From rainbow aubergines to giant onion seeds
Suttons has revealed its latest vegetable seeds, part of a range featuring more than 70 new vegetable and flower varieties – grow something different next season!
From beans to brassicas, tomatoes and salad crops to hearty roots, here are a few highlights for 2023.
Latest vegetable seeds – Aubergine Three Knight Recipe Collection F1
These three varieties look fantastic in the greenhouse and on the plate, with a variety of flavours and textures for all your recipes. The slender, smooth-skinned fruits in green, white and deep purple are suitable for Mediterranean dishes as well as Asian cuisine.
Early to mature and high-yielding, fruits are borne on compact, disease-resistant and well-branching plants, perfect for container-growing under glass. Chefs love the aubergine’s versatility in the kitchen, whether sautéed, grilled, baked or fried. They make a great substitute for meat in vegetarian and vegan dishes.
The collection is made up of:
- Green Knight F1: Slender, jade-green fruits, useful as an ingredient in Asian stir fries and curries, with firm flesh and a mild sweet flavour.
- Violet Knight F1: Long, banana-like fruits with smooth, deep purple skin.
- White Knight F1: Asian-type variety producing creamy-white fruits about 20cm long with thin skins and firm flesh. Height: 75cm. Spread: 60cm. Sow: February to April. Harvest: July to October, nine seeds, three of each variety, £4.99.
Herb Rocket Scorpion
Diplotaxis erucoides. Rocket Scorpion, a key variety in this year’s latest vegetable seeds, is related to wild rocket but a little faster to mature. It’s perfect to harvest at a young stage before it begins to bolt. Delicious in salads and as a peppery pesto sauce, you can also harvest rocket as microgreens.
Scorpion can be grown in containers or on a sunny windowsill if you’re short on space. Height: 30cm. Spread: 30cm. Sow: February to October. Harvest: March to November, 1,000 seeds for £1.99.
Latest vegetable seeds – Onion Galacticus
Allium cepa. Grow your own huge exhibition onions from seed with onion Galacticus. More elliptical in shape than most, it’s easy to grow onions which will easily weigh more than 1kg with no special care and attention.
Use this mild brown onion in salads, soups and casseroles. Its big size means a short storage life, so chop and freeze surplus crops for use later in the season. Height: 40cm. Spread: 30cm. Sow: December to January and March to April. Plant: May. Harvest: August to September, 100 seeds for £3.49.
Pea (Mangetout) Snow Max
Pisum sativum var. macrocarpum. Mangetout Snow Max is a semi-leafless variety. This means more pods and fewer leaves, on bush type plants that make harvesting a doddle!
The edible pods are sweet, crunchy and totally stringless, even when large, with pods growing to 9-10cm long and 2-3cm wide. Perfect to grow through the summer when most other varieties succumb to mildew. Snow Max performs well even in wet summers and its disease resistance is superb, including resistance to downy and powdery mildew, plus fusarium wilt. Height 75cm. Spread 30cm. Sow: March to June. Plant: May to June. Harvest: June to October, 100 seeds for £3.49.
Seeds are available widely at garden centres or online at www.suttons.co.uk.
