorite for eating fresh and for stir frying. I mostly wait till they are red before picking.

I just had to try Chocolate Beauty this year as I wanted to grow something different for a pepper. I resisted the urge to pick any green and waited for them to turn chocolate colors before picking. They win the taste test: marvelous flavor. I just wish they set more peppers.

I planted a 6-pack of Sweet Banana seedlings this spring, and now the plants are loaded with peppers. I have tried them at various stages of ripeness and they taste really good, starting from as soon as they get a hint of yellow color and onto the stage when they are a nice rich gold. Of course the more you harvest, the more they bloom and set. Very pleased with these, which I either eat fresh or use for stir fry.

I bought my plant as Golden California Wonder. The peppers set and turn from green to yellow to a color approaching orange. Very nice, sweet, mild taste. The fruits are supposed to be stuffing size, but mine are much too small for that use, so I think they're better just eaten fresh or cut up for stir fry.

Oh, what a surprise I got when I tried eating one of the Mohawk peppers. The tag said sweet pepper, but it was quite hot, at least my idea of hot as I never eat hot peppers. I never plant them either, at least not on purpose.

Small compact plants just loaded with golden, ripe, and pretty peppers.

I don't believe I ever grew Giant Belgium before this year, but I decided to try it when I saw plants this spring. So far the fruits have not been giant sized, but just a mostly normal beefsteak size with one much bigger one thrown in for good measure. Taste is very good: nice rich beefsteak flavor. The plant is a strong grower and seems to be doing really well.

Pink Girl is new to me in my garden this year. I had never heard of it until I saw plants at Home Depot this spring and bought one on impulse because it is a pink tomato. Not only pink, but a great producing variety that has been setting lots and lots of lovely medium-sized fruit. I just love the taste. Every once in a while, trying a new variety results in a new favorite. In this case I plan to plant multiple plants of Pink Girl each year from now on.

I could not resist Black Pearl when the neighborhood supermarket had an entire display of this variety this spring. It was an impulse buy for me, as I had never heard of this variety. It is a cherry tomato, very similar to Black Cherry. Larger than normal cherry-size tomatoes that started producing somewhat later than my other cherry varieties. Lots of fruit that keeps on coming. It tastes good, but I do prefer the taste of Black Cherry, so I probably will not be planting Black Pearl again next year.

This is the first year I have grown Black Cherry. I love it, so I will be growing it year after year. I bought it this spring by accident. I was thinking of Chocolate Cherry, but I didn't see any of that variety and picked up Black Cherry instead. Well, I sure am glad that I did.

They did start producing slightly later than my other cherry varieties, but the fruits are large for a cherry tomato, and once they did start producing, they have not stopped. They have the rich taste typical of black tomatoes. These are very good and not prone to cracking.

For the last two years I have grow Sungold. Wonderful taste. So when I heard about Sunsugar and heard that it was supposed to be even better than Sungold, I had to grow it.

I think that the fruits are slightly bigger, but because both are cherry types there probably isn't much difference in size. A big difference I have found is that Sungold usually split for me and Sunsugar rarely, rarely splits, and we have had a lot of rain this year. The Sunsugar plants this year are growing in the same spot that the Sungolds were in last year, so it is a good comparison.

The taste is divine. Lots of flavor and very sweet for a tomato, but not so sweet that it loses its taste. All in all, a big winner, in my opinion. I plan to be growing Sunsugar again next season and every year after that.

When I saw a seedling plant of Yellow Pear at Home Depot I decided to try it. I wanted to try some varieties that are yellow when ripe, and Yellow Pear seems to be an easy-to-find variety.

The plant grows really well and sets lots and lots of fruit that just keeps coming, no matter how much I pick. The fruits split long before they are ripe, so if you want unblemished fruit you need to pick them while they are still mostly green and just starting to show yellow. However, no matter at what stage I tasted them, Yellow Pear was bland and tasteless. I will never grow this variety again. They are also small tomatoes, the size of a cherry tomato. I expected them to be bigger for some reason.

I bought Razzle Dazzle after reading the hyped-up description on the Burpee website. Sure did sound good. Unfortunately, everything wonderful turned out not to be true. I think these are among the worst tomatoes I have ever grown and most certainly this year's worst variety. The tomatoes were hard and tasteless. Hard when nice and ripe looking, and tasteless no matter how long I waited to pick them. What a disappointing tomato.

I guess if I have to say something good about them, then I should report that the plant set lots and lots of fruit.

I bought this Burpee beefsteak-type plant when I decided to try some of their big beefsteaks. Fruits for me on Porterhouse were mostly much larger than on their other large beefsteak type, Steakhouse. I really like the impressive size that the Porterhouse fruits have been growing into. I get to impress my friends and neighbors if I give these away.

Steakhouse Hybrid is a new large beefsteak type from Burpee. They claim large fruits, up to 3 pounds. Mine were not really any great size to brag about, only average for a beefsteak type. However, it did set a goodly amount of fruit with a nice beefsteak-type flavor, so I have no complaints about Steakhouse Hybrid.

I wanted to try Jimmy Nardello peppers after I read about the sucess a fellow ATP gardener had with them. I must say they are mild and sweet -- and oh, so yummy -- when they are allowed to fully ripen to the red stage. I never did try any while they were still green.

All in all, a hit, but since I have to mail order plants and there are similar red frying pepper plants sold locally, I will probably not grow it again. If you grow your own from seeds or have easy access to plants, however, I do heartily recommend this one.

Ophelia was another variety of eggplant I decided to try out. Very pretty, smaller, purple, classic eggplant-shaped fruits. I just had to remember to pick them early, as they would never grow to the supermarket-sized purples that I am used to seeing. Honestly, I can't taste any difference between one variety of eggplant or another. Ophelia made pretty fruits, which have been cooked and eaten up like all the other eggplants here in my garden.