What to choose
I knew someone who loved tomatoes as long as they were round, medium-sized (or large but not too large) and exactly red. Pinks need not apply. No thanks, Orange Jubilees, which are round, medium-sized (or large but not too large) and tasty.
There are more than 10,000 varieties of tomatoes in the world, and a box of crayons gets its inspiration from the variety of colors among them. Nature has panache and a sense of humor when it comes to colors and shapes of the vegetables we eat. Not every gardener wants a bunch of choices, but some of us less stuck in the mud try new varieties every year.
Uncle Wahoo says a choice is not an inconvenience. Things have similarities and differences, and maybe appearance is the only difference. I grew eight varieties of summer squash this summer, none of them zucchinis or crooknecks. Three continents were represented. My culinary staff experimented with various presentations but decided they all tasted like summer squash with no more than three to five degrees of flavor difference… the same mineral, vitamin, fiber package just dressed in local styles.
The point for a gardener is to pick a Desi squash, which originated in India, and visit for a moment a garden on the other side of the world with different flowers, sounds and weather cared for by a gardener with dirty hands and honest intent, just like you.
Cucumbers often express themselves as short, long, really long, pointy cyclinders, but some are spherical as a cue ball or egg-shaped as an egg, like the Dragon’s Egg variety from Croatia. One plump red-brown ovoid variety from Asia resembles a potato whose enamel is cracking with age. Armenian cucumbers are light green, ribbed, and best picked at around 15 inches, plus they are milder in taste than other cucumbers. Guess what a lemon cucumber looks like?
I grew three cucumber varieties of different origins on the same trellis alongside beans, and they coexisted through the season with no issues, a model for the United Nations and other international gatherings.
Regarding international gatherings, peppers are a trip around the world. Opinion is divided on how many varieties there are in the world, but one source speculated at least 3,500. “Which ones to grow, I just don’t know,” said the gardener scouring seed catalogs who has yet to grow them all. Typically, frosty, icy weather is bad news for pepper plants, but varieties in tropical environments can last for years and even get woody like a bush.
Peppers offer an endless palette of colors and tastes. There are long, skinny purple peppers that are sweet, and others identical in appearance that will burn your nose off, so pay attention. Brazilian starfish peppers are shaped like bright red flying saucers. The plants, which bear copious amounts of the small peppers, might grow three feet tall or more, and spread out, which makes for a curious corner of a garden. Park a couple of those beside Murasaki peppers, which start out deep purple (even the leaves are tinted purple) before maturing red, and you’ll have a postcard picture in your garden. The point, again, is a gardener has the burden of choice, and that’s a good thing.
What about orange bell peppers? And why are they called bells? Pippin’s Golden Honey peppers are like large bell peppers but not as fat, and they start out purple, take a trip through yellow before maturing orange. Stuff like that keeps gardeners entertained.
If melons were paintings, they would range from classical to psychedelic to pointillism to kindergarten art class – marvels to behold. That’s why gardening becomes a habit that’s hard to break. It’s the choices out there for what colors and shapes we can grow, plus we eat the results, save some seeds and do it again next time.