Plant these seeds now -New vegetable varieties for 2012

It's time to start spring and summer veggie seeds indoors. In case you're in need of inspiration, check out some of the new offerings available this year. Links below will take you to the company's site where you'll find more information.

A vegetable that qualifies as being pretty enough for a flower bed comes from Seed Savers Exchange. Five Color Silverbeet's foliage can be tucked into any cottage garden, herb bed or container. Not only are the leaves good in salads, the plants will shade young seedlings planted under and around them.

Thompson and Morgan seeds is introducing 2 new eggplant varieties for containers. Start eggplant seeds inside now so you'll have flowering plants ready to go when it's time.

Emerald Isle eggplant

They recommend planting the seed on moist, sterile seed starting mixture and topping the seeds with vermiculite.

Pinstripe eggplant

Keep the seed starting at 60-degrees F or 20 C until the plants are established in the seed starting containers. Then move them to 6-pack size containers and continue to grow at 50-degrees F or 10 C.

Loco Pepper

Also start their new Loco Pepper seeds now to have plants garden-ready in the spring. Use the same method as you'll use for the eggplant seeds. 

Loco is a compact, container, pepper plant with those gorgeous red and purple fruits that are such a hit late in the summer.


Jung Seed has the Black Olive pepper seeds. These ornamental peppers are edible, just really hot.

Burpee is introducing a new English pea they call Easy Peasy Pea. In their trials each pod had 10 peas and there were 2 pods on each node. AND they are self-supporting vines.


Harris Seed has Long Season Lutz Beets. They are huge, tender and sweet, according to Harris. The outside is rough on this slow-growing variety, but the compensation is that Lutz keeps longer.

Hometown Seeds offers Cheddar Cauliflower seeds that grow those orange heads that even kids will eat. Seeds will germinate at 55-70 degrees and you'll have cauliflower in 75 days.

Starting seeds now? What are you growing?