Seeds from Italy News
Vol 6, # 4, Dec 2006
We publish four times a year (usually) and include information on all aspects of
Italian vegetables, herbs and flowers: selecting, growing, harvesting and
storing and cooking. We would be happy to receive and if space permits, publish
your experiences in these areas.
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1. Privacy Policy
2. 2007 Catalog
3. New Varieties for 2007
4. 2007 Prices & discounts.
5. Summer Trials: Tomatoes
6. Summer Trials: Peppers
7. Summer Trials: Beans
8. Seeds from Italy makes it to TV.
9. Christmas Gifts
10. Recipe. Breaded Cauliflower.
11. Secure Website
12. What a difference a degree makes
The newsletter is on line. You can read it there and view photos of the various
things mentioned below. If you want to read on line, go to: http://growitalian.com/
1. Privacy Policy. A number of people on their order forms asked me not to sell
or divulge their personal information: address, telephone numbers, email
addresses, etc. I want everyone to understand that I take privacy very
seriously. I never disclose any customer information to anyone under any
circumstances. I have been bothered by too many telemarketers, received too much
junk email to do that to anyone else. I don't even keep credit card numbers: a
number of customers who reordered and told me to use their credit card number on
file were surprised when I told them I do not keep them on my computer, nor do I
have access to them from the credit card authorizing service.
2. 2007 Catalog. New catalogs should be going out in the mail somewhere around
December 1st. They are getting mailed to all people who have ordered in the past
from Seeds from Italy. If you requested a catalog but did not order, I do not
automatically send out a catalog. The catalogs are going out bulk mail and
depending on how far you live from Massachusetts and other factors of which only
the post office is aware, you should receive one in seven to 20 days. If you do
not have one by Christmas, then something is wrong. Send me a note. IF YOU HAVE
MOVED SINCE YOU LAST ORDERED, PLEASE SEND ME A NOTE AND GIVE ME YOUR OLD ADDRESS
AND YOUR NEW ADDRESS. If you send the email to bmckay@growitalian.com you wont
get the little autorespond note.
3. New Varieties for 2007. Every year I say I am not going to add anything more
& of course I do. I have a number of interesting new varieties from Franchi
Sementi and also from Southern Italy. The new varieties should be on the web
site by the beginning of December. This year I will have:
a. Four new bean varieties. Garrafal Oro which is a long flat roma type that did
very well in trials this summer (see below). There should also be Garrafal Enana
which is the bush version of this. I have not grown it, but I am told that it is
a very large flat bean, much larger than other bush flat beans, with very good
taste. Both of these varieties are of Dutch origin. There will also be Smeralda,
a traditional pole flat bean from Northern Italy which has a very good
reputation. Finally, I will have bobis a grano nero (this is what they call
black seeded blue lake in Italy). This is a really great tasting round pole
bean.
b. New flowers. Franchi has a sunflower collection and I am going to carry three
of them. Great colors. I also plan to carry the red
field poppy, the kind you find all over Italy, a new zinnia and three or four
other flowers. I grew their flowers last year and was very impressed. Great
colors & huge blossoms. The rudbeckia were stunning.
c. Two new zucchini (just what you need). The one from southern Italy (San
Pasquale) is a bush type plant that produces early & heavily (most Italian
zucchini first send out a large growth of male flowers, then fruit, but not this
one). The other is a zucchini that is used primarily to produce blossoms for
cooking. (zucchino da fiore)
d. Brussel sprouts. This is a traditional open pollinated variety common in the
north.
e. There is ruby chard, a yellow carrot (jaun du doubs), gigante d'inverno
(giant winter) spinach; wild cardoon, another cima di rapa (grossima san martino);
a new lettuce recommended by a customer (gentilina).
f. There will be at least one new tomato (Scatalone which is sort of a San
Marzano type on steroids) and a new wild strawberry, fragola di bosco, the
common European woodland strawberry.
g. While not exactly new, many of the varieties I got after last years catalog
were printed are now in the catalog as well as on the web site. This includes
almost all of the varieties from Southern Italy: the fasano type cima di rapa,
the san salvatore peppers (sweet & hot), corno di capra pepper, the most
excellent escaroles: cento foglie & cardoncello barese, and the really nice
frilly endives, louviers & ricciutisima.
If all goes well with shipping (and it usually does not), they should be here in
early January. They will be on the web site no later than 15 December.
4. 2007 Prices. There is good news and bad news. The bad news is that I had to
raise prices; the good news is that it is not much of a rise. Most regular
Franchi packs go from $2.65 to $2.75. The special selection varieties go from
$2.95 to $3.05; varieties from Southern Italy from $2.75 to $ 2.85. There is no
change in organic seed prices. Bulk seed prices either remain the same or have
gone up slightly. The price rise is just enough to cover the price rise for
seeds in Italy & most importantly, the huge increase in shipping costs.
Shipments now incur a 20% fuel surcharge; that is real money. I will change the
prices as of January 1, 2007. If you order on line before that, you will pay the
old prices.
Discount. I have always had a free pack discount if you bought more than 11
packs (you buy 11 packs, you get one of them free). This has always been a
source of confusion for online orders since people had to enter the 'coupon
code' at the end. Lots of people could not find the coupon & got frustrated.
So, next year what I will do is automatically deduct the amount. NO NEED TO FIND
THE COUPON. Of course there is a but. The 'store' I use is a bit clunky and it
can not count up separate items; it can only total the order. The way I will do
this is that if your total comes to $33 (the cost of twelve regular packs), it
will automatically deduct the price of a pack.
5. Summer Trials: Tomatoes. This was a tough year to grow tomatoes in southern
New England. We had constant rain through June and July and lots of disease
problems. We had so much rain that throughout the entire growing season, I
watered the garden once. The information below has been supplemented by the
reports of customers who participated in the tomato trials this year.
a. Cherry Tomato Grappoli d'Inverno. This is a variety from Southern Italy.
(Winter grape). This was not what I expected. When I hear grape tomato, I think
the Santa tomatoes you find in the supermarkets. This was a semi-determinate
plant which produced a huge quantity of largish (1-1.5 ounce) red fruit which
were mostly about an inch across. The plant was the first to produce a ripe
tomato and continued producing pretty much through the end of the season. It
exhibited pretty good disease resistance. It made a pretty good salad tomato.
Skin was fairly thin and taste was good. I would suspect it would also make an
excellent drying tomato, kind of like a principe borghese, though I think it has
better taste than Borghese and is larger. I am thinking the reason it is called
winter grape is not because it stores well, but rather because it is a good
tomato to dry. Other trial growers gave it good reviews. For some reason, I do
not have any photos. Sorry.
b. Cherry Tomato, Red Cherry. This is a new variety introduced by Franchi
Sementi this year. It is fairly commonly grown throughout Italy. This was an
indeterminate small round intense red cherry. It is a big plant and produced a
heavy crop of smallish very sweet tomatoes. Skin was very thin. It kind of
reminded me of Sweet 100. There was a fair amount of splitting in my garden, but
then 25" of rain over the growing period will split just about any cherry
tomato. Other trial growers did not report any problems with splitting. Overall,
this is a nice red cherry.
c. Ponderosa. This is a variety from southern Italy. I had a single pack of
these show up in an order and decided to give them a try, even though I am not
crazy about yellow tomatoes. The pack photograph indicated they were a small
yellow cherry tomato. The
plant is determinate and produces an incredibly heavy crop of yellow tomatoes
with a red blush at the blossom end. Fruit are about the size of a golf ball and
grow in clusters of seven to nine. Plant ripens fruit mid-season, probably 70 or
so days from set out. Interestingly enough, the fruit are red inside. Taste is
good. Skin is a bit thick for an open pollinated tomato, but then none of them
ever cracked, even during the heaviest rain (and there was certainly heavy rain.
The fruit held very well on the vine and lasted at least twice as long as any
other tomato once they were picked. I decided this was a worthwhile tomato and
will stock them next year.
d. Tomato, Astro. This is a Franchi variety. It is a determinate f1 hybrid paste
type. It was bred to produce lots of paste tomatoes which more or less ripen at
the same time. In short, it is a tomato to make sauce or to process into passata
or to can. It is not much for fresh eating, but then most paste tomatoes are not
either. It is very early and produces heavy clusters of 3-4 ounce fruit which
have a small nipple at the bottom. Leaf cover is a bit sparse; although I had no
problems with sunscald (didn't have all that much sun this summer) it would
probably be an issue is very hot areas. This variety would probably do well in a
pot.
e. Tomato, Rio Grande. This is a Franchi variety. It is actually an old American
variety which has become very popular in Italy. It has a reputation of doing
well in very hot conditions; I can say, it also does quite well in very cool wet
conditions. It is a determinate & produces heavy sets of 4-5 ounce pretty
perfect paste tomatoes. It is about 10 days later than Astro. It has good leaf
cover. Fruit set is pretty concentrated and this is primarily a processing
tomato. I used it for sauce and thought the taste was good. One of the trial
growers thought it was a bit bland (perhaps they did not use my basil with it).
This is a nice all around determinate paste tomato. I like it.
f. Fiaschette di Manduria. This is a tomato from southern Italy. The name means
flask or jar from Manduria (manduria is a town in the province of Taranto in the
region of Puglia)and clearly indicates that it is a tomato for processing.
Unfortunately, at plant out time I could not find my Manduria tomatoes. I know I
started some, but as usual every year I loose track of some of the stuff I
start. Oh well, there is always next year.
g. Tomato, Costuluto Genovese. This is an indeterminate which produced a fairly
heavy crop of deep red ribbed fruit weighing 8-10 ounces. It was fairly early,
perhaps sixty five or so days from set out. Taste was very good. Disease
resistance was ok, but then any tomato that survived in my garden this year had
pretty good resistance to leaf spot diseases. It is more or less the same as the
costuluto fiorintino, but a bit darker red and somewhat heavier ribbing. Nice
tomato.
h. St. Pierre. This is a Franchi variety and is of French origin. It was one of
the highlights of the trials. It is an indeterminate that produced a large
quantity of perfectly shaped 8-9 ounce fruit. It was very early; this was the
first large tomato to ripen in the garden. Picked the first fruit sixty or so
days after set out which was pretty amazing given the weather we had. It
continued to produce well throughout the summer. Very good resistance to leaf
spot. Taste was very assertive. One trial grower thought it was too strong; I
thought it was perfect. Next year this will be my 'early tomato'. For market
growers, this might be a nice alternative to the traditional early tomatoes like
early girl which to my mind have no taste.
i. Monte Carlo. This is a Franchi variety. It is an indeterminate f1 hybrid. It
produced a heavy crop of 9-10 ounce mostly round
good tasting red fruit. Strangely enough for a hybrid, a percentage of the fruit
were a bit pointed at the end, but the taste was the same. Thin skin. No
evidence of cracking at the stem end. Pretty good leaf cover and good resistance
to leaf spot. It continued to produce throughout the season. I am not much of a
fan of hybrid tomatoes, but this one is pretty good.
6. Summer Trials: Peppers
a. Southern Italian Frying Peppers: Melrose, Friggitello (aka frieriello or
napoleatano) and frieriello barese. Melrose is a pepper brought by Italian
immigrants to the US at the beginning of the 20th century and became very
popular in the Chicago area. Friggitello is the version of the frying pepper
popular in the area around Naples; the last one is popular in the area around
Bari. All produce pretty much the same product: a 4 inch long, 3/4" or so
thick, slightly tapered blunt ended sweet pepper. All are brilliant red when
ripe and very sweet. Skin is very thin and kind of melts away when cooked. They
can all be dried; if dried & recooked in the winter, they puff up and taste
quite delicious. So what is the difference.
Friggitello Barese Melrose
Growth Habit. The melrose is a smaller plant and produces fruit the earliest.
It is 10 days or so earlier than the others. Melrose has less leaf cover and
probably would not do as well as the other two in a very hot (high 90's, over
100 F) climate.
Production. All seem to produce more or less equally, as in they produce a lot
of peppers. I thought Friggitello from Franchi produced a bit more than the
Barese and definitely more than the Melrose, but other trial growers thought
differently. I suspect that all have the capability of heavy production; it
just depends on your growing season, where in the garden you may have placed a
particular variety, etc. In short, all are capable of producing all the frying
peppers you need.
Taste. I can not tell the difference. I think all of them are really good
tasting. They are very sweet, have thin skins & are tender, fry up
perfectly, etc. However, other testers reported preferences. One thought the
Melrose had a definite taste advantage; another was for friggitello; others
were for barese.
So which one is for you. Any of them is fine. Franchi packs (the friggitello)
has the largest number of seeds; melrose is the smallest since the seeds are
rare and I have to fill the packs myself; Franchi seeds probably have a higher
germination rate. If anyone has more information, please send it along.
b. Pepper San Salvatore Calabrese sel. Tesoro. I had high hopes for this
pepper. I had heard that although it was pretty ugly (it is sometimes called
sheep nose pepper) that it was really good tasting. Unfortunately, the seeds
were no good. None of the trial testers were able to get any germination. I
got three plants to come up, but then I lost them somewhere in my brother's
greenhouse. There is always next year.
c. Pepper, corno di capra. (goat horn). This was an impressive pepper. The
plant is good sized with lots of foliage. It produces a
very good quantity of six to seven inch bright red sweet peppers. The fruit
are curved (like a goat horn) and are an inch or so wide at the top and taper
to a point at the end. Skin is very thin. They come in fairly early, a week or
so after friggitello. They are a first rate frying pepper.
d. Hot peppers. This year I did Corno di capra piccante and Red Cherry.
Corno di Capra. The corno di capra is a very large goat horn type, much bigger
than cayenna. It is 5-6 inches 
long, 3/4 or so at the top and tapers to a point. They are mid season,
ripening at just about the same time as the sweet corno di capra. They are
definitely hot (I had them growing next to the sweet corno di capras and
picked one thinking it was the sweet variety. Took a bite; HOT. However, if
you remove the seeds & cook it with some sweet frying peppers, it gives
just enough tang to liven things up. Very nice pepper.
Red Cherry. Next newsletter I will talk some about variety names for Italian
varieties; this name is one of the better examples of the confusion that
exists for Italian names. The official name is Small Red Cherry. It is also 
called calabrese. I am sure there are other names for it in different parts of
Italy. This is a two inch in diameter hot pepper that tapers slightly toward
the blossom end. It is intense red when ripe and fairly hot. There is very
good leaf cover and they are incredibly early. Production is very heavy. The
photo from the garden does not do justice to the production since (1) I had
picked a bunch of them already and (2) pepper fly had laid eggs in lots of the
fruit destroying them. Nevertheless, this is a really good pepper. It can be
used fresh, dried, pickled, etc. Wall is fairly thick and it has really nice
taste cooked fresh. You could dry them and make your own hot red pepper which
would be pretty hot.
e. Sweet Pepper, Dulce Italiano. This was a new introduction by Franchi. It is
described as a long sweet frying pepper, red when 
ripe. Turns out it is a pretty darned good pepper. It looks like a small corno
di toro. It is seven or eight inches long, 1 1/2 inches or more wide at the
top and tapers toward the bottom. The wall of the fruit is not as thick as a
corno di toro, but thicker than the southern frying peppers. Skin is very
thin. They are bright red when ripe and very sweet. Their advantage is that
they are much earlier than corno di toro which in my garden usually ripen in
early September. They are quite productive. Good choice for an early pepper.
7. Summer Trials: Beans This year, in addition to the usual beans I grow for
fresh eating, I trialed two others. One is a new bean this year; the other I
have carried for years but for some reason never grew.
Garrafal Oro. This is a flat roma type green pole bean. Numerous customers
asked if I could find it. I know why they were looking
for it. The bean is a very tall pole type which is a few days later than
Supermarconi (although the slight lateness may be due more to the awful
weather we had this 'summer' rather than any inherant lateness. It produces a
very long flat bean which will get to 10-12" with no stringiness and
without noticeable seed swelling. The bean has a slight curve. It stays juicy
& crunchy. In fact, the first one I bit into this summer resulted in a
bunch of bean juice flowing down my shirt. It is really pretty special.
Santa Anna. Although I have carried this bean for six years, for some reason I
never grew it out. Too bad. It is really a worthwhile bean. It produces a
round green bean with really excellent taste. The bean can be picked anywhere
from 4-5" when it looks like one of those skinny french fillet beans to
six or so inches when it fills out pretty completely to eight or so inches
when the seeds inside start to show. No strings ever. Really excellent bean
taste. It is a very heavy producer and produces over a very long season. It
was still going strong well into October this year. This is a really nice
general purpose bean.
8. Seeds from Italy makes it to TV. For three or four years, I have provided
Franchi seeds to Mary Ann Esposito, hostess of public television's Ciao Italia
series. This year she asked, among other things, for some brussel sprouts for
some special recipes she was doing. Brussel sprouts, says I. Then I looked
more carefully at the catalog and there they were. It turns out they are
fairly popular, especially in Northern Italy. So this spring, I treked up to
Durham, NH (only about an hour from where I live and planted the brussel
sprouts with her. It was a lot fun and a really good lunch after the tape
session. She is a really nice lady. Later on in the fall, I went back and did
the harvest. The show should be on next season (which I think begins in
February). She was also kind enough to provide a recipe which is in the 2007
catalog.
9. Christmas Gifts. Seeds make a great gift. I have certificates available in
$15, $25, & $50. I suppose I could do one for some other amount if you
wished. Certificates go out with a catalog and there is no shipping charge. I
can personalize a message if you wish. If you get the order to me within a
week of Christmas, I can guarantee it will get there before Christmas. If you
know what your gardening friend likes to grow, you could of course also just
order them some seeds.
10. Recipe. Breaded Cauliflower. The older I get, the more I think about those
things I ate growing up on the farm. My wife is sometimes taken aback by the
fact that most of my favorites are fried things, but we actually ate quite
healthy (it was always fried in olive oil, I remind her). In any case, this is
pretty tasty and makes a nice appetizer served at room temperature or a quick
side vegetable.
Cut up a head of cauliflower (or just take it apart). I tend to make the
individual pieces pretty good sized (at least an inch, perhaps a bit more).
Steam them until they are well done. Remove and allow to cool and dry some.
Put some olive oil in a heavy frying pan and turn the heat to medium. Dip the
cauliflower pieces in beaten egg and coat well. Bread them with plain
breadcrumbs [this is probably the one time that store bought breadcrumbs are
ok]. Fry until they are nice and brown on all sides. Remove & drain on
some paper towels. Serve at room temperature as a side vegetable or as an
appetizer.
11. Several customers mentioned that the web site was not secure (in the sense
that information between their computer & the web site was not encrypted.)
I finally got around to changing things and the store where you order is now
secure. As soon as you click on the store, you go to a secure encrypted site.
12. What a difference a degree makes. Most of the seeds I bring in from Italy
are traditional open pollinated (non-hybrid) varieties that have been grown in
Italy for years. I do this primarily because I like the way they grow and
taste and I prefer the underlying rationale behind the selection process in
Italian varieties. Over the years, people selected certain preferred
characteristics among the natural variations that took place: taste and good
production were high on the list. I tend to stay away from hybrids, although
there are certainly advantages in using hybrids. While most people think that
the main advantage of hybrids is increased production [many open pollinated
varieties produce as well if not better than hybrids], this is probably not as
important for farmers as some other characteristics. Hybrids usually have
higher adaptability to environmental stress (too much rain, to hot or cold,
etc) and tend to be more uniform in terms of shape, color & yield. They
may also have other desirable characteristics such as earlier or higher yield,
resistance to certain plant diseases, etc. You can be pretty sure that year
after year, you will get the same yield, colors, etc using hybrid seed. There
are also disadvantages. You can not find as wide a selection of varieties,
some of the characteristics bred into a hybrid may be not advantageous
(witness winter tomatoes), taste may not be a primary concern, etc.
This brings me to what a difference a degree makes. Most of the time, open
pollinated varieties are pretty consistent. Some varieties are not, however.
Radicchio is one that needs some pretty specific weather conditions and
cauliflower is another. I want to use the example of Sicilian Cauliflower. It
was selected in Southern Italy where summers are hot & dry & fall and
winter are cool & wet. This is definitely not New England weather.
However, I have grown it a couple of times with success. Once I did it in the
spring from transplants (often cauliflower does not work in NEw England during
the spring since our springs can be cool & wet, but quickly go into heat)
It headed up nicely, though the heads were light green and turned somewhat
purplish/green. Taste was great. I assumed that this was what it looked like.
I also did some one summer with less success; about 30% of the plants never
made heads, though the remainder did.
The other day I had an email from a grower I know out in the Connecticut River
Valley of Massachusetts. This is the only part of Massachusetts that I know of
with good soil and most of the serious farming in the state gets done there.
The farmer, Tim Wilcox, is very interested in Italian varieties, especially
those from southern Italy, and has grown out a lot of my varieties. He has
spent a lot of time in Italy. He is a really good farmer; in fact, if any of
you live out in the valley area and happen to need some really good vegetables
during the growing season, look him up. [Chef's take notice] Tim Wilcox, The
Kitchen Garden, Hadley, Massachusetts.
Anyway, Tim sent me some photos of some Sicilian Purple Cauliflower he did
this year along with some comments that I think you will find useful. One note
of explanation. The unusual weather he is referring to is the long cool (not
cold, freezing) fall we have had; late October and November have been in the
50-65 degree range. In fact as I write this on November 15th, the temperature
is 67F; pretty unheard of. These are his comments.
I just wanted to qualify some of my comments about the purple cauliflower. I
agree that weather has a lot to do with it, as evidenced by the fact that
these
warm rains have brought out another flush of the italian cauliflower, of a
higher quality than earlier. I attached some photos, 53 shows the San Michele
or Verona cabbage-a real winner in terms of unique appearance. 116 shows
romanesco and purple cauli harvested yesterday. And 113 shows a typical
off-type within the purple.
My hunch is that it takes a prolonged period of cool, even weather to mature
these things propery (like December and January in Napoli), something that New
England doesn't always get before the hard freeze. Many of the cauliflowers we
harvested in October showed signs of too rapid growth like spaces between the
florets and sunburn. Not so with the ones we picked yesterday, which developed
slowly with temperatures not going above the 60's.
To elaborate on my comment in a previous email, I'm really conflicted about
growing hybrids. The graffiti purple cauli offered by [***I removed the name
of the seed company] is this really unnatural uniformly violet hue, whereas
the variation between each specimen of
the sicilian feels just so much more appealing. I don't know. I have often
thought that the thing to do would be to do my own selection and breeding of
these heirlooms that have been somewhat sloppily maintained. It just takes so
much time. Maybe it's a project for my retirement.
Cauli, early, no cool weather Cauli, later, cooler weather
This is a picture of the San Michelle (verza verona) cabbage he was referring
to. I have to grow this one next year. 
Merry Christmas & happy New Year. Don't forget to have a bowl of lentils
on New Years day for good luck.
Good growing and may your garden be woodchuck & deer free.
Bill McKay