Miniature White Cucumbers<\/b><\/h2>\n
A brief description of these will suffice because their name says it all: They\u2019re small (3 inches) and white. But moving beyond their physical description, Miniature White cucumbers<\/a> are nicely prolific with good flavor, plus they produce quickly, putting cucumbers on the table in 50 to 55 days.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n And while they are admittedly smaller than your typical slicing-type cucumber<\/a><\/strong>, thanks to the volume that Miniature White produces, your harvests will be impressive. Miniature White cucumbers have a crisp texture that\u2019s delicious in salads or sliced for snacking. <\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s an added bonus: Miniature White thrives happily even if you’re vegetable gardening in containers, which is a nice option if you\u2019re limited on garden space or want to be able to bring the plants indoors on cold autumn nights.<\/span><\/p>\n Read more: Succession planting keeps the garden full of delicious, homegrown produce!<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I used to try growing beautiful large tomato varieties<\/a><\/strong> such as German Pink, but even though my garden did its best, the growing season here is just a little too short to reliably produce large tomatoes in abundance.<\/p>\n I can grow the early-season varieties and cherry tomatoes all day long. But I sometimes just want the fun of growing a big tomato.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Last year, I tried Emmylou<\/a> and was pleased with my vegetable gardening results. Emmylou produces gorgeous red tomatoes that are surprisingly large for <\/span>the speed with which they mature (75 days from <\/span>transplant). I liked that they were resistant to cracking, and they also exhibited disease resistance, which is another plus for this extra-special tomato.<\/span><\/p>\n Just because we live in colder climates doesn\u2019t mean that we don\u2019t want to grow pumpkins. Now of course we can plant miniature pumpkins, like the charming Casperita, which is adorable and matures in about 75 days. But sometimes you just feel like growing a jack-o-lantern-sized pumpkin, right?<\/p>\n But large pumpkins are slow to mature, and that\u2019s why you need Neon<\/a>. It\u2019s a very pretty, 8-pound pumpkin that has a reputation of being perfectly ideal for carving up at Halloween. With its brilliant orange color, useful size, great productivity and lightning-fast maturity (ready in approximately 80 days), Neon has more than earned its place in my garden.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Bonus features: It\u2019s prolific and stores well. What are you waiting for? Your search for the perfect pumpkin starts and stops with Neon.<\/p>\n (P.S. In your quest for larger pumpkins, don\u2019t overlook the fun of the miniature pumpkins, like the aforementioned Casperita. They\u2019re a lot of fun to grow, and they make delightful decorations, too.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t have the greatest track record with vegetable gardening and growing carrots. I can recite all the reasons it\u2019s difficult to grow them: They\u2019re slow to germinate, the soil has to be just so, you have to thin at the proper time, and if you don\u2019t follow the magic steps correctly, the carrot fairies revolt.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For a while, I tried growing carrot varieties such as Thumbelina, thinking that\u2014like cherry tomatoes\u2014the smaller types would be better suited to the north, maturing more quickly. But the joke was on me!<\/p>\n The diminutive Thumbelina, while lovely, still requires up to 70 days to mature. And I wanted to grow full-sized carrots. Enter Yaya<\/a>!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Yaya is a gorgeous, 5- to 6-inch, Nantes-type carrot that\u2019s everything you could want in a carrot. Early maturing? You got it (60 days). Deliciously sweet? It\u2019s among the best. Easy to grow? I\u2019ve never grown carrots that did as well as Yaya.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Just think: You could be harvesting beautiful, super-sweet carrots in just 60 days!<\/p>\n Read more: Want to grow and enjoy tasty carrots? Read more about this gardening staple.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Vegetable gardening with snap beans in colder climates is no problem. Plenty of early-maturing varieties are productive, tasty and colorful. But I like growing dry bean varieties, and that can be tricky. <\/span><\/p>\n Take Mayflower, that gorgeous dry bean variety that has a legendary connection to the ship. It\u2019s beautiful, and I\u2019d love to grow it, but it\u2019s a 100-day variety. The good news is that there are other dry beans that require fewer days to grow, such as Orca.<\/span><\/p>\n Now Orca has several aliases, including Yin Yang<\/a> and Calypso. But all refer to a stunning black-and-white bean that\u2019s as eye-catching as it is delicious. Another bonus: Unlike most dry bean varieties, which are pole habit, Orca beans are bush habit, which eliminate the need for trellising.<\/p>\n A dry bean that\u2019s user-friendly and matures in just 75 days sounds like a winner to me.<\/p>\n I probably don\u2019t need to tell you much more than that Sweetness<\/a> is the most accurately named vegetable ever. An impartial panel of seven family members unanimously agreed it was the best corn they\u2019d ever tasted! (And they\u2019ve tried some not-so-great corn over the years.)\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s difficult to know where to start when describing just how excellent Sweetness is. It matures really quickly, in less than 70 days, produces a nice quantity of ears, and is quite beautiful with its bicolor kernels.<\/p>\n But the flavor! It\u2019s beyond delicious. The plants reach approximately 6 feet tall and produce 8-inch ears of corn.<\/p>\n I know there\u2019s nothing extraordinary about growing peas when working with short-season vegetable gardening. It\u2019s easy to grow peas, right? They don\u2019t mind cold weather, and they don\u2019t take long to mature.<\/span><\/p>\n But Little Snow Pea White<\/a> takes everything you knew about growing peas and says, \u201cHey, I can do it even faster.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Little Snow Pea White grows at a lightning fast rate, with peas ready to harvest in as little as 30 days. In my zone 4a garden, it took closer to 40 days, but we had a cold spring, which may have been a factor.<\/p>\n Once it started producing, Little Snow Pea White kept at it for weeks, filling our harvest baskets with abundant quantities of tasty snow peas. They\u2019re quite elegantly pretty, too. So if you\u2019re looking for a great way to kick off your gardening season and an addition to those early garden harvests of radishes and arugula, give these peas a chance.<\/p>\n Following on the heels of Sweetness corn: How about Candy onion<\/a>s? An ideal choice for short-season gardeners, Candy hybrid onions are an amazingly large, simply delicious, day-neutral variety. They\u2019re always reliable, beautiful and ready in approximately 90 days from transplant. <\/span><\/p>\n (Yes, this is on the longer end of the range, but you can set out onion plants earlier than tomato seedlings. So there\u2019s never an issue with onions having time to reach maturity.)<\/span><\/p>\n To add to the fun, Candy onions come in red and white, both equally beautiful and absolutely yummy. Candy onions aren\u2019t a superior storage variety, but they\u2019re so tasty that you\u2019ll probably eat them all before long-term storage is an issue.<\/span><\/p>\n These may not be the largest or the most productive potatoes in the whole world, but I can say this: These potatoes are simply the most fun to grow. I mean, they\u2019re blue potatoes! What\u2019s not to like?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n All Blue<\/a> is an heirloom variety that has somehow been eclipsed by the more popular potatoes such as Yukon Gold, but if you\u2019re willing to think outside the box, you won\u2019t be disappointed by these gorgeous potatoes.<\/p>\n They appear brilliant with an unexpected shade of blue-purple inside and out, and they hold their color when baked. They\u2019re truly a delight when short-season vegetable gardening, in the kitchen and in your tummy.<\/p>\n For me, growing peppers can be like growing carrots: occasionally unpredictable. Here in the north, the sun just isn\u2019t sunny enough sometimes to satisfy the requirements of sweet peppers, and I\u2019ve tried a lot of varieties over the years in a quest to find peppers that produce reliably and in a short time.<\/p>\n
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\nEmmylou Tomatoes<\/b><\/h2>\n
Neon Pumpkins<\/b><\/h2>\n
Yaya Carrots<\/b><\/h2>\n
![\"Some](\"https:\/\/img.hobbyfarms.com\/carrot.jpg\")
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\nOrca Beans<\/b><\/h2>\n
Sweetness Corn<\/b><\/h2>\n
Little Snow Pea White<\/b><\/h2>\n
![\"short-season](\"https:\/\/img.hobbyfarms.com\/peas.jpg\")
Candy Onions<\/b><\/h2>\n
All Blue Potatoes\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/h2>\n
![\"short-season](\"https:\/\/img.hobbyfarms.com\/pot.jpg\")
Lunchbox Peppers<\/b><\/h2>\n