What varieties of tomatoes, peppers and eggplants is everyone planning to start this year? Because of the hurricanes I never got my fall plants rolling, and because of the frost my winter tomatoes got shot, so I’m pretty determined to get a good harvest before the bugs takeover.
For tomatoes I have San Marzano, Coyote and a Pink Thai already at fruiting age, and Gobstopper, Clackmas, Everglades and Midnight Snack started in the greenhouse. I also have a few unmarked seedlings from fall that I had stored in the greenhouse.
I am going big on peppers this year. I overwintered 3 Jalepenos, a Giant Jalepeno, a Sweet Heat, a Chocolate Bell, 2 Thai Dragon offsprings, a Serrano, a Golden Marconi, a Pablano and 2 White Zinfandel Bells. In the greenhouse sprouting I have Sugar Rush Peach, Chocolate Bell, Zavory and Diamond. And then I got 13+ varieties of seeds in the mail yesterday from Matt’s Peppers which I am extremely excited about. Got mostly mildly hot to sweet peppers, but got a couple of superhot types. Don’t want to list them before I get them sprouting because I feel like I jinx myself everytime I do that.
For eggplants, I only got Casper. I don’t like eggplant, but this one is supposed to have a mushroomy flavor, and I love mushrooms. It grew well for me over the summer, but I had a hornworm issue and its growbag got filled with fireants, so I pulled it before it fruited. Got some sprouted in the greenhouse right now.
Let me know what everyone else is got planned or is growing.
So in my case this will be my first year gardening at a new place, (and the first time actually having a garden after more than a decade of apartment living) so my aims will be to get a feel for how much I actually want to grow, how much I can keep up with between a 9-5, finishing a move and fixing things up around the house, and not being in my 20s anymore, and finally to get a baseline of my family’s preferences for comparing varieties.
-For eggplant I’m planning to try some Ping Tung (a long thin thai eggplant).
I dont love eggplant myself and havent grown them before; my wife loves eggplant but cant eat “normal” ones any longer due to health conditions that limit how much fiber/seeds she can eat. Supposedly these eggplants have fewer seeds so I’m hoping we might find one that she can enjoy again and maybe I’ll even enjoy them if they’re home grown.
For peppers this year I’m just going to try some Chocolate Beauty Sweet Bell peppers since if nothing else they will give me a different color to add to stir fries and I didnt feel like experimenting with a lot of sweet peppers this first year in this garden.
Since my wife also has some trouble with hot peppers I’m holding off on any of them this year but once I’m more settled in will likely try growing a plant of Tepin, Thin Cayenne and Lemon Drop pepper as I enjoyed all 3 in years past when I’ve grown them, and I may may grow a milder Ancho for my wife when I add those.
Tomatoes: ok i cant explain why but it never fails I am tempted to want to try as many varieties as I can… this year I’ve resolved to “limit” myself to starting a half dozen varieties to see what does well in this location and what varieties we enjoy most so we can have some point of reference when trialing new ones in the future. The varieties im planning to start (also hoping not to jinx it by saying it before they are planted) are:
Pineapple
Berkley’s Pink Tie-dye
Ulure Ochre
Kate’s Wooly Yellow (got free seeds so why not?)
Green Doctor
Rosella
Hoping this gives me enough variation of colors and sizes that even if in a chaotic planting season I misplace tags I’ll be able to know which tomato is which when taking notes at harvest.
Now that I got all but 3 varieties sprouting, I feel more confident listing them. I got these all from Matts Peppers (who is apperently having a sale right now).
Mattepeño (white and green variegated foliage and pepper jalepeño)
HJ2 Meteor (one of the peppers that were mutated in space)
Nazghul’s Breakfast (a superhot)
Sugar Rush Peach Stripey
Cheiro Roxa x Peach Biquino F3
Violgo
PeppaPeach Stripey (a cherry pepper sized Stripey)
Giant Sweet Devil’s Horn
Violet Sparkle
Brazilian Starfish
Mocha Swirl
Thundermountain Longhorn
I have a few more varieties to start still, but I am waiting to up pot these ones before moving on to the next (plus its getting cold again and the greenhouse and porch are full).
I started 8 SuperSweet 100’s about 3 weeks ago. My wife and 2 girls love them and we get big tomatoes from my in-laws. All 8 sprouted and are about 3” tall. I will move them to a larger pot shortly and then when it warms up a bit, I will put them in 7 gallon buckets.
I like Casper a lot. It doesn’t taste that much like mushrooms, so don’t get your expectations too high for that, but it somewhat does. The texture is firmer and more mushroom-like than most other eggplants, which is nice. It’s a pretty good grower and reliably productive. It is a staple variety for me that I have grown each year over the past 3 or 4 years and will continue to do so. The uniqueness of taste and texture and reliable fruiting nature are why I like growing it. A minor issue I don’t like is that the calyxes are thorny, so those need to be rubbed off after picking them. Perhaps my biggest issue with Casper is that it attracts flea beetles more than the other varieties of eggplants I’ve tried. Sprays will take care of that if done regularly, but the plants really suffer if I don’t spray for it.
I am growing this year with the goal of refreshing my seed inventory with favorite varieties, plus a few extras.
Favorite tomatoes:
Brad’s Black Oxheart
Ananas Noire
Paul Robeson
Japanese Black Trifele
Black Beauty
Favorite peppers:
Biquinho
Shishito
Espelette
Jimmy Nardello
Ethiopian
Also trying Moskvitch tomato (gift seed from a friend), and a few more peppers (Lemon Drop, Habanada, Ajvarski, Hungarian Hot Wax)
Never had much luck with eggplants here, our summers seem to be too cool. There are some eggplants at Adaptive Seeds that seem to have potential for my climate that I hope to try someday.
Thats good to hear. I figured they didn’t really taste like mushrooms, but it was a flavor in the right direction. Plus white fruit are sick. I love the lighter color fruits like white, yellow and pink.
I have never had an Everglades tomato crack on me, even when we are getting multiple inches of rain a day in the summer (most currant tomatoes in general don’t crack in my experience). Midnight Snack also did really good. Don’t have a lot of experience with bigger tomatoes in the rain though; by the time the rains come something else has either eaten them or they take a couple of hot days and die.
tomatoes:
San marzano, Amish paste, hogheart.
yellow Brandywine, black krim, Japanese trifele, trialing Mamie brown pinks and I’m sure there will be Matt’s wild cherry and yellow pear popping up again.
peppers:
Italian red fry, Thai hot, jalapeno, Serrano, big poblano, fish peppers, plus all the dormant ones I overwintered
eggplant:
astrakom, long purple, Rosa bianca, egg white
I have a lot of peppers and tomatoes that I’ve started only one or two of to test out. “Chinese red”,
mortgage lifter, black cherry, and a handful of “extreme heat” kind of peppers, Scotch bonnet included.
over winter peppers: nardella, shishito, cayenne, Marconi.
I haven’t decided on everything yet.
Definetly going to grow some long asian type eggplant.
Peppers so far:
Red Chili (that is what it says on package)
an unknown small hot chili that my MIL liked a lot
I just started some stuff that likes the colder springtime:
Celtuce- rolling bin
Iceberg lettuce
Hanson Improved Crisphead lettuce
Abundant Tree Kale
Vates Collards
Shuginku- edible chrysanthemum
Early Golden Acre cabbage
Purple of Sicily cauliflower
Tatsoi
Early White Vienna kohrabi
Not a tomato, but it is a nightshade! I’m hoping to try to grow golden berries (ground cherries) for the first time. I’ll be looking on this forum for people’s favorite tomatoes for next year when I’ll have a little more time
i grow 5 types of Sweet peppers and over winter them in my greenhouse then plant them back the next yr . im not much into hot … I know sad right . i do grow Ghost peppers every 4 yrs i make a spray with them for nieces and children around the area . one girl of 12 sprayed a would be kidnapper and got away in alaska so i started making it up for kids and small Bottles . It works . you can also over winter egg plants but i have had no sucess with that
I’m trying all sorts of stuff this year… getting a tiller for my tractor and figured this is the year to overdo the garden and see what works.
Tomatoes…
Korean Long (paste)
Evil Olive
Apricot Zebra
Barry’s Crazy Cherry
Brown Sugar
Peron (classic round red)
Prairie Fire (paste)
Roma
Burmese Sour
Jersey Devil (paste)
Peppers
Trepadeira Werner (a hotish cherry type)
Aji Cachucha (sweet)
Canary Bell
Jamaican Scotch Bonnet (very hot)
Banana
Aleppo (hotish)
I’ve tried a lot of the trendy varieties in the past, but this year I’m trying to focus on varieties that have grown well for me in the past, or new-to-me that are specifically for hot humid summers. Also my first year growing eggplant.
