22 Seeds To Grow in 2022

Spring is almost upon us, which means it's time to start thinking about starting seeds. I don't know about you, but I have been buying seeds like crazy lately. I just placed an order so I figured I'd come out and talk about five to seven of the plants I'm really excited to grow this spring in 2022. Jacques, our resident garden hermit, he's going to talk about some of his favorites. And then for you colder climate growers, we have Chris, a new addition to the team who's also going to talk about some of the stuff she's growing up in Vancouver. My first selection for you of course is a tomato and it is my favorite tomato that I grew in the backyard last year. You may have seen it in our tomato trellis ideas video. It's called Beauty King. This one's from Brad Gates out of Wild Boar Farms. It's a cross between two classic varieties and it has absolutely one of the best flavors, one of the best sizes, one of the best productions and one of the lowest disease incidences that I've seen in all the 15 varieties that I grew last year. Huge bi-colored yellow and red striped tomatoes that really live up to their name. They are king sized and they are absolutely gorgeous. And on top of that they just taste delicious. A huge beefsteak slicer that will be perfect in your summer garden. The next crop I have for you is not this giant cabbage here known as San Juan Cabbage Strano Jr. This is my successor to the giant cabbage that I actually failed to grow last year. So we put the shade cloth up, we have all sorts of different tips and tricks that I'm going to get a huge cabbage this year. But instead I have for you a dwarving cabbage. This is Minuet Chinese cabbage. You kind of have to like that Asian green variety of cabbage, but they're about nine inches tall, somewhat compact, nice green exterior, darker green, a little bit more light and yellow and sweet inside. It's a mild flavor and it's downy mildew resistant. So it's a huge, huge favorite of mine this year because I simply just love Asian greens. It's not a summer epic garden unless you have some chilies or some peppers. I actually tried about 45 to 60 different varieties of peppers last year and I have some favorites that came out. Actually one of the favorites I'm about to share with you is one that I didn't have a crazy amount of success with, but I want to this year. It's a jalapeno. It's called Farmer's Market jalapeno, also known as the potato jalapeno because of the insane amount of what's called corking on the jalapeno skin. This is where you get those little cracks. Usually those run vertically. On this Farmer's Market jalapeno, it's almost like someone took it and wrapped it up and created all these little scar marks. Now you get a nice sweet heat with this. It's a big jalapeno and it is probably one of the better jalapenos you're ever going to taste. I've had the privilege of tasting them. I got mine from Refining Fire Chilies, my friend Jim Duffy. I'll put all the links to everywhere we're getting our seeds in the video description. Out here in the backyard I'm sitting right behind my spring wheat crop, which if you haven't seen it, we harvested some wheat last year and actually baked it into a homegrown, fully from scratch loaf of bread. But I am not talking about wheat for this tip. I'm talking about asparagus, a crop that Jacques, our garden hermit, has had some success with this year. He actually gave me one of his four spears to eat fresh, which as a gardener, that is a gift that you can't underweight because asparagus takes at least two years to get established, three, four, five to start regularly harvesting off of. So what I'm thinking about this year are any of those varieties that have the word Jersey in front, Jersey Giant, these types. I'm looking at those. I may play around with some other ones. All that to say, I will be buying crowns of asparagus, not seeds. I want a little bit faster uptake for a crop that takes that long. And I'll be building out a custom asparagus bed, which you'll see soon here on the channel. Well, I sit here in front of my carrot bed, which I will admit has served me quite well. I'm pulling out little snackers like this all of the time. And maybe we'll do a carrot guide soon. I'm going to tell you about a crop that I have never ever grown that is almost a sacrilege that I haven't grown it. But first of all, dirt and all, that is a delicious crunchy snacker. The crop that I have never grown is a sweet potato of really any kind. I've propagated sweet potato slips. I have never actually grown it all the way to completion. This year I'm focused on the Okinawan sweet potato, which if you take a cross section of, you get this beautiful purple interior. I really should be finishing this carrot right about now. Not talking with my mouth full, but I'm so excited about it. So we'll be doing a full guide on Okinawan sweet potatoes or sweet potatoes in general here on the channel. But now we need to toss it over to our new garden correspondent, Chris up in Vancouver, British Columbia for some of her picks for your colder climate gardeners. Hey, I'm Chris and I am up in Vancouver, BC, and my climate is classic Pacific Northwest with a lot of moisture and pretty mild to cool temperatures for most of the year. And at home, although I do like to grow the summertime staples like squashes, tomatoes, beans, and kales, I like to dedicate a large part of my garden for more experimental and fun purposes. So I like to try out different plants just to see how they grow and also how they taste. One of my favorite one-stop shops for seeds is Salt Spring Seeds. And this year I picked up two varieties of chickpeas to grow. So I know chickpeas don't sound overly exotic, but I'm actually more interested in how much a chickpea plant can actually produce. So hopefully we can find out soon. This first variety is chickpea of Spello and I believe it's an heirloom Italian variety, which is quite high yielding, very tasty. And the plants are more bushy in habit as opposed to sprawling. So it could be a good option for container growers. And this other variety is Winifred's Garbanzo, which is an earlier to mature plant. And the chickpeas are dark Brown, quite small and very nutty tasting. So it sounds really delicious. This next plant is probably the least exotic, at least for me up here in Canada, because Canada is one of the world's top producers of oats. Now this is going to be really interesting growing oats or a cereal crop for consumption, because I've only really grown crops like barley and rye as cover crops. So it's going to be really interesting to see how these turn out. So I have four varieties from Salt Spring Seeds, Baton, Vicar, Terra, and Streaker Hulless. One of my go-tos for rare and unusual plants is definitely Small Island Seedco, which is another Canadian grower. And what I really like about the selection is that there is a strong perennial plant focus. And many of these plants are also cold hardy. Now I'm not talking about the leafy plants that can withstand some cold. I'm talking about fruiting plants as well. And this year I'm really excited to grow Capsicum flexuosum, which is a cold hardy chili, which can withstand minus 15 Celsius or five Fahrenheit. So that's pretty darn cold. So hopefully the plants can get going. I really want to try the fruit because it's supposed to be really delicious, juicy, and tropical tasting. Another really cool plant from Small Island Seedco is the perennial nine-star cauliflower, sometimes called nine-star broccoli for some reason. So I like to think of this plant as kind of like a sprouting broccoli, but instead of the many shoots of like the broccoli, like florets, you're going to get these large heads of cauliflower. So it's a really cool looking plant. It gets quite large. So you do need the space, but definitely worth growing. And I actually started some last summer for our fall planting. And I was totally choked when I realized that a whole bunch of squirrels had just decimated the plot. So I'm definitely going to be starting more for this year being in a climate that sees frost towards November. I like to make sure that I choose plants that are either able to withstand a bit of cold temperature or have a shorter growing window. So this is especially important if you're growing squashes or melons. So I like to source my seeds from areas that actually get frost a little bit before I do. And this year I chose to buy my melon seeds from Greta's Family Gardens and they are out in Quebec, which does get colder before I do here on the West coast. So three types of melons and these are supposed to be well-adapted to cooler temperatures and also a shorter growing season. Got Montreal melon, which is a green fleshed musk melon, sweet Siberian, which is a creamy apricot fleshed watermelon and also farthest north, which is a smaller fruiting melon. That is supposed to ripen in as little as 65 days. And those are just a few of the plants that I'm really excited to start from seed this year, mostly because I've never grown those specific varieties before, and I'm really excited to see how they actually turn out and how they look in the garden and how they behave. And of course, how they taste. Now that Kevin's talked about what he's excited to grow this year, I want to show you what I'm excited to grow. And I think I've put together a very interesting mix of flavorful, unique items that maybe a lot of you guys haven't seen before. Let's just get straight into it and talk about this guy and actually have an example of it growing in the garden right over there. Diatola costa fine, which is an Italian variety, and it's actually significantly sweeter than any other chard that I've ever had. It still has some of that salty flavor, but it's got like no bitterness. It's delicious sauteed. It's even good raw. Where I got this from is actually a really cool seed company called Adaptive Seeds. They have all these really neat interesting seeds that they've been developing, protecting, and sort of cultivating of all sorts of heirloom varieties from across the world. If you guys haven't ever run into them before, I highly recommend you check them out. They've got a big list of unique heirloom seeds. As I was looking around the garden, trying to decide what I would be excited to grow this year, I realized that the snapdragon is one of the only flowers I have growing right now. So I needed to step up my flower selection. And that's why this is on the list. This is a cactus mix zinnia from San Diego seed company. We love San Diego seed company. They have such a great selection of sort of regionally adapted seeds, both flower and vegetables. But the reason why I chose this one is that a, I like zinnias. They do really well here. And B, I love this kind of ruffled petal look and also that orange red color. I'm a total sucker for when it comes to flowers. So this is my flower that I'm most excited to grow this year. So here I am in my winter cabbage patch of 2022 and what will almost certainly be the future side of tomato jungle 2022. And in my hands, I hold $30 worth of seeds. I did not misspeak. These two seed packets are $15 each. The reason why I decided to grow these two $15 seed packs is that they're hybrids that have what have been described as a superlative taste and appearance comparable or exceeding heirloom quality tomatoes. So one of these is a copy of a French heirloom. And the other one is the copy of a Cherokee purple. The names are Marbon and Marnero. And the reason why I wanted to try these is that they have increased yield, way more disease resistance. So the idea is that if I have to pay a dollar a seed, but in exchange, I get the equivalent tomatoes from five plants. To me, that's totally worth it because in the end, I'm still going to be net positive on my dollars per pound on tomatoes, if you will. And also beyond that, it saves me a ton of space. If I could get away with one plant that will produce the same as two, three, maybe more, then that's a huge win when you're dealing with a small space. So these two tomatoes, I'm extremely excited to grow and we'll also be sure to keep you guys updated on whether $15 seed packets are worth it. The next seed on my list is a Brassica family member, and this is called Spigarello. I can't promise you I pronounce that right. I'm not Italian. I don't speak it, but it hails from Italy just like that green chard. And what it is, it's actually a relative to the broccoli or it is actually in the broccoli family. And instead of producing these nice florets that we love to eat, it actually produces a ton of the foliage. And instead of being these bigger fan leaves like broccoli is like for instance, this one here, it'll be a bunch of tiny spiraled leaves. I had this in a dish at a restaurant. And as soon as I took a bite of it, I was like, I need to know how I get this. Good luck finding it in the grocery store. You're probably not going to. So I hunted down some seeds and this is actually a new company to me. It's called Siskiyou seed company. I believe they're up in the Pacific Northwest. And so I'll try them out, see what it's like, but I'm very excited to grow this because man, I got to tell you, the sauteed greens, absolutely delicious in a pasta dish. You may be asking yourself, why am I sitting in front of a chicken coop? I'm talking about seeds. Well, that's because with this one, I think there's a 50 50 chance that either I'm going to eat everything or these chickens are going to get to clean up after me. And that's because it's a special type of tomatillo called the queen of Malinoco. We'll be sure to put some pictures up, but basically it grows more similar to a Roma tomato. So it's elongated. It still has that husk just like any tomatillo would, but it has a sweeter flavor. So that's the part where I'm not really sure if I'm going to like it. I've seen it described in really delicious ways. It could be used fresh and sauces. It could be cooked into sauces. So I'm very excited to try it out. And this actually comes from Richard over at small island seed company. He's been on the Epic gardening podcast before really interesting story. A lot of interesting seeds. I highly recommend you guys check it out. If you know me, you know that I like to grow for flavor first. And this year I'm actually replacing all of my summer squash with one variety. And that is the center cut squash from row seven seed company, row seven seed company. If you haven't heard of them, they don't have that many things to offer because they only offer things that chefs and restaurants would want. They're growing entirely for the flavor and cooking aspect of vegetable use. So the center cut squash, just to describe it quickly, it's a Trombocino type. So it's one of those that usually get really long, but you actually harvest it when it's only about this big. And if you're comparing a zucchini or standard summer squash to the center cut squash, there's just no comparison. This thing is nutty. It's creamy. The texture is amazing. It's basically entirely changed the game for zucchini and summer squash for us. I'm not planning any other zucchini. I might do one Lebanese cause those are delicious too. But if you don't like zucchini or if you're a big zucchini fan, I highly, highly, highly recommend that you try the center net squash from row seven seeds. As promised, I have a bonus selection here. These are actually seeds from Bulgaria. You could see, you probably can't really read the seed packet. I am actually Bulgarian myself. And what I have here is some eggplants, watermelons, and very, very important tomatoes and peppers, Bulgarian tomatoes and peppers, hands down by far best I've ever had in my life. So I'm very excited to try to grow some of these this year. I can't fit everything in the garden, but I'm definitely going to be trying a couple from each. And I'm very excited to see the results. So let's go back to Kevin and thanks for checking out my seeds. Three growers, three different sets of plants to get you excited about growing this season, really no matter what climate you're in. Let me know what you thought about some of Chris's suggestions and what kind of topics you want to see from Chris coming up. Because she has a background in horticulture that Jacques and I actually don't possess. We're both self-taught growers. And we want to do a little series with her called Digging Deeper, where she goes really deep into some of these horticultural topics that provide some extra context for some of our run and gun garden antics here on the channel. So I'm super excited to have her. Hope you guys are too. Until next time, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.