My Favorite Varieties - 2015 Summer Garden

Romanesco zucchini

Variety is the spice of life, right? With that in mind, I thought I would share with you my favorite varieties from our summer garden. I tried several new varieties this year and many of them were hits! Maybe you will find something new to try next year.

I think the most shocking winner for me was the Romaneso zucchini. I am not a lover of zucchini, but this type has won me over with its delicately crisp texture and sweet flavor. Everyone who tried it said the same thing, "This is the best zucchini I've ever tasted." With raised longitudinal ridges, it creates beautiful gear-shaped slices. I love it lightly sauteed in butter and sprinkled with tarragon.

The tomatoes always steal the show in the summer garden. I grew 12 varieties and my favorite was Black Krim. This is a hearty, robust, flavorful tomato.

Black Krim tomato

One look at the deep color and you can just imagine the rich complex flavor. It tastes how it looks.

Black Krim tomato

Pineapple Hawaiian tomato is light and fruity. This was my most prolific grower. The fruit is incredibly sweet, and when the sun hits it the bright orange color glows. It has a pink blush at the bottom too, making it even prettier.

Pineapple Hawaiian tomato

Pineapple Hawaiian tomato

What a treat it was to share my Black Krim and Pineapple Hawaiian with my dear friend, Jane, on our little get away to Ventura Beach. This is why we put up with the traffic to live in L.A. One hour in the car and we are at the beach, at the ski resort in the mountains, in the desert, or in farm country.

The tomatoes were fabulous with pita chips and red pepper hummus, topped with fresh tarragon and basil.

When I bit into my first Red Pear Abruzzese tomato, it finally made sense why tomatoes are considered a fruit. By far the sweetest tomato I have ever eaten, this one is like candy.

Red Pear Abruzzese tomato

Red Pear Abruzzese tomato

Out of the 12 pepper varieties I planted, my favorite are these Italian heirlooms. Quadrato Rosso D' Asti is a red sweet pepper which is deliciously flavorful with a slightly spicy finish.

Quadrato Rosso D' Asti bell pepper

Its yellow cousin is Quadrato Giallo D' Asti. Isn't it beautiful? It's also crisp, sweet and tasty.

Quadrato Giallo D' Asti bell pepper

This little melon is not much to look at, but it is fantastic. Sakata's Asian Melon is a small crisp melon that is intensely sweet with a hint of cucumber flavor. I will grow this one every year.

Prosperosa eggplant is stunning with its embre effect. The plant was a prolific producer and its upright growth habit takes less room than my spreading Kamo eggplant. 

I purchased all of my seeds from Annie's Heirloom Seeds. (I am not compensated by them in any way, I am just a customer.) One thing I like about them is they have collections of seeds which makes trying new varieties easy. This bush bean collection was just fabulous. They call it "Annie's Rainbow Beans" and it contains Contender, Golden Wax, Royal Burgundy, and Dragon's Tongue. 

And finally there are the Cosse Violetta pole beans. With flowers this pretty, and pods that are striped then mature to a deep violet, these are a stunning (and delicious) addition to the summer garden.

I hope you are inspired to try a new variety next year. Now I am off to start looking through seed catalogues for unusual additions to try in my winter garden. 

Oh, the possibilities!

Cosse Violetta Pole Beans

Cosse Violetta are beautiful beans, deeply purple on the outside, green inside. My current favorite bean, they are sweet and tender in addition to being pretty. And the flowers, well let's just say they are lovely.

Hanging in clusters, the pods grow to 10 inches long and are a striking contrast to their green foliage.

These vines are vigorous and have spilled over the top of my 8 ft tee pee. 

My dog loves Cosse Violetta beans! Here she is waiting for me to put down the camera and pick her a little snack.

When they are young, the beans are green then gradually turn purple. I love their stripes as they mature.

One interesting thing is, they tend to turn green when cooked. Oh, are they delicious!!

Annie's Rainbow Beans

They are beautiful, aren't they? Oh, but you should taste them sauteed with ham!! These are Annie's Rainbow beans, a combination of Contender, Golden Wax, Royal Burgundy, and Dragon's Tongue. I bought all of my seeds from Annie's Heirloom Seeds. (They don't know of this blog, I have no affiliation with them other than I purchase my seeds from them.) One of the things I like about their website is there are collections such as these beans and that makes it easier to experiment with different varieties. In the collections the individual varieties of seeds are packaged separately so they aren't all mixed together leaving you guessing. (At least that it true with the tomatoes, the beans may have come in one package. You can tell the beans apart, the varieties look different.) 

These beans are my current favorite thing in the garden, and they were a surprise. I thought I was planting a mix of pole beans and I put them at the base of one of my tee pees. It turns out they are bush beans and the mistake was mine. I didn't read the package well. So these are the pole beans that aren't. The flowers are sure pretty.

I can eat the beans uncooked right out in the garden, crisp and flavorful, but here's one of our favorite quick meals...

Add a little butter into a saute pan, add the beans and stir fry them for a few minutes, then add small pieces of ham and heat until the ham is slightly brown. Prepared this way, the beans are lightly cooked and still a bit crunchy, just the way I like them. YUM!

Sometimes the best things are unintentional. We are loving these bush beans so much that I am planting more every three weeks so we can have a continual supply throughout the summer! 

The Pole Beans that Aren't

Bush bean "mix" on the left, pole beans on the right.

I thought I was planting pole beans, but they aren't. They are bush beans. It was my mistake, no one to blame but me. I decided not to buy bush beans this year. Instead my plan was to make 5 tee pee trellises and plant pole beans in succession. Somehow I bought a mix of bush beans by mistake, and planted them first. They came up beautifully. Three weeks later I planted the second tee pee with Cosse Violetta pole beans.

April 23, 2015

Imagine my surprise when the mix didn't start to twist their way up the twine. The "mix" are bush beans, and they are bushy! They won't be climbing anything.

Bush bean mix

Bush bean plant with multiple stems.

Bush beans grow to about 3 feet high and two feet wide. They tend to produce their beans all at one time.

Pole beans are vines that can grow 8-10 feet long. They need trellises like my tee pees. 

Cosse Violetta pole beans climbing the tee pee.

Pole beans have one twining stem.

The bush beans are healthy so I'll let them grow. They are starting to bloom.

Next time I'll read the package better. But for now I'm going to enjoy those bush beans that are coming soon!

How to Build a Green Bean Tee Pee

Deciding of what type of trellis to build for my beans and tomatoes is my current challenge. I have tried various types of trellises and this year I am making a new type of bean tee pee. Well, it's new for me. I wanted to use materials that I already have instead of buying new supplies. I have these round garden poles that are coated in green plastic. They are 8 feet tall. I discovered that a PVC coupling fits perfectly on the end of the pole and it doesn't slip down because of the raised ridge inside the coupling. Drilling holes in the coupling allowed me to tie twine to it. This is how I was able to attach 8 strings to the top of the pole without them sliding down.

Place the coupling in a vice and use a relatively large drill bit.

Drill through both sides of the coupling.

Now drill another set of holes to make 4 holes.

The coupling slips easily onto the end of the stake.

Actually I decided it would be much easier to cut the twine and tie it to the coupling before attaching it on the pole. It was at least 90 degrees in Los Angeles this weekend, so the idea of standing on a ladder and fiddling with all that twine just did not appeal to me. In the cool garage, I tied the twine onto the coupling, taking care to bundle the long strands so they did not get entangled.

I have high hopes for my beans, so I want these tee pees to be as tall as possible. I didn't want to pound 2 feet of the pole into the ground for stability, so I pounded 3 ft long rebar stakes into the ground, leaving about 8 inches above ground. Then I pushed the green pole about one foot into the ground right along the rebar and tied them together with wire.

After placing the coupling onto the top of the pole, I used "U" shaped hooks to attach the strands of twine about one foot from the pole, evenly spaced.

It helps if you compact the soil where you push in the hook, otherwise it will pull out easily.

I planted 3 seeds near each string and I'll thin them to 2 each. 

One tee pee down, 4 more to go. Not today though. It's too hot, and I am going to plant my beans in succession. In a month or so, I'll make the next one. I have space for 5, so if I make one per month I should have beans all summer!