Thoughts on every variety grown in Meadowwood Garden in 2008:
Eureka Yellow Bush Bean — Highly prolific. Did not like the taste and will not grow again.
Blue Lake 274 Bush Bean — Good yields. Good taste.
Kentucky Blue Pole Bean — Huge amounts of green beans and super flavor. Need to pick before they get too big or they have strings and get tough.
Sweet Success Burpless Cucumber — Amazing yields — 15+ cucumbers per vine. Very vigorous. Good taste.
Burpee Hybrid Eggplant — Did well and high yields. Somewhat bitter. Need staking.
Purple Rain Eggplant — Also high yields. Pick small for better taste. Need to be staked as they tend to fall over when fruits get large.
Venus Honeydew Melon — Surprise of the season! Thought it had died but was growing within a mass of other vines. At the end of the season as I was tearing everything out I found 21 melons! Loved the smaller size and taste.
Golden Giant II Pepper — All the pepper plants had huge amounts of leaves and small amounts of peppers. Maybe the soil was too fertile or something. This one had a mediocre taste.
Gypsy Pepper — Was ok. Decent yield in spite of issues with all the peppers.
California Wonder Pepper — Not sure I picked a single one.
Flavorburst Sweet Pepper — Don’t remember this one. All the peppers were disappointing.
Tangerine Dream Pepper — grew as an ornamental — nice color.
Hot Pepper Mix (Cayenne, Hungarian Wax, Large Cherry, Anaheim, Jalapeno) — The problem with a mix like this is you never know exactly what ones you will get and how many of each one. I could only tell them apart after the peppers matured.
Early Prolific Straightneck Yellow Squash — The name says it all — early and prolific! Taste was excellent. Was a staple of the garden this year.
Burpee Hybrid Zucchini — Wowzers! Planted one by seed and less than 28 days later was picking zucchini! High yields, good taste. A winner.
Hasta La Pasta Spaghetti Squash — This was very neat. The plant was a bush form like a zucchini. The squash were orange and there were a lot of them! Ideal for shorter season areas.
Vegetable Spaghetti Squash — Traditional yellow squash like in the supermarket. Grows on a vine and takes longer to ripen than the Hasta La Pasta.
Acorn Table Queen Squash — These were growing among other vines and I failed to check on them. Failed harvest.
Large Bottle Gourd — Very cool. Probably my favorite plant of the year! Vines grew to 30 feet long and covered the fence. Picked 30+ large gourds and set aside for drying. These take a long time to mature, so keeping the bugs away is important.
Small Gourds — Nice colorful additions to the garden. Also climbed the fence and made a nice backdrop. Once picked they lost their color over about a month or so — I’m probably picking them at the wrong time or doing something else wrong.
Big Beef Tomato — Nothing outstanding to say.
Black Krim Tomato — Neat purple tomato. OK taste. Probably won’t plant again.
Brandywine Tomato — Low yields. Very vigorous. Outstanding taste. Famous variety that was fun to grow.
Cherokee Purple Tomato — Good yield and reasonable taste.
Early Girl Tomato — For whatever reason this didn’t ripen any earlier than the others — in fact the first I picked was over a week after others. These came from a nursery.
Fresh Salsa Tomato — Lots of tomatoes. Poor taste. Disappointment.
Mortgage Lifter Tomato — I think I got 1 or 2 off this plant. They had a good taste but the yield didn’t seem worth it.
Striped Cavern Tomato — Another huge disappointment. They were small and not really hollow as advertised.
