New 12 months, new seeds! We’re heading into 2024 by providing a couple of new varieties on our catalog and web site. A few of these are heirlooms which have been shared with us, just like the Turkish Cekirdegi Oyali Watermelon. Others are new varieties like Xiye Butternut Squash which have just lately been bred for options like illness resistance, local weather adaptability, and taste. Not all of our new varieties can be found on the web site but, however these fourteen are, so make sure to seize them whereas our seed provides final!

Adirondack Blue Seed Potato

This new selection from Cornell College will rapidly turn out to be one in all your backyard staples. Adirondack Blue produces moist, beautiful, blue-skinned, and blue-fleshed potatoes. The vigorous crops assist good yields.

Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera) 

Ashwagandha is a vital herb in Indian conventional drugs. Herbalists use the roots to strengthen the immune system, improve resiliency to emphasize, and relieve insomnia. You can even use the berries as vegetable rennet. 

Ashwagandha is native to the dry areas of India, the Center East, and North Africa, the place it grows to be a small shrub. It’s within the solanacea or nightshade household, like tomatoes and peppers. Within the U.S., it’s solely perennial to USDA zone 10 however may be grown as an annual in temperate areas. 

Appalachian White Wheat

Homescale grain manufacturing is less complicated than you assume, particularly with this glorious selection from North Carolina State College. Appalachian White Wheat has excessive protein (14%) and delicate taste.

It’s a semidwarf selection with good illness resistance to most wheat ailments of the Mid-Atlantic. ½ pound sows 125-250 sq. ft as a canopy crop or 250 sq. ft as a grain crop.

Biquinho Spice Pepper (C. chinense)

These little Brazilian Peppers are comparatively delicate and scrumptious pickled. In Brazil, they’re a well-liked snack in botecos or neighborhood bars and are sometimes served with sausage or fish. They get their title, which suggests “little beak” in Portuguese, from their inverted tear-drop form.

Biquinho Spice Peppers develop about 2 ft tall and are extremely branched. The peppers are small, about ½ by ¾ inches, and comparatively delicate. Their harvests usually tend to taper off than with different Chinese language varieties. 

Cekirdegi Oyali Watermelon

Cekirdegi Oyali is a Turkish heirloom launched to the U.S. by our buddies at Two Seeds in Pod. This selection produces small melons, about 5 kilos every, with candy orange flesh.

One of many joys of saving seeds from this selection is its unique-looking seeds, which seem like they’ve been carved. As they dry, the black seed casing cracks, revealing the white seed inside.

Fiesta Trailing Blended Coloration Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus) 

With a surprising mixture of yellow, orange, rose, and crimson blooms, Fiesta is a must have for any nasturtium lover. These crops produce lengthy trailing vines of enticing, edible leaves and flowers with watercress-like taste that works nicely for salads and garnishes. 

Inexperienced Finger Cucumber

Inexperienced Finger is a superb selection for market and residential growers bred by Cornell College. It produces crisp, thin-skinned cucumbers 8 to 10 inches lengthy. They’ve nice taste and productiveness and constant fruits.

Inexperienced Finger exhibits glorious illness resistance to powdery mildew, papaya ring spot virus, watermelon mosaic virus, zucchini yellow mosaic virus, and excessive tolerance to angular leaf spot. It matures in sixty days.

Take pleasure in them proper off the vine as you stroll by way of your backyard, in a salad, pickled, or as an addition of crisp freshness to your cool summer time drink!

Pink Zinnias

Who doesn’t love zinnias? These easy-to-grow flowers are staples for every kind of flower gardens, so we jumped on the likelihood so as to add a brand new zinnia to the listings. 

Pink Zinnias produce a smorgasbord of pink flowers on tall crops, together with a stunning mixture of single, double, and semi-double flowers. 

Purple Viking Potatoes

Purple Viking has nice appears and taste. These enticing potatoes have purple skins with pink splashes and vivid white flesh. They’ve nice taste, too, and are glorious mashed or baked.

Purple Viking produces huge potatoes on compact crops. Their productiveness and wonder make them a superb alternative for market gardeners.

Quan Yin Batavian Lettuce

This Batavian-type lettuce produces pretty, huge, dense heads. Quan Yin grows nicely in the summertime warmth, germinating extra simply in sizzling soil than different lettuce varieties. It’s chilly tolerant too and overwinters nicely in delicate winters.

Our seed inventory for this selection got here from the great people at Siskiyou Seeds. 

Queensland Romaine Lettuce

This Australian heirloom has nice warmth resistance and is a favourite for growers in Florida and the Deep South! It options tasty, giant, mild inexperienced leaves.

Our seed inventory for Queensland Romaine got here from the superb seed keeper and artist Melissa DeSa. You could find her on Instagram @southern_seed_queen. 

Showstar Melampodium

In search of easy-to-grow crops that tolerate warmth, humidity, drought, and poor soil? Look no additional! Showstar Melampodium produces mound-shaped crops with many 1 ¼ -inch yellow flowers. It flowers most closely within the fall and continues till frost, with out deadheading! 

Spinners Ivory Cotton

This new cotton selection was bred by Cindy Conner by way of Homeplace Earth’s Cotton Venture proper right here in Virginia. She bred Spinners Ivory from a cross of inexperienced and brown varieties.

Cindy named this selection for its bare seeds (no lint), making it straightforward to take away by hand or spin proper off the seed. It has a brief staple and off-white shade.

For those who’re concerned with cotton or fiber arts, we extremely advocate you learn Cindy’s e book Homegrown Flax and Cotton: DIY Information to Rising, Processing, Spinning & Weaving Fiber to Material.

Xiye Butternut Squash (C. moschata)

This new winter squash was bred by Care of the Earth Group Farm in Corryton, Tennessee, and named in honor of local weather activist Xiye Bastida. This selection was bred from a cross between San Jose Mountain Membership Squash (from Costa Rica) and Waltham Butternut.

This great-tasting squash was bred to withstand downy mildew and tolerate variable and unpredictable weather conditions. The crops are totally vining and really productive. Xiye Butternut is good and nutty and has a caramel or butterscotch taste when roasted, and the outside shade is a deep tan. 

Choice is ongoing for butternut form, measurement (choosing for 4 lb. measurement), smaller seed cavity, dry matter content material, taste, and skill to retailer for at the very least three months. Xiye is at the moment in its seventh era; anticipate a little bit of variability for all traits.

Including new varieties to Southern Publicity Seed Alternate and preserving outdated favorites is all the time a cautious balancing act. Whether or not heirlooms or newly bred varieties, these fourteen crops have earned a spot on our web site and catalog for his or her scrumptious taste, hardiness, illness resistance, magnificence, and productiveness. Contemplate including one in all these new varieties to your backyard this season, and make sure to tell us the way it goes!