atomic carrots & super freak pumpkins - the Lonesome Road Kitchen Garden 2012!

Atomic carrots and super freak pumpkins. Sounds like some kind of mutant science fiction vegetables. In reality, heirloom Atomic Red carrots and warty Super Freak pumpkins are part of the 2012 Lonesome Road Studio kitchen garden!

Part of the New Year's Day break was spent poring over pages and pages of all the new gardening catalogs arriving daily in the mail, with their tempting photos of gigantic heads of cabbage, heaping piles of green beans, and bushels and bushels of perfectly ripe tomatoes. Eighty dollars later, we've made some progress in planning the garden. Joining the Atomic Red carrots will be Tendersweet carrots, and the Super Freak pumpkins will be neighbors with Giant Magic Hybrid pumpkins. Fresh garden salads are a favorite on the Lonesome Road, and there will be Romaine lettuce and a lettuce blend, plus two varieties of spinach, and radicchio.
The pepper family is represented by three favorites: Cubanelle (wonderful in summer bread salad), San Martin Anchos, and Del Sol Serranos. Let's hope they grow this year; 2011 was not the best year for peppers around here.
Mr. Lonesome enjoys snow peas, and I like long slender filet-style green beans and yellow wax beans, so there will be a little of all of these in the kitchen garden again this year. I am always intrigued by the beauty of deep purple beans but that fascination fades just like their purple color after cooking. Instead, finger-length Hansel eggplants will provide the purple in this year's garden.
Don't tell anyone... but I'm not a big fan of corn even though I live in the heartland. Mr. Lonesome does though, so we will have a little patch of sweet corn this year, replacing the patch of Japanese hull-less popcorn we grew last year (and are enjoying in abundance!).
Two old favorites are making a return in the garden this year, cucumbers and white kohlrabi. This year's newcomers are Borettana Cipollini onions and Stonehead cabbage. I did not forget how awesome last year's Walla Walla onion harvest was and later this spring I will be returning to the garden center where I bought last year's sets - why mess with a good thing?
The neighbors' Clydesdales assisted with this year's garden, if you know what I mean.
Did I forget anything? Oh yes, tomatoes and herbs. The tomatoes of choice are usually paste varieties like Roma or San Marzano. We haven't decided whether to start them from seed or purchase plants later in the spring. As for herbs, we've ordered a couple varieties of oregano and I'm sure we'll have more than enough volunteer dill and maybe cilantro. Past efforts to grow perennial rosemary and tarragon were not particularly successful, but gardening is much like being a Chicago sports fan, there's always next year!
Check back to see our garden's progress, and tell me a little about your garden!