Best of 2020: My Favorite Varieties from the Veggie Garden

In addition to growing flowers, I grow a big veggie garden in our backyard.

Every year our lawn gets smaller and our veggie garden gets bigger.

Here are some of my favorite veggies from the garden this year:

Tomato: Sun Gold. A sweet, early and prolific cherry tomato. The past two years I’ve been thinking: “maybe I should just grow all Sun Golds!” But I also like to have variety.

You will not be disappointed. I grow mine in an unheated hoop house. Next year I will trial these outdoors.

Kale: Red Russian. I’ve been growing Red Russian for six years. It is just my absolute favorite kale year after year.

It’s meaty and sweet in the fall. Plus you can grow it as a baby green by planting densely OR grow into a large plant for bunching. Once cut and massaged with dressing it makes THE BEST kale salad.

And get this folks, we still have kale in the garden now (it’s November as I write this)! We planted a HUGE bed of kale early in the summer. The leaves are frozen but you can go pick and they saute into an amazingly sweet and delicious side dish.

Carrot: Yaya. A yummy 5-6 inch sweet and tender carrot. Great for eating right out of the garden. With kids around, I just can’t keep carrots in the ground till the end of summer :)

Broccoli: Blue Wind and Belstar. I loved both of these varieties. Delicious and huge! Once the main head on Belstar is harvested it goes on to produce lots of side shoots. Blue Wind, not so much. It’s more of a one-and-done variety.

Cucumber: Socrates. A great cuke for Alaska. 52 days to maturity (once transplanted out). It’s seedless, sweet and tender. The kids (and myself) ate these like candy all summer long!

I’d like to try these outdoors next year to see how they perform. But in my unheated hoop house, they did amazing in pots. I trellis these straight up to the roof of the hoop house in order to squeeze in more plants.

Zucchini: Dunja. A classic, high-yielding zucchini that I grow every year! Don’t make the mistake and grow these too big. Although it’s fun to have big zucchini in the garden, they are the most succulent when picked at the proper stage (when fruits are 6-8 inches long).

Cilantro: Calypso. If you avoid growing cilantro because it bolts too fast, try this one! It is the slowest to bolt! Then when it does, you can cut the flowers to put in a vase (they smell heavenly) or wait till it forms seeds and use them as fresh coriander. Yum!

Spinach: Corvair. A delicious, juicy spinach. This is slow to bolt, so does well into the early summer.

And of course there are more!

If you need a suggestion for a certain variety, ask below in the comment section OR send me an email at turnstonefarm@gmail.com.

There’s nothing I love more than talking about gardening.