Between the lines of the seed catalogs

I picked a lot of melons last week, and ate a few of them too. Some were great, some were fine, and some were "meh" (hopefully I can by now guess which those are, and those didn't make it to you).  Of course, all the melons are the same variety—a cultivar new in catalogs in recent years, which has enough disease resistance to survive without fungicide sprays, unusual in a melon plant—yet any individual melon can taste quite different, and there's no way to be sure what's in there without cutting it open! 

Out of everything on the farm, though, only melons show this kind of unpredictable variation. Contrast that to a potato: all the potatoes of the same variety taste the same, so far as I can tell. Each tomato, or pepper, or lettuce of the same variety will taste pretty much the same, when grown in the same conditions and eaten at the same maturity. 

For that reason, I've always felt it of great importance which varieties to select from the catalogs: the choice of cultivars that will taste great, and grow well, and produce good yields has an incredible effect on the results. And, in placing my winter seed order, it's something I have complete control over—unlike other variables on the farm.

The farmers I learned from always noted that they simply selected varieties where the catalog description mentioned flavor or taste: so many varieties are bred for uniformity, easy shipping, or purely for yield, that catalogs find it worth mentioning when a variety is bred for taste as well. In a commercial seed catalog aimed at the commodity industry, a note about "exceptional flavor" is probably meaningful—if nothing else, it means not to buy the other ones which don't mention taste at all! A home garden seed company, on the other hand, well, they know their market: of course all those varieties taste good according to the catalog. It becomes a game to read the seed catalogs in the winter, gambling on which varieties might work well based on that company's audience, its writing style, and comparison to other options listed on the same page. Cross-referencing to other catalogs offers some reassurance, but it's always unknown how a new trial variety stacks up.

Many of the newer varieties, it seems to me, DO grow really well...if they have ideal conditions: the sort of conditions on a commercial farm that grows, for example, lettuce in the ideal lettuce-growing climate. Which is to say not Virginia, where we rarely have ideal lettuce conditions. Finding varieties that have a good peak potential AND are still worthwhile when that full potential is (inevitably) not reached has involved some years of trial. The older varieties, it seems, don't grow as uniformly under ideal conditions, so I can see why they've fallen out of favor and been discontinued from most catalogs; but then, when they don't receive their ideal conditions, they do still grow all right. And overall, that's what I need: unlike those Salinas Valley lettuce farms, there's no way lettuce here will have perfect conditions every week of the summer!

For other vegetables, the question of which seeds to order isn't so settled. On the recommendation of other farmers, this year I'm trying out pointy peppers in addition to the red bells, ready to find out if they justify their exorbitant seed cost of 40 or even 50 cents a seed. They are supposed to be productive, tasty, etc. and, crucially, in my experience, they're less susceptible to a characteristic fungal defect that strikes most red bell peppers grown without fungicides. (Catalogs don't describe this characteristic, of course, because most peppers aren't grown without sprays in a humid climate, so it's just not a characteristic that matters to most customers.) I'm not completely sold on these new peppers—they're a little smaller than I'd anticipated—but we'll see how it turns out. You'll see them over the coming weeks, and you can make up your own mind.

Tomatoes, though, are where the real varietal excitement is, because there are just so many different ones... and they all seem to be over-hyped  Some years ago I settled on a red tomato that is good enough, reliable, productive, on sufficiently short plants, and that's been the safe bet ever since...but I've never loved it. This year I finally gave in and took what seemed to be the best of the "other" options, new offerings from a couple different catalogs, to trial alongside that old standard variety and see if I could finally find a variety to beat it.  Mixed results so far, but promising in that these two trial varieties do taste noticeably better than the old standby. It's enough to make me feel like there is an option to be found with a combination of flavor, growth habit, days to maturity, and yield that can beat the current standard.

Iterations necessarily take a long time in a yearly enterprise like a vegetable farm, but some day I hope to have locked down the tomato and pepper variety schedule the way I have for squash, cucumbers, winter squash, and, as of this year lettuce. After all, we do all the same work to tend a plant no matter which seed it grew from, selected, grew, and cared for over the course of the season. When its fruit turns out to surpass all others in the standards that matter, that feels like an excellent use of effort! Surely that can be the case for all the crops, and some day I hope to have such a rewarding experience for all the plants that grow here. We'll get there the same way we do everything on the farm: relying on tried-and-true perfectly-good bets, while keeping a thoughtful eye out for what might be better.