Design

My squash investigations reminded me about several appealing seed houses -- first, I ordered more seeds from Gourmet Seeds International (lots of interesting varieties and I wanted to check on the 'Summer Sampler Mix'), then I bumbled past Bountiful Gardens (uh oh, more seeds), and then Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds had all these cool eggplant varieties that I remember seeing in markets in Thailand and Laos, and finally, I wanted to order some 'Fourth of July' tomato seeds (from Burpee ), after having bought some at a local farmer's market (and of course, needed to add some other things to make the order worthwhile). 'Fourth of July' tomato My gardening companion, who loves cherry tomatoes, really liked them. They're bigger than cherry tomatoes, but still small, and very tasty. The squash mystery has been focused by CEN's comment about the last post, who suggested they looked similar to 'Zephyr' - a hybrid offered by Johnny's Seeds . ...

I'm puzzling about the identity of one of the plants in my 'summer squash mix' labeled as C. moschata on the seed packet. Unfortunately, I gave the packet with 'left-over seeds' to a fellow gardener to put in our raised beds in the Children's Garden, so can't double check the label at the moment. In the Gourmet Seeds International catalog, they were identified as 'Zucchini Summer Sampler Mix' -- but none of the varieties mentioned match the bi-color spoon gourd-look of these squash. I also read that gourds are eaten in Meso-America traditionally when young, so maybe these are young gourds ( C. pepo varieties) rather than C. moschata ? In any case, the borers haven't got them yet, and they're quite tasty when small. The diversity of leaves and fruit types is striking, actually, but the season is still young. I ordered another packet of 'Zucchini Summer Mix' today to check it out. Rambling down the slope Tromboncino squash heading d...