My favorite vegetable varieties this year

We've had a cool, rainy summer this year here in Michigan, which I have loved, but it has been hard on the traditional vegetables of summer, the tomatoes, peppers, and squash, that love a little heat. But poor growing conditions can be nice in one way: They serve to highlight the very toughest varieties that really perform no matter what. Here's what I'm loving in the garden this year:

Tomato 'Matt's Wild Cherry'

I've long been a huge fan of this tomato. The flavor is off the charts -- sweet, rich, juicy and wonderful. It even beats the always delicious 'Sun Gold' as my very favorite tasting cherry tomato. But what really puts it over the top is the sheer vigor, yield, and disease resistance. Cool wet weather like we've had this year is an invitation to every fungus in the garden to beat up on the tomatoes, and all my other varieties are a mass of ugly brown blighted foliage. But not Matt's Wild Cherry -- it is green and pristine, not a speak of blight or leaf spot.

Pepper 'Flavor Burst'

This is a new variety for me this year, and I'll confess I bought it just for the name. I mean, Flavor Burst! How could I pass that up? In reality, I have to say that the flavor isn't particularly noteworthy, good, but typical bell pepper, but the performance! Big bell peppers always grow for me, but with my cold, short summers, I don't usually get much of a crop from them, usually just a few peppers that I can harvest full ripe and colored up, the rest are still green when frost arrives. But Flavor Burst has not only been the earliest ripe of ALL my peppers, sweet or hot, this year, the plant is also nearly twice the size of any of my other bell peppers, and loaded with way more peppers than any of them. This is my new gold standard for bell peppers for the north.

Zucchini 'Costata Romanesco'

I've been in love with this variety for a long time... and every year it proves yet again that no other zucchini can come close to matching it. The zucchinis this produces have a wonderful nutty, rich flavored. And the texture! Most zucchini, if you even think about cooking it too long, collapses into a pool of wet mush... this holds up firm with an excellent creamy texture even after prolonged cooking. Another plus, it produced about half the yield of a normal zucchini, which means you have enough for nearly every meal, but not so much you resort to throwing it into the open windows of passing cars. Finally, it is lovely and distinctive looking. The ribs down the zucchini means that when you slice it, the forms little star shapes. Can. Not. Be. Beat.

Squash Mini Red Turban 

Another new variety for me this year, and one I will certainly be doing again. First, this is a Cucurbita maxima variety, which is great because this species has great flavor and a very long storage life so you can eat them all winter. Second, it is lovely. Pretty enough to be displayed for fall decoration, to be sure. Third, it isn't too large, so I can cook up just enough for a meal instead of having to figure out what to do with a massive squash all at once. And fourth, it is producing like MAD. I've never had a winter squash yield so heavily. I think I'm going to have 20 maybe even 30 of these things by the end of the season... and that is in a summer that has been generally terrible for squash! 

So... those are my winners this year. Any favorites you have that I should try out next year? 

Hardy artichokes!

Is it just me, or does "Hardy Artichokes!" sound like it should be a folksy expletive?  Hardy artichokes Batman! Well. Anyway.
Artichokes are delicious but rather annoying to grow. They're perennials, but not big fans of hot summers, and not very winter hardy either. Which is why 99% of the commercial production is in cool summer parts of California. You can also grow them as an annual, but that is sort of a pain, as you have to make sure you give the seedlings a dose of cold temperatures when they're young to ensure they flower. More work than I'm really willing to do, particularly in the already insanely busy period if early spring.
What the world needs (and by "the world" I mean, of course, me) is a fully zone 5 hardy artichoke you can just plant once and then harvest from every year.
So I decided to make one. It started several years ago when I requested seed from every variety of artichoke (and cardoon, which is the same plant, just selected for tasty leaf stalks instead of flower buds) I could get, and planted them in the warmest, most sheltered spot in my old garden, along the South wall of my very poorly insulated house.

Baby artichoke plant huddling for warmth by the south wall of my old house

As luck would have it, that first winter was incredibly mild, and though most of the plants died, a few -- the most cold hardy -- survived!

It's alive! Despite appearance to the contrary.

These artichoke plants look rather rough when they first emerged that spring, but they were alive, so I greeted them with joy, in all their mushy weird-looking glory.

If you don't eat the artichoke, it turns into this. 

They flowered that summer, and I let the bees cross pollinate all my toughest survivors, collected seeds, and sowed out another generation. The next winter came, and my little babies faced -17 degrees F (-27 C) and...

Two survived! Two! Yay! Then this past winter came, and apparently all the Pure Michigan ads trying to lure tourists to this fair state worked, because the polar vortex came for a couple week vacation, causing temperatures to drop to -24 F (-31 C), and for a full week temps barely got above 0 F (-17 C)... I figured for sure my "hardy" plants were goners.

But gone they most certainly aren't! BOTH of them pulled through, and there you have wee little artichokes just beginning to develop! Zone 5 hardy artichokes, baby!

Now, I must confess that the artichokes themselves are quite small. I've got quite a bit more work to do on these to get them as big and beefy as the regular tender 'chokes, but I'm still quite euphoric. I've cleared the biggest hurdle, the rest will be easy, if a bit time consuming.

In other seemingly good news, this spring I also had two plants from my project to try and breed zone 5 hardy perennial kale survive the winter as well!

Then the groundhogs found them. Grrr... Chicken wire fence is now in place. Hopefully they'll recover. Have I mentioned that I hate groundhogs? And deer? And rabbits? And squirrels? And... well, honestly, most herbivorous mammals?

Anyway, cold climate artichoke lovers, rejoice! Hardiness has arrived! Unless you live in zone 4. Or 3. In which case... sorry about your luck. I've gotten them to 5. You'll have to take it from here.