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Seeds from Italy Trial Garden. It has been a bit of a crazy year weatherwise, but then what year is not. We had an extremely cool spring. I did not get tomatoes out until June 2, about 14 days later than normal, and even then it was cold and damp. Peppers did not go out until June 10th. Cucumber beetles were a real problem this year. Nevertheless, things did manage to grow. Report is below.

FAVA BEANS. The last snow did not melt until mid April, so I was not able to get fava beans in until 20 April. I planted superaguadule and supersimonia (sel maroc). Seeds were one inch deep, space five inches apart with rows 24 inches apart. I thought the crop failed; they took three weeks to germinate, but I had almost 100 percent germination. They grew pretty slow through may and early June, then really took off when it warmed up a bit. First flowers appeared about sixty days after sowing; the first favas were ready in 78 or so days. Harvest continued through July. I finally pulled them around the beginning of August; it got really hot and aphids showed up with a vengeance.

Both varieties took about the same time to mature (80 days). Had the spring been warmer and if I had a bit more sun on my garden space (spouse will not let me cut down some of the trees that shade the west) they probably would have been ready five or six days earlier. Both varieties had fairly long pods with five or six beans in each pod. If you pick them young, you can eat them with out removing the bitter outer skin. Taste was outstanding. They are really worth growing for a treat.

Some of them I pinched the tops when the first flowers appeared, others I left alone. If you pinch the tops, you actually increase the yield since you get a lot of side shoots. This is especially important if you have a long cool spring so that those side shoots have time to flower and set pods. I also basket wove mine with a string, since favas have a tendency to flop over when they get tall and set a lot of pods. Pictures are online.

TOMATOES. New varieties this year were maremmano, San Marzano nano (bush), goia della mensa and gigante liscio. I will report my results here; next time will include the results of the trial growers. Of course I grew a bunch of my favorites also (patano, red pear, san marzano redorta, costuluto fiorintino, oxheart, palla di fuoco and a bunch more). Tomato plants were started on 28 March in flats, went into six packs, then four inch pots and these went out to the unheated hoophouse about May 1. Usually I transplant from the four inch pots around 20 May, but it was so cold they stayed in the hoophouse until 2 June when they went outside. Some were transplanted into six inch pots and had got pretty big and had flowers when they were transplanted. It was so cold & damp I did have some fungus problems while they were in the hoophouse. Weather was difficult for tomatoes and almost guaranteed to produce disease problems. June was cool, then warmed up for the last two weeks. Tomatoes were doing incredibly well when we had a long spell of cold (as in 40's) with rain in midJuly. Most plants developed leaf spot diseases, though they continued to produce as the weather improved significantly. In general, plants all did well, though they did not look terrific.

Maremmano. This is a bush variety. It produces a huge quantity of 1-2" fruit. First fruit were ready in 60 or so days. It was the first tomato to produce, even before the cherry tomatoes. Most of the fruit ripen at the pretty much the same time. While taste for fresh eating is ok (since it was first to ripen it tasted great) it is really a cooking/processing tomato. Taste is excellent for a paste type tomato. It has soft flesh & the skin comes off fairly easily. It makes a great sauce. It is suitable for fresh sauce, for canning whole (perfect size) and especially for processing with the passata machine. If it has one fault, it seemed to me that it had a lot of seeds (but if you make passata, the seeds are removed anyway.

San Marzano Nano f1. Bush hybrid San Marzano type. Early (65 or so days from pretty good sized transplants. Amazing production of 4-6 ounce paste tomatoes. Fairly concentrated ripening. Fruit are definitely for sauce or conserving. They made an excellent tasting sauce. This probably made almost as many fruit as an indeterminate San Marzano, though the harvest season is more concentrated. 

Goia della Mensa. Translation of name is "Jewell of the Table" and it is a very handsome tomato. It produced a large quantity of deep red perfectly shaped fruit which weighed 10-12 ounces. Taste was very good. Fruit were ready in 70 or so days, so it is an early mid-season variety. Fairly good disease resistance (anything that survived this summer in New England has decent disease resistance.) Definitely a tomato for fresh eating.

Gigante Liscio (Large smooth). This was another perfectly shaped tomato. Indeterminate, ready in 70 or so days. Good producer of 10-12 ounce smooth red fruit. Very good taste & texture. For fresh eating. Plant was a small indeterminate and might lend itself to basket weaving type support for you market growers. I did them in two foot wide cages, but that was a bit of overkill. Pretlty good disease resistance. 

BASIL TRIALS. This year I set out Genovese Basil (the standard) as well as Napoleatano Bolloso and Sicilian Basil. Plants were started in six packs at the end of March, 6-7 seeds per cell thinned to three. They went out to the unheated hoophouse the end of April. They went into the garden the beginning of June spaced 12" apart. The Bolloso developed into 12" plants with huge (4 inch plus) leaves with very assertive flavor. Both the genovese and the sicilian basils grew sixteen plus inches tall and were very bushy. The genovese has the characteristic smooth leaf and excellent flavor. I was not sure what to expect of the sicilian basil (diserento strain). It is a small leaf type, about the same size leaf as the genovese. However, the leaf is a bit blistered, like the Napoleatano. Very assertive flavor. I tried several taste comparisons. Liked them all, though I thought the sicilian was the most assertive flavor. Any of them make a really good basil.  These are young plants and it is a bit difficult to tell them apart.  The sicilian is on the right, then genovese, then napoleatano.  The far left row is more genovese.  This is a close up of the Sicilian basil.  You can see that the leaves are a bit blistered whereas the genovese is completely smooth.  

ONION. I grew the cipollotto a mazi (bunching onion) for the first time and was impressed. Direct seeded in 4" deep trenches on May 7th. Seeds were spaced at one inch, rows at 8 inches. Good germination. Filled in the trenches as they grew which made it easy to control weeds and also gives the onions that longish white stem. They were ready toward the end of July. Very nice white tips with absolutely no bulb. Good tender green stems. Great flavor, excellent in salad. If you started them inside about 9-10 weeks before set out, they would be considerably earlier. Also, I would probably make my initial trenches deeper, perhaps six inches, so as to increase the size of the white tip.

SPIGARIELLO. This is a broccoli, though it is grown not for the head but for the leaves. In southern italy where this is very popular, the leaves are commonly made into a soup. However, it can also be eaten raw if you like. Better is to cook it like any green (boil it, drain, chop, cook in some olive oil flavored with a bit of garlic and red pepper). It is grown just like head broccoli. I started some transplants about six weeks before setting them out the beginning of May. Spacing was sixteen inches since these get pretty good sized. Initially, the plant looks just like a regular broccoli plant. The photo on the left is the immature plant. The photo on the right is the mature plant. As it matures, they grow smaller and longer leaves and little brocoletto type heads. The more you cut them, the more side shoots they will send up.

The photographs below have been previously reported on, but nevertheless are old favorites.

    Four Seasons Lettuce (quattro stagioni).  This is a lovely and tasty butterhead.  In the spring the color is a lighter red than in the fall when it turns almost completely red.  It has medium resistance to bolting.  This was grown from seed and just about made it to full size before they began to bolt.  In the spring, if you get very hot weather early, you would be better off setting out six or seven week transplants.  Note that this particular plant is growing in the middle of a a few rows of parsley and there is a beet (egitto) next to it.  The reason is that I had a bunch of red ants in the garden.  I sow lettuce on the surface and they redistributed my lettuce seed (and other seeds) all over the garden. 

Red salad bowl is also lighter in the spring than the fall.  It has a nice crunch and very good resistance to bolting. 

It is definitely a loose leaf lettuce worth growing.