Burgundy coloured lettuce with frilled leaves. Excellent for gourmet salad mixes.

55 Days to harvest!

Italian looseleaf loved for its deep red, tightly curled leaves surrounding a bright green heart.

An ideal baby leaf variety providing mild flavor and excellent loft, heft and color to salad mixes. Open heads are compact, slower growing and slower to bolt than other lettuces. Displayed field resistance to mildew in our trials.

Ideal baby leaf variety

Slow to bolt

This wonderful Italian heirloom summer squash is a vigorous climbing vine, producing many 12 to 15-inch, lime-green fruits with a curvaceous trumpet shape and a delicate mild taste with a hint of nutty artichoke flavor. Trombetta's flesh is seedless and firm and doesn't get watery or mushy like regular zucchini. The rambling plants will soon cover a trellis, fence or stakes with fruits

Soil

Fertile garden soil with excellent drainage.

Position

Full sun.

Frost tolerant

Good. Where winters are mild, well-rooted plants survive one winter and bloom heavily the following spring.

Feeding

Encourage fast growth by mixing a balanced organic fertilizer into the soil before planting.

Companions

Cosmos, Salvia and Celery. Upright and uniform, snapdragons make great accent plants when grown in groups. Try a snapdragon as the upright element in a mixed container.

Spacing

Single Plants: 11" (30cm) each way (minimum)

Rows: 11" (30cm) with 11" (30cm) row gap (minimum)

Sow and Plant

When starting snapdragon seeds indoors in late winter, barely cover the seeds with moist seed starting mix. Grow the seedlings under bright lights until they are large enough to transplant outdoors. Most gardeners save time by buying snapdragons as bedding plants.

Our Garden Planner can produce a personalized calendar of when to sow, plant and harvest for your area.

Notes

Some varieties can grow tall enough to need staking. Colors include red, orange, yellow, violet, white, pink and many bicolors.

Harvesting

Snapdragons make wonderful cut flowers. Gather stems when two-thirds of the flowers on the spike have opened. As flowers fade outdoors, snip them off with scissors to encourage reblooming.

Troubleshooting

Especially in warm, wet weather, tired snapdragons may collapse from various root rot diseases.

Soil

Well-drained soil of average fertility.

Position

Full sun.

Frost tolerant

None. Morning glory is a warm-season annual.

Feeding

Mix a light application of a balanced organic fertilizer into the soil prior to planting. In midsummer, drench plants with a liquid fertilizer to prolong bloom time.

Companions

Melon. Vigorous morning glory vines will twine up any type of support and grow into lush, heavy-blooming plants. They are at their best on a sturdy fence.

Spacing

Single Plants: 7" (20cm) each way (minimum)

Rows: 7" (20cm) with 7" (20cm) row gap (minimum)

Sow and Plant

Sow morning glory seeds indoors to get a head start, or you can plant the seeds where you want the plants to grow at about the time of your last spring frost.

Our Garden Planning Tool can produce a personalized calendar of when to sow, plant and harvest for your area.

Notes

Morning glory vines are fast climbers that will run up fences, poles, or taller plants such as sunflowers. Morning glory flowers close up during the afternoon hours.

Harvesting

Gather up the old vines after they are damaged by frost and compost them. Morning glories are related to tomatoes, sweet potatoes and other members of the nightshade family.

Troubleshooting

Many older strains of morning glory quickly become invasive weeds in warm summer climates. ‘Heavenly Blue’ and ‘Flying Saucers’ are safe choices because they set few seeds compared to many other varieties.

Soil

Well-drained soil of average fertility.

Position

Full sun.

Frost tolerant

Limited. The varieties sold as bedding plants can tolerate light frosts, but are meant to be grown as summer annuals.

Feeding

Mix a light application of a balanced organic fertilizer into the soil prior to planting. In summer, drench plants every two weeks with a liquid fertilizer.

Companions

Ageratum and Petunia. African daisies look best when planted in groups or masses, perhaps framed with dusty miller, ageratum or annual verbena. Osteospermum make great flowers for containers.

Spacing

Single Plants: 11" (30cm) each way (minimum)

Rows: 11" (30cm) with 11" (30cm) row gap (minimum)

Sow and Plant

Only a few varieties of osteospermum are grown from seed. The heavy flowering varieties are propagated from rooted stem cuttings and sold as potted plants in spring. Set plants out at about the time of your last spring frost.

Notes

Osteospermum colors include pink, white, and shades of yellow. The plants will bloom for eight weeks or more if old flowers are removed.

Harvesting

When cut as soon as they open, osteospermum make good cut flowers.

Troubleshooting

As plants age, they sometimes develop problems with powdery mildew. Aphids may occasionally feed on new growing tips and buds. Pinch off large colonies.

Endive Frisée is a type of chicory that has exploded onto gourmet plates. The exotic plant resembles a lettuce that has gone horribly awry. With a pale green explosion of frizzy leaves it adds a frisky note to green salads.

Frisée or chicorée frisée is French for curly chicory. It also is sometimes called Italian curly chicory or French curly chicory. Now, frisée is not exactly the same vegetable that comes to market as chicory, curly chicory, and curly endive, although it is exactly the same plant, Cichorium endivia.

Grown in, and named after a municipality in northern Italy near Turin. Suitable for both summer and autumn cultivation, it has curly and strongly lobed leaves and a creamy-white self-blanching heart.

With a very large head, long mid-green leaves and a self-bleaching, creamy-white interior, the fullness of the head facilitates tying up for more intense blanching.

Popularised in the 1990s, Frisée often appears in mesclun and other salad mixes, because the green is extremely laborious and expensive to produce as a sole salad ingredient. It is generally served in loose chunks in salad to highlight its exotic feathered appearance and a small amount can go a long way.

While it can have a slightly bitter flavour, frisée is much milder than other varieties of endive such as radicchio or Belgian endive. Tie up for a week before harvesting to blanch.