Fruit Vegetables

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  • in Fruit Vegetables, Tomatoes

    Heirloom and Hybrid Tomatoes

    Tomato Brandywine heirloom1

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    Do heirloom tomatoes (or other heirloom vegetables, for that matter) have benefits or advantages when compared to hybrid tomatoes? The answer is not simple. Natural selection of tomatoes Most of the crops we eat today, including tomatoes, have evolved from less desirable wild plants. Over generations and generations, humans have selectively created many plant varieties […] More

  • in Fruit Vegetables, Tomatoes

    Growing Early-Season Tomatoes for Great Taste

    Sungold tomatoes

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    Early-season tomatoes ripen fruit 55 to 70 days after being transplanted to the garden as 6-week-old plants. Because great tomato flavor comes with just the right combination of sugars and acids that are the product of sunlight and photosynthesis, early-season tomatoes are often dismissed as less tasty than mid- and late-season tomatoes (which require 80 […] More

  • in Fruit Vegetables, How to Grow, Plant

    How to Plant and Grow Eggplant

    Eggplant young fruit flowered attached

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    Eggplant is a very tender warm season perennial grown as an annual. Grow eggplant in the warmest, frost-free time of the year. The edible fruit can be long and slender or round or egg-shaped fruit. The fruit is creamy-white, yellow, brown, purple, or sometimes almost black. Eggplant is a small- to medium-sized bush vegetable that […] More

  • in Fruit Vegetables, How to Grow, Plant

    How to Plant and Grow Hot Peppers

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    Hot peppers are distinguished from sweet peppers simply by their pungency or hotness of flavor. There are thousands of hot pepper varieties in the world. (This is the case because peppers easily cross-pollinate to produce new kinds.) The hotness of a pepper is determined by a number of blister-like sacs of capsaicinoids on the interior […] More

  • in Fruit Vegetables, How to Grow, Plant

    10 Steps to Grow a Bumper Pepper Crop

    Peppers transplanted

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    To get a bumper crop from your pepper plants, you must dedicate yourself to helping the plants thrive. Pepper plants are more temperamental than tomatoes—they demand warm temperatures, even soil moisture, feeding, and support—literally. Here are 10 steps that will all but guarantee sweet and hot pepper growing success. (But don’t turn your back on […] More

  • in Fruit Vegetables, Prepare

    Five Ways to Cook and Serve Chili Peppers

    Pepper stuffed

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    Chilies or hot peppers can be eaten raw or they can be roasted, grilled, pan-seared, toasted, or stuffed. Chilies can also be added to other cooked dishes; they contain natural chemicals that enhance the flavor of other foods during cooking. Often small, hot chilies—such as the jalapeño, Serrano, poblano, Anaheim, and banana–are used fresh. But […] More

  • in Diseases, Fruit Vegetables, Pests, Problems

    Mid-Season Pepper Problem Cures

    Peppers growing1

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    Peppers are tropical plants and can be temperamental–especially the further they grow away from the tropics. They demand warm temperatures—not too cool and not too hot, organically rich soil, and even soil moisture—not too little and not too much. Give peppers these optimal conditions and they will produce until the first frost in autumn. Common […] More

  • in Fruit Vegetables, How to Grow, Plant

    Growing Cucumbers: Planting, Care, and Harvesting Tips

    Cucumber on vine 1

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    Cucumbers–natives of India–love warm weather. Wait until soil and air temperatures average 70°F each day before sowing or transplanting cumbers to the garden. While warm temperatures are required for growing, cucumbers require a relatively short season–55 to 60 days from sowing to harvest. In long-season regions, you can plant successive crops. In cool or short-season […] More