Plant Review: Onions/Garlic

Time for another plant review! Onions and garlic this time, it's the stinky plants review...

Here we go! 

Onions

Yellow of Borettana:

A medium sized doughnut shaped onion, mild, but hell when I cut into them. I needed goggles! Many tears were shed over this onion. I left them in the ground too long and the bottom where the roots are will split open and start to kinda rot out. So for next year I will pull them in early-mid July instead of early August. They are not a keeper onion, but will last for some time in the fridge. Mine didn't last that long because they went into the salsa's! I will plant more of these next year.

Yellow Of Parma:

These were my keeper onions, but they didn't do as well as I had hoped. I put the starts in the ground when they were smaller than a pencil and I should have repotted them inside and got them a bit bigger before they went out. Most of mine were the size of my fist, medium to small ish. They have good flavor and seemed to do just fine in my soil. The tops took a while to fall over but when they did I didn't have any rotting issues like I did with the Borettana onion. Sadly I can't seem to find my picture of this onion, but it looked like the average store keeper onion. But it tasted awesome! I don't have many keepers because I used a lot of them in salsa, pasta and bbq sauce, and making onion powder. However I'll plant more of them next year in the hopes that I don't have to buy any from the farmers market. 

Evergreen Hardy: 

Bunching green onion, just standard. I still have a half row that I need to bring inside in the green onion pot. Did you know if you just cut the green part and stick the white part back in the soil (provided you didn't cut off the roots) it will regrow again and again. I have a pot that I keep in the window all year and when I need green onions I just chop them off at the soil line.

Giant Musselburgh and Blue Soliaze Leek:

I honestly can't tell the difference between these two leeks. Apart from one having slightly blue'er foliage they taste identical, or perhaps I am not much of a leek connoisseur. About half of my leek crop is still outside braving the frosts and the cold. They were surprisingly easy to grow, I did start all my onion family from seed. The leeks seemed to do the best even though they spent much of the summer hidden by the tomato jungle.

Garlic

Inchelium Red:

Softneck, keeper. This is the bulk of what I have planted and I love it! Not as easy to peel as store bought garlic. The flavor is a good midline not overpowering or hot. Some of the bulbs grew to near onion size! I have saved some of this seed and replanted it for next year's harvest. 

Georgian Crystal: 

Hardneck, Large cloves only 4 per garlic bulb, mild also good raw. This guy is a dream to peel the cloves practically jump out of the skin. Good soft flavor if you need some garlic in a dish you don't plan to cook. I saved some seed to have more of them, but the bulk of this crop was given away as gifts. 

Asian Tempest:

Hardneck, Purple striped, HOT! I used much of this in salsa and gift giving. It adds great garlic flavor and makes some of the best spicy hummus. I have this growing in the ground now for next year. I really enjoyed this garlic.

Georgian Crystal and Asian Tempest bundles:

Plant Review: Tomato

This is going to be a long entry. If you've seen the garden list page ---> you'll know that I grew 7 tomatoes this year. I've gotta get this review written before I forget how I liked each variety. Here we go...

Long Keeper:

Small fist sized tomatoes that are uniformly round, they look like shinny green apples on the plant. They don't ripen well on the plant, they must be pulled inside to slowly ripen. If we had a normal fall we would have just pulled them off the plant. Since we didn't they've been inside about 3 weeks before we were anticipating. Regardless they look great and are just now turning colors. We should have fresh tomatoes through mid November. They ripen to a soft pink color and have good but mild flavor. I'll grow it again but only 1 plant not 5. I still am not sure what to do with them all!

Italian Heirloom:

Gianormous tomatoes! 1+ pounds each! Great slicer and heavy producer. This one was the easiest from seed to start. I had so many starts I put tomatoes in spots I never intended because I didn't have the heart to toss them. The vines grew to 6 feet and were so weighed down Jake and I had to add extra twine supports for them. The fruit was a good juicy slicer, almost bigger than the average hamburger bun, but really I'm not complaining.  I'll grow this one again, but not nearly as many, 2-3 probably. The fruit picture shows it compared to a larger roma tomato.

Martino's Roma:

Wow! This guy didn't vine up like the Italian heirloom, it only got off the ground 3 feet. But those 3 feet packed a punch. The plants were loaded, I'd venture a guess at 30+ pounds per plant. We're going to get a butcher style scale next year to be sure. I digress.... The fruit was hidden under the leaves so it was deceiving. We harvested maybe 10 of these ripe on the plant, everything else has had to ripen slowly inside. The flavor is wonderful with very little juice. I've made TONS of tomato sauce. I will be growing these next year. We put in 5 plants I am thinking a few more wouldn't hurt.

Cherry Roma:

If we would've had height these guys would have kept going. They got to 6 feet easily and likely would have made it to 8+. A typical cherry tomato plant but the fruit had little juice in it. They're excellent sun dried because of all the meat on the inside. Prolific as they were we ended up drowning in them. Exceptional flavor raw that got even more intense when dried. I ate them every time I was outside, harvested daily and couldn't keep up. I had 3 of them in the garden and I'll likely only put in 1 or 2 for next year, I haven't decided yet. Fruit picture shows them green, I didn't have any ripe when I took the pictures of them. Like everything else they came inside green and slowly ripened.

Sheboygan:

A paste tomato but much bigger than the standard roma. The vine was thin with fewer leaves than the other varieties. All the fruit seemed so exposed. I love this tomato. Not as productive as the Martino's but the fruit was on average fist sized. The flavor was awesome and slightly sweet. The fruit ripens to a pink hue. Sometimes the fruit had curled bottoms like chili peppers, which was slightly adorable. I only had 4 of these guys and I will make sure I have that or more next year. The bottom fruit picture shows it's color next to a silvery fir tree tomato. I couldn't get the camera to capture the pinkness of the color. The naked eye is no match for a camera.

Silvery Fir Tree:

Another one that was so easy to grow from seed I had to chuck some out. The foliage is similar to carrots only fatter. This one was the first to flower and produce fruit. A tennis ball sized slicer with good flavor and tons of juice. The plants were so heavy loaded they didn't vine up much, very similar to the Martino's Roma. Silvery Fir only came off the ground about 2 feet and then kinda vined outward on the ground. Each plant had at least 25 pounds of fruit on it when we pulled them inside. I had 5 of them. I will grow this one again for it's early yields, but with the Italian heirloom slicer these became too much.

Green Zebra:

I didn't like this guy too much. It was fine when under ripe but got kinda mushy when ripe. The one plant I had didn't produce much either. It vined up nicely but didn't get to the going until too late. This was a trial plant to see if we liked it before growing it in mass. I'm glad we did because I doubt I will grow it again. I don't have a picture of the plant because I forgot, but I have a picture of a ripe fruit. It's sure pretty with those yellowy stripes.

This year was insane! All of our tomato processing was done after they came inside and ripened a while. I'll remember to give them more room next year and I won't plant leeks right next to each tomato plant. Poor things got lost. As much as I love tomatoes I will be really glad when canning/processing is done.

Plant review: Peppers

Fish Pepper:

A beautiful little pepper plant with it's variegated foliage and oddly colored/striped peppers. This guy was slow to start producing, honestly we didn't think it would even do anything. It's heat is a #3 according to the Seed Savers Exchange heat index. I found that to be true, although I don't eat straight hot peppers so I really wouldn't know. Average pepper size was around 2 inches, tiny but with a kick. I'll grow this again next year only probably not as many plants.

Sweet Chocolate:

Only a small handful of these got to the chocolate color before we had to pick them due to cold. The ones that did make it to the chocolate stage were beautiful, a shinny brown outside and brick red inside. Not as sweet as the name implies, they had a bit more heat for a sweet pepper given it's heat number is #0. Not anything unbearable but warmer than your traditional 'green pepper'. This little plant was pretty prolific, which was surprising. I only put 3 out this year, next year I will grow more.

Joe's Long Cayenne:

Prolific, loaded, weighed down. I put in 5 of these thinking that should be enough for all the salsa I want to can. YIKES I am over run with these. We had the same problem with the cayenne as the chocolate, due to cold not many of them are red like the name cayenne implies. Our harvest was mostly green but some we managed to pamper to red. Much of these we will dry and have green cayenne powder. I intend to grow these again but not as many since they did so well. Heat #3.


Quadrato Asti Giallos: (Green Bell Pepper)

I didn't think these would attain much size but was surprised. They didn't get to the grocery store giant size, but held there own for stuffed green peppers. A really good sweet taste it's heat number is #0. The plants only had 7 or less peppers on them. I had a hard time germinating these, so I'll make sure to double the amount I try. I was only able to put 3 plants out in the garden and I'd like at least 6 or more for next year.


Wenks Yellow Hots:

Another prolific hot pepper a #3. These guys were tall, leggy plants and loaded with little yellow hot peppers. They get a lovely fire orange the longer they are on the plant. I had the easiest time growing this variety. It was the first to put out "fruit" and produced for the longest time. I will grow this again but not as many since I had two other varieties of heat for salsa's.

Next year I would like to grow an Anaheim pepper for a larger roasted pepper. I ended up purchasing some of these from the farmers market to roast and freeze. I roasted much of the Wenks harvest they will make a great spicy addition to pizzas and hummus. Knowing how poorly the germination rate was, I will  make sure to start more of the varieties I really like or felt I needed more of. I was pretty happy with our pepper choices for this year and how well they performed in this strange growing year.