Garden update: Early start, plenty of peas

Much has happened in my vegetable garden since I first wrote of my plans at the start of the season. Thanks to our fairly mild weather, the plants got off to a nice, early start.

One of the most exciting developments is my acquisition of some very special heirloom tomato and winter squash seeds. After reading Carol Deppe’s book “The Tao of Vegetable Gardening” (Chelsea Green Publishing, 270 pp., $24.95) and learning of her heirloom seed company, Fertile Valley Seeds, I decided to try some with noteworthy attributes for growing in my Inland Northwest garden.

The Amish Paste – Kapuler variety of tomato has been selected over many decades to produce much larger tomatoes than the standard Amish Paste variety commonly seen in seed catalogs. The tomatoes are meatier and the plants more vigorous and cold-tolerant.

The three heirloom winter squash varieties I’m growing are Candystick Dessert Delicata, known for its sweet, flavorful flesh; Sweet Meat – Oregon Homestead, which is vigorous with fruits weighing up to 25 pounds, has thick flesh and is more cold-tolerant than regular Sweet Meat squash; and Lofthouse Landrace Moschata, which is a butternut type. I’ve long had problems growing butternut squash in this region, so wanted to try this variety. It is touted for tolerating shorter growing seasons yet producing abundant, full-size squash. I’ll let you know how each of these performs in my garden.

My experiment to overwinter last year’s artichoke plants didn’t go quite according to plan. I covered them with floating row cover in early fall and later added a sheet of plastic as the temperatures dropped. The plants made it through the winter but I didn’t realize how toasty they were getting during our unseasonably warm early spring. The poor plants ended up getting fried under the plastic, which I should have been pulling back during the daytime hours. That was a frustrating but important lesson to learn.

Last fall, my husband, Bill, and I built a small hoop house, which is a plastic-covered greenhouse. It covers two raised beds and the pathway in between. I used it last winter to grow greens such as kale, arugula and corn salad during the colder months. Now we’re using it through the summer to grow tomatoes, melons and cucumbers. We removed its two doors to provide cross-ventilation once the weather became quite warm and to let pollinators go inside to work their magic.

I’ve been growing a new variety of snow peas called Golden Sweet. It originated in India and features purple flowers and lemon-yellow pods. The 6-foot-tall vines have been very productive, rewarding us with plenty of sweet pods for both stir-fries and munching on in the garden.

For the first time, I’m growing a portion of my Viking Purple potatoes in a grow bag called a Smart Pot. I initially filled the bag halfway with organic potting soil. As the plants developed, I kept adding more soil until the bag was full to the rim. I’m eager to learn how well the plants produce using this alternative growing method, compared to those growing in raised beds.

In addition to growing regular, bush-type zucchini, I’m also trying a climbing zucchini called Trombetta di Albenga that will produce slender, 15-inch-long, trombone-shaped fruits. Why? I don’t know, they just spoke to me from the Renee’s Garden seed catalog. Perhaps it was the mention of a “hint of nutty artichoke flavor” that appealed to me. I’ll definitely give you an update on this one later in the season.