1) I don't grow shelling peas - tried once, I hate shelling them. So I usually grow snap peas. This year I ran across a type of snow pea that is a triple-pea! It works as a snap pea (it never gets tough), a snow pea (because it's flat), and as a shelling pea if you let it get really big. And the best part about them is that they're very disease-resistant! I found that mine just gave and gave and gave - we had no lack of peas this year! And frankly, they're so huge that you only need a couple in order to get a full serving of veggies. My son actually told me "Mommy, I don't like peas anymore". That's how many we were eating. So, the title for BEST PEA AWARD goes to Oregon Giant!
2) Brocooli. I've wrote a few times about the surprising ease of growing your own broccoli. Normally I grow Gypsy broccoli because it is both cold-resistant and it doesn't bolt very easily in the heat. This year I found an article about Calabrese Broccoli - according to what I read, it's a very old variety that gives consistent and tasty offshoots all summer. So I tried it, and was I ever surprised!
This is the size of an offshoot from Gypsy broccoli:
Now here's an offshoot from Calabrese broccoli! It's a big as the original head was!
And just to prove that it's NOT the original head, you can see in this picture where I've already made two decent-sized cuts from this broccoli, as well as all the smaller offshoots also growing.
3) If you like yellow tomatoes, try a bush or two of Taxi tomato! Mine are so prolific it's not even funny. I've gotten about 30 lbs of tomatoes so far this year, and I'd say 80% of those have been from my 5 Taxi plants. Considering that I have 23 plants in all, that's saying something. About 1/5 of the plants have given me 4/5's of the fruit. So far. They're earlier than a lot of my red ones so I'm sure a couple of the others will catch up , but you really can't beat their productivity and sweetness. I haven't really found a red tomato that I love yet though. I've been planting Early Girl because they're reasonably prolific and early, but they don't taste like much. Do you have a tomato variety that you plant every year?
