Summer is the season of tomatoes! If you like cherry varieties, ‘Cherry Falls’ is the type for you. It’s quick-growing and fast to fruit, sprouting delicious, bite-sized fruit two months after planting. Give it the care it needs, and it’ll reward you with baskets full of cherry tomatoes. I used to think determinate tomato varieties were less ideal than indeterminate ones. Boy, was I wrong! Determinate tomatoes, though they develop all at once, are great for gardeners with short growing seasons. They also work well for home cooks who like to can or preserve their tomatoes. Unlike indeterminate pole tomatoes, bushy determinate ones flower and fruit all at once instead of throughout the growing season. There are hybrid varieties that produce fruit earlier than most other types. ‘Cherry Falls’ is one such variety. It grows a wealth of cherry-sized tomatoes before pole types sprout flowers! Whether you’re growing this kind for the first time or brushing up on how to care for it best, this guide has all the information you need to keep your crop happy, healthy, and productive. What Is It? ‘Cherry Falls’ is a hybrid tomato variety that grows clusters of grape-sized fruit. Though it’s determinate, you can prolong its growing season by harvesting consistently. Routine picking can encourage new growth that sprouts fruit after the first harvest. Native Area All of our current tomatoes originated from wild ancestors in South America. The ancient Inca Empire had farmers, gardeners, and growers who cultivated new varieties from wild specimens near Peru. These new types spread throughout the world through trade, after which breeders in other countries bred new tomato types. This is why, nowadays, different countries have their favorite tomatoes. Quick-growing, determinate varieties are popular in cold areas like Canada and Russia, while indeterminate types are widespread in gardens with warm, frost-free climates. Characteristics ‘Cherry Falls’ grows short vines that max out around 18 inches long. Off the vines sprout multiple new shoots with flower clusters and, eventually, fruit! The short vines may grow longer than 18 inches if they hang down from raised beds, planters, or hanging baskets. The tomatoes themselves have a sweet, semi-tart flavor that sweetens the longer they sit on the vine. They’ll give when you squeeze them, indicating they’re ripe and ready to eat. The small, round fruits are perfect for fresh eating, salads, and sauces. The foliage isn’t as dense and bushy as other types. It’s incredibly ornamental! You’ll appreciate the spear-shaped leaves and compact stems. This variety’s size is perfect for container growing. Planting Whether you purchase seedlings at the store or grow them from seeds, they’re easy to care for and transplant into the garden. They appreciate warm temperatures, consistent moisture, and bright light. How to Grow ‘Cherry Falls’ thrives in a wide range of gardens. Give it the care it needs, and it’ll provide you with bushels of fruit throughout the summer. Plant many in a large pot, or give each one its own home and space. No matter how big or small your yard is, this tomato will easily tuck into every empty nook and cranny. Maintenance Tomatoes are high-maintenance because they typically need caging, fertilizing, and plenty of water. ‘Cherry Falls’ is significantly easier to care for than most other types. You may give it support if you’d like it to grow upright, or let it drape over the edges of containers and baskets.

Eggplant is a very common vegetable that's part of the nightshade family. These easy to grow veggies are quite popular in many gardens around the world. In this article, organic gardening expert Logan Hailey takes you through each step you'll need to follow to successfully plant, grow, and care for eggplant in your garden. Whether cooking up a cheesy eggplant parmesan, roasted baba ganoush dip, or a simple grilled side, eggplant is a summer staple. These glossy purple vegetables are widely used in Italian, French, Indian, Mediterranean, Chinese, and Japanese dishes. In fact, they come in a vast range of colors and shapes that we don’t often see in the supermarket. Eggplant (or “aubergine” in Europe) is simple to grow and a joy to eat. This warm-weather garden crop bears heavily and withstands even the hottest summers. In the kitchen, eggplant has a mild flavor that can readily adapt to the oil and seasoning of any dish. The spongy, creamy texture is reminiscent of squash. Requiring just over two months to mature, eggplant is a fast-growing and rewarding nightshade vegetable. It’s the perfect veggie to add to your summer abundance of zucchini, tomatoes, and bell peppers. If you’ve been wanting to try your hand at growing one of the dozens of unique purple, white, pink, striped, or green varieties, spring is the best time to get started. Let’s take a closer look at everything you’ll need to get started growing eggplant in your own garden. History and Cultivation Most of us think of eggplant as a shiny purple rounded fruit sliced up in lasagna or eggplant parmesan. But long before eggplant made its way to Italy, this nightshade-family crop grew wild across Africa for millions of years. It is suspected that it was first domesticated in Asia and later spread across the globe as an economically important food plant. What is Eggplant? Eggplant is a warm-weather vegetable known by the Latin name Solanum melongena. The edible portion of is technically a fruit. S. melongena is a tender perennial in its native Africa and Southeast Asia. However, it is most commonly grown as an annual in temperate gardens. As a member of the Solanaceae, or Nightshade family, they are closely related to potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, and tobacco. Also known as aubergine or Guinea squash, eggplant is an upright bushy plant that often has spines along its stem. The leaves are large and somewhat fuzzy, often with a purplish hue. Eggplant flowers are vibrant purple and hang like pendants downward. From the flowers grow egg-or-banana-shaped fruits with glossy skins that can be purple, fuschia, white, yellowish, or striped, depending on the variety. The European varieties tend to be the plump, egg-shaped types whereas Asian and Middle Eastern varieties are elongated and banana-shaped. Eggplant is used in a vast variety of global cuisines. It’s most well known for the signature eggplant parmesan of Italy, the Middle Eastern relish dip called baba ganoush, Greek moussaka, and the spicy Indian eggplant curry called baingan bharta. Where Does Eggplant Originate? Recent genetic sequencing of eggplant (or aubergine as Europeans call it) has revealed that sometime in the last couple million years, it split into two distinct lineages. One of the wild African type. The other into the ancestor of what we now know as domesticated Asian and European eggplants. Believe it or not, the spread of eggplants out of Africa and into Asia was likely facilitated by African elephants and impala feeding on the Solanaceous fruits and pooping out their seeds as they migrated! As the elephants carried on with their eggplant feasts, Southeast Asian and Indian farmers began domesticating aubergine plants several thousand years ago. The antiquity of eggplant is shown by its wide range of names in Sanskrit, Bengali, Hindustani, and Chinese languages. The oldest known records of eggplant come from a 5th-century Chinese cookbook. These ancient eggplants were likely far more similar to the heirloom Thai, Chinese, and Japanese varieties we see at local farmer’s markets today. They were long, slender, and curved somewhat like a banana, with violet, fuschia, white, or dark purple skin. As we’ll explore below, the diversity of Asian eggplants far surpasses that of European types. The delicately sweet flavor and denser texture of Asian types have converted even the most adamant eggplant-haters into aubergine lovers. When Did Eggplant Come to the Western World? Fast forward to the 16th through 18th centuries, when Moors carried the eggplant westward. Upon its arrival and establishment in Spanish cuisine, many Spaniards began calling them berengenas, or “apples of love.” This was based on the Medieval idea that eggplant could be used in a sort of love potion. Meanwhile, other European botanists called them Mala insana. This translates to “mad apple, because they thought eating the nightshade would make you go insane. A similar sort of folklore traveled with eggplant to the Americas in the 1500s. But the crop did not catch on. For centuries, colonists were very suspicious of eggplant because it was a member of the Nightshade family (along with tomatoes and potatoes). Nightshades have many toxic relatives. Many Americans thought that eggplants, tomatoes, and potatoes were poisonous and even associated with the devil. It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that large purple Italian eggplants finally became popular amongst European gardeners and later amongst commercial vegetable producers. Interestingly, eggplant was primarily considered an ornamental plant before it became accepted as a food crop. Finally, sometime around the 1960s, the smaller, more slender Asian varieties made their way to the United States. Though we were quite behind in discovering the abundance of shapes, sizes, flavors, and colors of eggplant, modern gardeners have a whole world of eggplant samplings at their fingertips. Propagation Eggplant is usually propagated from seed. The flattened nightshade seeds look very similar to tomato seeds because they are actually from the same genus (Solanum). They are extremely heat-loving plants, so the seeds need plenty of warmth to germinate. For this reason, it’s best to start seeds indoors in seedling trays. If you don’t have a greenhouse or seed starting setup, consider purchasing starts from a local nursery to make your life a little easier. How to Seed Eggplant Eggplant seeds should be started indoors in flats or cell trays about 6 to 8 weeks prior to planting outside. Fill your trays with a high-quality well-drained potting mix and sow 1-3 seeds per cell about ¼” deep. Lightly cover with soil and maintain consistent moisture until germination. The soil temperature should be between 80-90° until the seedlings emerge (use a temperature probe to check). A heating mat is the easiest way to ensure even germination. After the seeds come up, the soil temperature can be reduced to around 70°F. Anything colder than this will result in poor germination or stunted plants. After the seedlings have 1-2 sets of true leaves, thin to one plant per cell. If you started in smaller plugs, you can up-pot the seedlings to 3” pots. This allows them to get larger and stronger before transplanting. Keep the ambient temperature above 70°F for adequate establishment. After 6 to 7 weeks, eggplant starts should be large enough to prepare for planting. Be sure to harden off your seedlings about one week before planting out in the garden. You can do this by reducing the amount of water (but still maintaining adequate moisture) and lowering their temperature exposure to around 60°F. You can move plants to a sheltered outdoor space under row cover to allow them to get accustomed to night time temperatures. Planting Eggplants aren’t ready to be planted in the garden until several weeks after the last spring frost. In some regions, you should wait until early summer. The weather needs to be thoroughly settled and consistently above 60°F. Eggplants are very tender and sensitive to the cold. Too much cold exposure will significantly reduce plant vigor and yields. Practice companion planting with your eggplants to help with pest and disease prevention. How to Grow Eggplant Eggplants are heavy feeding, heat-loving crops that absolutely love rich, fertile soil and consistent water. Once established, the plants aren’t super needy or time-consuming. As long as you take the time to give eggplants the proper conditions to thrive, they will reward you with loads of glossy fruits. Maintenance Some gardeners prefer to prune and stake up their eggplants so that they don’t fall over, however, I have never found this to be necessary. Sometimes the plants will be weighted down by a heavy fruit set, but they shouldn’t topple over unless you are in an exceptionally windy area or your soil is extremely loose. In any case, wooden stakes with twine or small tomato cages will do.

Have you ever wanted to grow tender white asparagus in your garden? Growing these albino spears is easy with just a few simple steps. In this article, plant expert Matt Dursum shows you how to plant, grow, and care for white asparagus. If you’ve ever tasted white asparagus spears, you probably know why they’ve become a culinary craze. They have a delicate, nutty flavor and refreshing texture. Like green asparagus, they’re also packed with nutrients. What you may not know is that these unique looking vegetables are from the same plant as their green lookalikes. In fact, you can grow white asparagus in your garden by changing one simple process. Read on below to learn how to plant, grow, and care for this novelty type of asparagus. Soon, you’ll harvest bountiful white spears at home without paying extra at the market. What Is It? White asparagus is essentially the same plant as the regular green varieties. To get its appearance, farmers cover its spears with soil to prevent photosynthesis, a process called etiolation. As the spears grow, they cannot produce chlorophyll, which is the pigment in plants that makes them green. All asparagus are dioecious plants. This means that each plant has either male and female flowers. The white varieties you find at the grocery store and market are most likely the male spears due to their productivity. Characteristics In the garden, white asparagus will eventually turn green once exposed to sunlight. Male spears will grow to be larger than the female spears. When they mature, they produce beautiful bell-shaped flowers ranging from yellow to white. There are tons of varieties and hybrids to choose from. You can produce delicious and tender white spears from any type of asparagus. Some are more disease resistant and flavorful than others. Below are some common varieties to choose from. Native Area These perennial vegetables evolved in Europe, North Africa, Western Asia, and the Middle East. Asparagus developed a deep taproot system to survive various climates. It was first cultivated around 2,000 years ago in ancient Greece, Egypt, and the Mediterranean basin. The ancient Greeks thought it was an aphrodisiac while the Romans used it as a main course for their legions. In its native habitat, it flourished in sandy soils and mountainous terrain. In places such as the Middle East, it evolved in arid soils and developed a tolerance to drought conditions. White asparagus was first cultivated in Europe in the 17th century. It was a popular dish in French aristocratic households. Today, it usually costs more than green asparagus. Chefs and foodies tend to agree that its sweeter and richer taste and delicate texture are worth the hype. Planting Asparagus is a perennial that grows best in well-drained soil and full sun. It should go in the ground in early spring. Once it establishes itself in the soil, it will give you a bountiful harvest for 20 years or more. The location you plant your seedlings or crowns is very important. You want well-drained soil with plenty of nutrients and direct sunlight. It should be deep and porous, with no barriers for the taproots. Personally, I’ve always grown my plants in tall raised beds like this one. They bring the plants closer to eye level. When you’re producing white spears, it makes it easier to keep an eye on the spear as they grow. How to Grow White asparagus is relatively easy to grow, as long as you have the right location, lots of light, and enough soil to keep the spears covered. As the spears get larger, the trick is to keep covering them with soil so they never see the sun. Harvest them just before the heads of the spears appear to open up. Alternatively, you can cover your plants with black plastic or cloth while their spears grow. This will also block the sunlight and keep the spears white and tender. Maintenance Use disinfected pruners to harvest the spears in late spring or early summer, two years after planting your crowns. Let a few grow into mature flowering stalks. When your plants turn brown, they’re storing energy in their roots for their winter dormancy period. During this time, use your clean clippers to remove the brown stalks and compost them. Add another layer of mulch and fertilizer. After winter, just make sure your garden bed is weed free and you should have another bountiful harvest the following year.