Gardening with Allen: Four veggies earn tops marks for 2022
The Columbian
Published: January 8, 2022, 6:02am
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Tomato Purple Zebra (Photos contributed by All-America Selections)Photo Gallery
Are there vegetable winners in addition to the flower award winners for the coming year?
All-America Selections has given two new tomatoes, a pepper, a leaf lettuce and an eggplant awards for 2022.
Tomato Purple Zebra is a plum-size, deep mahogany red tomato with green and purple stripes. It is sweet and acidic with interesting complex flavors. Fruits have thin skin. Plants are resistant to eight different tomato diseases. Up to 150 3- to 4-ounce fruits are produced per plant. Tomato Purple Zebra requires about 85 days from transplant to first fruit, and can be grown in containers of 5 gallon or larger with support.
Tomato Sunset Torch is a small, orange plum tomato with a rose blush. The plant is an early-maturing and vigorous grower reaching 5 to 6 feet. Multiple disease resistant plants produce up to 250 2-inch fruits. The tomatoes have overall better performance, less splitting, a mildly sweet, fruity flavor. This variety takes approximately 75 days from transplant to harvest.
Pepper Dragonfly produces beautiful purple bell peppers that have thick, sweet walls. This pepper turns from green into purple, and the fruit is as delicious at the green stage of maturity as it is when fully purple and mature. The four-lobed fruits do not fade. If left on the vine, they turn a beautiful, bright red color. The 2- to 3-foot plants can be grown in containers. The fruit size is about 3 inches.
Lettuce Bauer is a high-quality, high-yielding oak leaf lettuce with dark green leaves, dense heads and sweet crisp leaves. You can harvest it at the baby-leaf stage or wait until it grows into rosette-shaped, full-sized heads. For continuous harvest, make successive plantings at three to four week intervals. The lettuce has a nice flavor with thick, crunchy leaf texture and can be grown in containers.
Eggplant Icicle is a cylindrical white eggplant with larger fruits than other white eggplants. The plant has fewer spines than most eggplants, making for a less painful harvest. It produces a nice yield while also providing fewer seeds. The large, durable and vigorous plants hold up to insect damage and the environment. Plants of new All-America Selections winners are sometimes hard to find the first year they’re introduced. Let local greenhouses and full-service nurseries and garden stores know of your interest in specific varieties in January so they can purchase seeds and starter plants for their own production. Seeds of all five vegetables should be available from mail and internet seed sources.
Allen Wilson is a Vancouver gardening specialist. allenw98663@yahoo.com
