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`Mojo' for your garden; New vegetables and flowers to start the season blooming.


Byline: Paul Rogers

After a challenging winter season, homeowners everywhere are looking forward to a fresh, new gardening season. Just think of it - lying ahead are months of planning, planting and enjoyment. Pure, unblemished, never-before-used months to cultivate vegetables and colorful flowers, and renew our spirit through contact with nature.

"New" in gardening refers to whatever product or process is new to the individual, not necessarily new to the world. For example, although many New Englanders have grown sweet potatoes, this is the first time that we will be planting the popular orange-fleshed Beauregard sweet potatoes from Johnny's Selected Seeds, www.Johnnyseeds.com.

Johnny's is offering 200 new products along with 300 organic products. Look for Amethyst amethyst (ăm`əthĭst) [Gr.,=non-drunkenness], variety of quartz, violet to purple in color, used as a gem. It is the most highly valued of the semiprecious quartzes.  Improved basil. The basil's rich, deep purple color is darker than Red Rubin with a more stable coloration than either Dark Opal or Osmin Purple.

What is a garden without cherry tomatoes? Last year Tomatoberry won our hearts with high yields of sweet, meaty one-inch fruits. This year we must find space for the red Sweet Mojo and the yellow Solid Gold - both full-flavored, split-resistant and sweet-tasting.

As tomatoes are the number one vegetable grown by home gardeners, it is not surprising to find one featured on the front cover of the Burpee
For the seed company, see W. Atlee Burpee.
For the museum of natural history, see Burpee Museum of Natural History.


The burpee is a calisthenic exercise performed to increase strength and explosiveness.
 catalog, www.burpee.com.

What is interesting is the tomato that is touted as the world's first Sweet Seedless Seed´less

a. 1. Without seed or seeds.

Adj. 1. seedless - lacking seeds; "seedless grapefruit"
seedy - full of seeds; "as seedy as a fig"

seedless adj
 tomato. Following the breeding magic that has given us seedless watermelons and almost seedless cucumbers, it was only a matter of time before a seedless tomato made its appearance, and who better to offer it than Burpee's, who has been providing us with seed since 1876.

Not by tomatoes alone do gardeners survive, thus we turn to the Thompson & Morgan catalog, www.tmseeds.com, for a look at a robust, bushy red Rudbeckia rudbeckia (rədbĕk`ēə): see black-eyed Susan.

rudbeckia

indicates fairness. [Flower Symbolism: Flora Symbolica, 177]

See : Justice
 named Cherry Brandy. Grow it in containers or plant it en masse in the border and enjoy the first-ever breed red coneflower coneflower, name for several American wildflowers of the family Asteraceae (aster family). The purple coneflowers (genus Echinacea), found E of the Rockies, have purple to pinkish petallike rays; some cultivated forms have white flowers. .

Never be surprised to find Thompson & Morgan leading a parade of new introductions. Enjoy old favorites in new dress - a double-flowered dark red nasturtium nasturtium (năstûr`shəm), any plant of the genus Tropaeolum, tropical American herbs (usually climbing) native to mountainous areas of South and Central America.  called Cobra, a double-flowered pink hollyhock hollyhock: see mallow.
hollyhock

Herbaceous plant (Althaea rosea) of the mallow family, native to China but widely cultivated for its handsome flowers. The several varieties include annual, biennial, and perennial forms.
, Fiesta Time, and several new sweet peas - Melody Rose in pink and white and Rosea in rose-pink.

There is a wholesale nursery that supplies our local plant places with a bewildering be·wil·der  
tr.v. be·wil·dered, be·wil·der·ing, be·wil·ders
1. To confuse or befuddle, especially with numerous conflicting situations, objects, or statements. See Synonyms at puzzle.

2.
 array of exciting woody plants. Hydrangeas have a new expanded lease on life with colors, flower forms and reblooming that started with Endless Summer and Blushing Bride. Now entire series are here. The Let's Dance series includes Moonlight with pinky mophead flowers. Starlight is a vivid pink lace-cap hydrangea hydrangea (hīdrān`jə): see saxifrage.
hydrangea

Any of approximately 23 species of erect or climbing woody shrubs that make up the genus Hydrangea (family Hydrangeaceae).
.

To greet spring, think forsythias such as Golden Peep, a ball of color, or New Hampshire Gold, a plant superior in habit and bloom.

There are supertunias, hedgetunias, littletunias and more new kinds of flowers, vegetables, organic fertilizers and helpful tools than you have time to plant, spread or use. But being gardeners with months of growing ahead, our excitement for the new will once again exceed our space and energy. Enjoy!

ART: PHOTOS

PHOTOG pho·tog  
n. Informal
A person who takes photographs, especially as a profession; a photographer.
: Photography by Tom Rettig

CUTLINE: (1) Amethyst Improved basil from Johnny's Selected Seeds; (2) below, Beauregard sweet potatoes, also from Johnny's.
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Publication:Telegram & Gazette (Worcester, MA)
Date:Mar 4, 2009
Words:530
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