digitS'
Garden Master
I've been gardening a long time but usually, I miss anything new by several years.
It was true with Early Girl tomatoes which were featured on the cover of the Burpee catalog in 1975. To be kind to myself, I have to say that I was gardening that year where even an Early Girl might have had trouble ripening. I know that I was soon growing Sub Arctics as my sole tomato in that garden. But, to be honest, I wasn't especially happy about that . . .
I wasn't quite asleep at the wheel when Big Beef won the All-America Selection in 1994 but my garden was at considerably lower elevations by then. It took only a couple of seasons before I'd tossed aside the other slicers Earliana, Fantastic, and nearly all (but not quite all) of the Early Girls so as to have room for Big Beef. I still grow it each and every year but I've since found some heirloom slicers that can also produce vine-ripened fruits in my garden
. Still, I'm very appreciative of those new varieties.
But, I didn't start this post to talk about tomatoes. I want to say something about Snap Peas!
Sugar Snap Peas showed up in 1979. I didn't have any reason to think that they were much different from the Chinese pea pods I was already growing . . . but, I was mistaken! It took me 10 years to realize how off base I was!
I can comfortably say that for my home garden, Dr. Calvin Lamborn made the greatest contribution of my gardening lifetime by developing a snap pea into the wonderful vegetable it is!
You can read a little about Lamborn and his peas and find some really tempting recipes on Eatwell.com. Mmmmm. Yay for Snap Peas!
Steve
It was true with Early Girl tomatoes which were featured on the cover of the Burpee catalog in 1975. To be kind to myself, I have to say that I was gardening that year where even an Early Girl might have had trouble ripening. I know that I was soon growing Sub Arctics as my sole tomato in that garden. But, to be honest, I wasn't especially happy about that . . .
I wasn't quite asleep at the wheel when Big Beef won the All-America Selection in 1994 but my garden was at considerably lower elevations by then. It took only a couple of seasons before I'd tossed aside the other slicers Earliana, Fantastic, and nearly all (but not quite all) of the Early Girls so as to have room for Big Beef. I still grow it each and every year but I've since found some heirloom slicers that can also produce vine-ripened fruits in my garden
. Still, I'm very appreciative of those new varieties.But, I didn't start this post to talk about tomatoes. I want to say something about Snap Peas!
Sugar Snap Peas showed up in 1979. I didn't have any reason to think that they were much different from the Chinese pea pods I was already growing . . . but, I was mistaken! It took me 10 years to realize how off base I was!
I can comfortably say that for my home garden, Dr. Calvin Lamborn made the greatest contribution of my gardening lifetime by developing a snap pea into the wonderful vegetable it is!
You can read a little about Lamborn and his peas and find some really tempting recipes on Eatwell.com. Mmmmm. Yay for Snap Peas!
Steve
