The Best New Vegetables, Herbs, and Fruits of 2025
January 14th, 2025
It’s another new year, and the garden is waiting in the wings to be filled in just a few months with fresh, home-grown produce.
The Purple Tomato really is purple inside and out… not just purple-skinned.
This is a good planning time – not only to order seeds for the 2025 edible garden but also to hone in on the best varieties of vegetables, herbs, and fruits for May planting.
Lots of new varieties are debuting in 2025 to add to the tried-and-true.
Let’s have a look this week at some of the best new edibles hitting the market.
Next Tuesday, I’ll post the best new annual flowers of 2025, then on Jan. 28 the year’s best new perennial flower introductions, and finally on Feb. 4 the year’s best new trees and shrubs.
Some of the following new edibles are already available online and in catalogs. If any strike your fancy, it’s best to order ASAP before the supply dwindles.
Others will show up in local garden centers – seed packets already and plants in April and May.
This purple-fruited cherry tomato generated much news (and controversy) last year when it debuted as the first bioengineered food crop marketed mainly to home gardeners. The fruits get their purple color (both skin and flesh) from purple snapdragon genes inserted into a standard cherry-tomato variety.
The Purple Tomato (that’s the official name) came out a bit late for 2024 seed orders, so this is the first January that gardeners will be able to order in time for indoor seed-starting (if the supply isn’t already gone). It’s available only by direct-ordering from the producer, California-based Norfolk Healthy Produce.
2025 seeds went on sale Dec. 2 and were expected to sell quickly despite a price of $20 for 10 seeds (plus shipping).
Besides the fruit-color novelty, the attraction is a nutrition makeup that’s exceptionally high in antioxidants – on par with the so-called “superfood” levels found in blueberries, according to Norfolk Healthy Produce.
Plants are heavy fruit producers, the fruits mature almost black, and the flavor is described as better than average by some but bland by others.
Once you buy seeds, you can save your own to start your own in future years.
Read George’s trial experience with The Purple Tomato
On the more conventional cherry-tomato front, Tonatico is a new red-fruited cherry tomato that performed well enough in trial gardens last year to earn a 2025 All-America Selections award for the Northeast region.
AAS judges say this Bejo USA introduction is an excellent yielder, is disease- and crack-resistant, and has a “sweet and robust” flavor.
Plants are indeterminate (i.e. they produce continually until frost) and grow about five feet tall. Each plant can produce up to 200 nearly two-ounce round fruits, which ripen about 60 days after transplant into the garden.
Cherry tomato Park’s Junior Whopper Red Hybrid
Another new red cherry tomato from Park Seed is the favorite 2025 edible of Katie Dubow, president of the Chester County-based Garden Media Group and author of its annual Garden Trends Report.
Park’s new Junior Whopper Red tomato.
Credit: Park Seed
She says Park’s Junior Whopper Red Hybrid stands out not only for good taste but for its high nutrition levels and “impressive yield and vigorous growth in less-than-ideal conditions.”
Park claims the variety has high enough levels of vitamin C, vitamin A, and potassium to earn it “superfood” status.
Junior Whopper Hybrid is an indeterminate variety, producing round, red, crack-resistant, half-inch fruits all season long.
Park adds that the variety’s Beefsteak-tomato flavor has made it a “hands-down winner” in in-house taste tests.
If none of those cherry tomatoes strike your fancy, maybe this pink-fruited one will.
Unicorn Pink is the favorite new-for-2025 edible of Burpee Home Gardens manager Tiffany Heater, who touts the variety’s heavy fruit set, crack- and disease-resistance, and sweet flavor.
“It’s delicious for snacking, bruschetta recipes, and eating fresh in salads,” Heater says.
Plants are indeterminate and grow five to six feet tall. The inch-wide fruits ripen 65 days after planting.
Before we leave the world of new tomatoes, one more standard-size variety is worth mentioning for its good flavor and unusually rich-red fruit color: PanAmerican Seed’s WonderStar Red.
WonderStar Red tomato.
I test-grew this one last year and liked the beefsteak-like tomatoes that kept coming, even though the variety is supposed to be determinate (i.e. produces mostly at one time and then calls it quits).
PanAm’s vegetable manager Isabel Branstrom rates WonderStar Red as the brand’s top new 2025 edible, mentioning its early fruit maturity (60-65 days after transplant) and its resistance to two of the biggest tomato scourges – late blight and septoria leaf spot.
If you’re intrigued by something different, here’s a tropical vine with unusual flowers that also produces edible fruits.
Chester County’s Star Roses and Plants is introducing a new variety of passionfruit vine called Poppin’ Passion that’s being marketed as an edible under the company’s Bushel and Berry collection.
Poppin’ Passion passionfruit.
Credit: Star Roses and Plants
Star Roses’ Leah Palmer says Poppin’ Passion thrives in warm weather, is ideal for summer patio containers, and can be moved inside to overwinter for ensuing seasons. It’ll die with frost if left outside.
“It has abundant production of large fruit and a climbing habit that gets up to 10 feet in height,” she adds.
The flowers are a show in themselves – a purple inner ring surrounded by a white perimeter with stringy tips and protruding stamens in the center. That look reminded early admirers of Christ’s crown, which is the source of the passionfruit or passionvine name.
Palmer adds that the flowers are attractive to pollinators, too.
The fruits are oval, about the size of a grape, sweet in flavor, and gelatinous inside. Poppin’ Passion’s fruits ripen reddish-purple.
Plants grow and produce best in full sun.
Here’s a new herb with a flavor you’ll either love or hate – strong lemon.
Basil Everleaf Lemon.
Credit: Ball Seed
Everleaf Lemon is an upright, light-green-leafed basil that flowers weeks later than most lemon basils, extending its useful harvest season.
Both the scent and taste are distinctively lemon, which some gardeners prefer to “regular” basil but others describe as a chemical scent reminiscent of lemon furniture polish.
Everleaf Lemon plants can grow up to three feet tall.
The variety can be started from seed at home, it does well in pots or the ground, and growth is best in full sun.
This compact basil is the newest introduction in PanAmerican Seed’s Kitchen Minis line, a collection of potted varieties geared to grow inside on a sunny windowsill or counter.
PanAm’s Tara Breinig describes basil Bonsai as a fine-leaf Greek basil.
“Its smaller leaves mean no chopping is required for use in recipes,” she says. “Simply harvest and sprinkle the flavor.”
Bonsai can be grown in outdoor pots as well. Plants grow in a mounded habit about a foot tall and are ready for harvesting 41 to 56 days after planting, Breinig says.
Konstance is a new deep-purple kohlrabi that performed well enough in independent garden trials last year to earn one of four 2025 national All-America Selections best-edible awards.
Kohlrabi Konstance.
Credit: All-America Selections
AAS judges cited its smooth skin, crack-resistant crunchy texture, good keeping ability, and especially its performance in fall when most kohlrabis aren’t happy.
This is also a good-looking vegetable that not only produces four- to five-inch purple globes (the swollen edible roots) but also has purple leaf margins.
A hybrid variety from Bejo Seeds, Konstance grows about 16 inches tall and is a fast maturer at just 42 days after direct-seeding in the garden.
Kohlrabi is a cool-season cole-family vegetable that’s best planted in early spring.
The second 2025 AAS edible winner is pepper Pick-N-Pop, a miniature, banana-type pepper that – you might guess from the name – is intended as a “snacking” variety.
AAS judges say this Seminis Home Garden hybrid produces a heavy yield of yellow-maturing, four-inch fruits that are both crunchy and sweet. The two-foot-tall plants are capable of churning out 50 to 100 fruits each.
One judge also mentioned that Pick-N-Pop plants grow a dense leaf canopy that’s good at protecting the ripening fruits from sunscald, which is a mid-summer problem that can ruin overly sun-exposed pepper fruits.
Fruits take about 90 days from seed to ripe harvest.
Squash Green Lightning.
Credit: All-America Selections
The third 2025 AAS edible winner is a “patty-pan” summer squash with an eye-grabbing look – a green-and-white striper in the shape of a fat, scalloped turban.
“The color and pattern of the squash was novel and cute enough to use as a decoration,” said one AAS judge of Green Lightning.
Another PanAmerican introduction, this squash can be direct-seeded into the garden after frost with fruits ready in 48 to 52 days.
Green Lightning plants grow a fairly compact, bushy two feet tall (no sprawling and no staking), and fruits grow three to five inches wide and one to two pounds in weight.
AAS judges add that the seed cavities are small, and the flavor is good.
Squash Thriller.
Credit: All-America Selections
The last of the four 2025 AAS edible award-winners is another squash that you could grow either to eat or to use in fall decorating.
Thriller is a dumpling-type squash that produces blocky one- to two-pound fruits that are deeply ridged and colored in a changing blend of cream, green, and orange.
AAS judges called it a “psychedelic color pattern” and a look somewhat like a mini-pumpkin.
Plants grow a fairly bushy 15 inches tall with a three-foot spread and produce about eight fruits per plant 80 to 85 days after direct-seeding in the garden.
Plants are also resistant to the leading squash disease of powdery mildew and offer both “great appearance and good flavor,” the judges added.
Jalapeno pepper Spicy Slice
Although not brand-new, the “newish” jalapeno pepper Spicy Slice is being grown for the first time this season by wholesale Quality Greenhouses near Dillsburg, which means you’re more likely to see it on garden-center benches in 2025.
Chris Wallen, the head annuals grower at Quality, likes the variety for its thick walls, large and uniform elongated green fruits, and early maturity (65 days from transplanting to first harvest).
For heat fans, Spicy Slice is in the medium range for a jalapeno, rated at 6,000 Scoville units.
Read George’s post on best new edibles of 2024