Sometimes Things Don’t Go The Way You Thought They Would — The 2016 Plant List

by A.J. Coltrane

On May 7 we showed up early for the May Tilth Edible Plant Sale. Unfortunately they actually held the sale on April 30(!)

Every year the sale had been on the first Saturday in May. Not this year.

Improvisation time. We had twelve EarthBoxes to fill, and time to go to two nurseries–

The Tomatoes:

Not bad. We had hoped for a small, short-season melon called “Minnesota Midget”. Neither of the nurseries we hit had a melon like that, so we chose to cut bait and grow an “extra” box of tomatoes instead. It all breaks out to two Cherry Tomatoes (Sun Gold and Yellow Pear), three “Purple” Tomatoes (Paul Robeson, Black Krim, and Cherokee Purple), two “early” tomatoes (Oregon Spring and yellow Taxis), one Sauce tomato (Roma), the striped Tigerella, and a pink/red Valencia.

Ten tomatoes = five boxes. That left seven boxes to go.

The Peppers:

Well, sorta. I was happy that we got Serrano, and the King of the North was replaced with other assorted bell peppers… I’m fine with the way the peppers shook out. Three boxes of peppers makes for a total of eight boxes filled.

The Cucumbers:

Which Marketmore did we get specifically? Who knows. Hopefully “in the ballpark” is close enough. I feel ok with it, and we’re down to three boxes to go.

The Tomatillos:

This year Tilth didn’t offer either of the types that we’ve grown in the past — “Mexican Strain” or “De Mipa”. We selected “Verde” as the replacement. It turned out that the first nursery that we hit had “Verde”, so…

Ding! We’re down to two boxes to go.

One box with basil plants will be a gimme. We’ll buy starts in the next 10-14 days. We’re going to try basil from seed this year too. We’re covered regardless. One box to go, and it’s intended to have Tromboncino Zucchini…..

And today a nice woman at the nursery helped me find one of the two Tromboncino plants for the last box. It was labeled with the alternate “Rampincante” name. With any luck they’ll have the last plant back in stock on Tuesday.