Tomato Starts
Pepper Starts
Eggplant Starts

Tomato Starts

Varieties Suitable for Container Growing

Bloody Butcher - Rich deep red inside and out. Medium sized fruits. Strong full-bodied tomato flavor. Moderately high yielding, early ripening. Heirloom
Brown Berry - warm reddish brown color and great taste, like all dark tomatoes. Heirloom.
Da Inverno a Grappoli (winter grape) - from Italian seed, sweet two ounce fruit, a first rate salad tomato, and good for dried tomatoes. New to us this year. Heirloom.
Dwarf Champion - Good for slicing. Tangy, mild, sweet overtones. Medium fruit. one of two best yielding of the container varieties in 2007. Heirloom
Heartland - Compact 30" plants produce delicious 8 oz. tomatoes until frost. The other best yielding variety. Hybrid
Nebraska Wedding - Beautiful 3-4" round orange fruits, meaty flesh with a well-balanced flavor. 36" tall plant, use a large container, needs staking. Heirloom.
Orange King - Tart, medium-sized orange fruit. The juice looks like orange juice. New to us this year. Heirloom.
Polish Dwarf - 1-4 oz red fruit, early and productive, keeps producing throughout the season. New to us this year. Heirloom.
Sophie's Choice - Extra early, flavorful fruit with an orange-red exterior and deep red flesh. Small plants. Can stand cooler weather. Heirloom.
Stick - an odd looking plant with bundles of leaves like pom poms. Round red 3" fruits on stalks like sticks. 60 year old variety, new to us this year.
Sweet Baby Girl - "This may be the world's best tasting cherry tomato." Not an exaggeration. Long fruiting trusses, dark red fruit just under 1". Hybrid
Tiny Tim - A heavy yielder with clusters of fine flavored, red fruit that are about ½ inch in diameter. When grown in pots, this variety only grows ten to twelve inches tall and 14 inches across. New to us this year. Open-pollinated
Tumbler - bred for hanging baskets, it will fill up the space rather than sprawling. Nice flavored cherry tomatoes. New to us this year. Open pollinated.

Full Size Tomatoes

Heirlooms

Brandywine - Large pink beef-steak type, rich, intense tomato flavor.
Cherokee Purple - Unique dusky rose color, flavor rivals Brandywine.
Garden Peach - A medium sized yellow. A great color and flavor combination with Green Zebra and Early Girl or Stupice.
German Pink- Large, pink, and tasty. A little earlier than Brandywine.
Green Zebra - Medium -sized, light green with bright yellow stripes when ripe. This tomato won over seven others in a tomato tasting at Gales Meadow Farm in 2006.
Jubilee - "The best medium sized orange tomato." New to us this year.
Italian Heart - This seed was a gift from a friend in Virginia, who got it from her neighbor, whose great-grandfather brought it from Italy. Medium sized, pink, heart-shaped, wonderful for sauces.
Japanese Black Trifele - In spite of the name, it's from Russia. Purplish black tomato, the size and shape of a pear. Incredible flavor, very productive. These are grown from seeds we saved.
Jubilee - Super taste, medium sized gold tomatoes. new to us this year, first offered in 1943. New to us this year.
Maremmano - traditional variety from coastal Tuscany. Early, smallish red fruit, very productive and tasty. New to us this year.
Nebraska Wedding - Beautiful 3-4" round orange fruits, meaty flesh with a well-balanced flavor. 36" tall plant, use a large container, needs staking.
Paul Robeson- A medium sized brick-colored tomato from Russia, named in honor of the famous American singer. Distinctive sweet flavor.
Prudens Purple - One of those ugly, odd-shaped heirlooms with amazing flavor. This is the earliest of the big purple heirlooms.
Stupice - an heirloom from the Czech Republic. 6-8 oz round red fruit, very early, fine flavor.
Tiger Tom - One of the first to ripen, 6 oz. fruits with yellow-orange stripes on red skin. Sharp, sweet flavor.

Paste or Roma-Type (All Heirlooms)

Black Plum - the size and shape of ordinary Roma tomatoes, but very dark in color and with a fantastic rich flavor.
Polish Linguisa - the best red paste tomato, large fruit with great flavor. Heirloom.
Striped Roman - Long and pointed, red with orange stripes, meaty substance, and great flavor. Good for sauces or slicing. Heirloom.

Open-Pollinated, not "Heirloom" (less than 50 years old)

Furry Yellow Hog - the silly name is because it was created at Wild Boar Farm in Marin County. Yellow and red stripes, possibly similar to Garden Peach. The picture looks pretty.
Glacier - very early, but nonetheless supposed to be very tasty. new to us this year.
Rosalie's "Big Rosy" - Very large, pink, fantastic flavor, a little earlier and therefore better for the Northwest than German Pink.
Rosalie's Early Orange - Early irregular heart-shaped orange fruit. Sweet, juicy, well-balanced flavor.

Hybrid

Early Girl - An Oregon classic. Easy to grow, fairly early, very productive. There are those who think that the taste is inferior, but I think they must be growing them in poor soil or picking them unripe. It's a good tasting tomato.

Cherry Tomatoes

Bi-Color - Yellow and red stripes, 1-2", superb taste like "Big Rainbow." New to use this year.
Brown Berry - warm reddish brown color and great taste, like all dark tomatoes. Heirloom.
Galina - a Siberian heirloom. We have been saving and replanting this seed (originally from a seed exchange at an Oregon Tilth meeting) for five years. Productive, sweet, sunshine yellow fruit. This plant keeps going well into fall and can even stand a light frost.
Gobstopper - early yellow cherry with green interior, fruity and sweet, New to us this year.
Gold Nugget - Golden 1" fruit on a compact plant. We ate a ripe one on June 29, 2007, the earliest ripe tomato so far.. Heirloom
Millefleur - small oblong yellow flavorful tomato, with long tresses of fruit.
Pomodoro Dattero - "Date Tomato." We go this seed from tomatoes we bought at a farmers market in Padua, Italy in 2004. Although it was January, the tomatoes were delicious. The plants can be pulled right before frost and hung in a sheltered place and the tomatoes will continue to ripen. We have been saving and regrowing the seed since then. A vigorous plant with abundant bright red fruit. The Italians think they are shaped like dates, but if you want to call this a grape tomato, it's ok with us.
Purple Cherry - another gift seed from a Tilth meeting. This is the most rambunctious plant, which is why a little pruning and sucker pinching is recommended. The fruit is a dusky pink, a little larger than most cherry tomatoes. It has an excellent true tomato taste. It makes a great fresh sauce - no need to peel, just put them in a food processor. The foliage has a distinctive, pleasant aroma.
Red Fig - A nice companion to yellow pear. This tomato has been grown in American gardens since the 18th century. Heirloom. Seed Savers.
Sungold - everyone's favorite - intensely flavored bright, golden orange color. Hybrid.
Yellow Pear - We chose it because it beat out 25 other strains of yellow pear in a taste testing at Seed Savers. "Endless supply of 1 1/2" pear tomatoes with great taste."

Pepper Starts

(Some are ready now and others will be available in coming weeks.)

Hot Peppers

Beaver Dam - Shaped like a hefty bull's horn pepper, with rich flavor. Not as hot as a jalapeno. Great for spaghetti sauce or roasting. The grower (in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin) who preserved this variety says it’s good on bologna and cheese sandwiches. You have to understand that bologna in Wisconsin comes in a ring, tastes great, and has no relationship to that stuff in the blister package at the grocery store.
Black Hungarian - One step down from Jalapeno. Wonderful flavor. When they turn brick red at the end of the season, they are sweet as well as hot. This is the earliest hot pepper we grow. Limited supply this year.
Cayenne - long, red, and hot. We got a lot of ripe cayennes even in last season’s challenging conditions.
Habenero - the hottest pepper we offer. It needs to be in the hottest spot in your garden. (We have heard of ghost peppers, but they grow in India, for goodness sake, in a climate nothing like ours.)
Jalapeno - the best for salsa, nachos, pizza, and pickling.
Hungarian Hot Wax - new to us this year, it has been requested by several customers. Not as hot as Jalapeno. It can stand our cooler nights better than some other peppers.
Padrone - not hot when picked green and fried up for a tapas plate; somewhat hot after it turns red.
Serrano - hotter than a jalapeno, and with thicker flesh than Cayenne or Thai peppers. No need to remove the seeds; just cut it into fine slices for salsa.

Sweet Peppers

Carmagnolo Rossa - an Italian bell pepper, new to us this year. Perhaps it will ripen to red earlier than Napoleon.
Napoleon - an elongated bell pepper, very tasty and productive. It has performed beautifully as a green bell. It begins to turn red in late September.
Jimmy Nardello - our all time favorite Italian sweet frying pepper. Incredible flavor. Limited supply this year.

Eggplant Starts

(Some are ready now and others will be available in coming weeks.)

Bambino - a delightful miniature (walnut to golf ball sized) purple eggplant, quite productive and very tasty. Hybrid
Fairy Tale - Miniature tear-drop shaped eggplant, white with lavender stripes. Very pretty, mild flavor. Hybrid
Machiaw - a long, slim Asian variety. Fuchsia colored. Hybrid
Opal - Teardrop-shaped Italian variety with shiny black skin. Harvest fruit at 5-6” long for robust eggplant flavor and creamy, firm flesh. Very productive moderate-sized eggplant. Open-pollinated.
Prospero - a fat purple Italian variety. New to us this year. Heirloom
Violetta di Frenze - Violet-pink fat ribbed Italian eggplant. Not particularly productive at Gales Creek, but we grow it anyway because it is so delicious and beautiful. Heirloom.
Yasakanaga - Dark purple Asian-style. Fairly productive, excellent flavor. Hybrid.