The Best New Vegetables and Fruits of 2016

January 12th, 2016

Breeders and growers have been busy again trying to come up with the absolute best new plants ever.

The industry’s latest creations are in catalogs now and primed to show up in local garden centers come spring.

Blueberry BrazelBerries Perpetua

One of the year’s top innovations is a blueberry plant that produces two crops of fruits in the same year.

It’s the newest introduction of Brazelberries, an Oregon-based branded line of compact and attractive fruit bushes geared to home gardeners.

BrazelBerries Perpetua produces its first crop of small and mildly sweet berries in July and then a second crop in fall. Even one bush will produce fruits, but two or more boost yields due to interpollination.

Besides the fruits, Perpetua has hanging, white, bell-shaped flowers and dark-green, glossy, curled leaves in spring and summer, then deep-red fall foliage, and then yellow-red canes over winter.

Plants grow 4 to 5 feet tall and are vase-shaped, making them a good choice as a sunny and edible hedge.

Tomato Indigo ‘Dancing with Smurfs’

How about a blue tomato?

Stauffers of Kissel Hill Garden Centers plans to carry a new variety in the Indigo line called ‘Dancing with Smurfs’ that’s a cherry-type tomato with fruits that are blue-purple before maturing to purple-black.

Steve Norman, SKH’s director of merchandise, says the variety has good flavor and is a good keeper in addition to its novelty color.

Tomatoes are borne in 6- to 8-fruit clusters and keep producing until frost. The first ones are ripe about 80 days after transplanting.

Eggplant ‘Meatball’

Bucks County-based W. Atlee Burpee Co. is highlighting this new eggplant variety as the “mightiest, meatiest eggplant ever.”

“This variety is meant for Meatless Monday dinner tables,” says Chelsey Fields, Burpee’s vegetable product manager. “It’s an incredibly different fruit texture, one that’s both dense and meaty but also with a hint of sweetness. The moisture content is also really high, which helps to create a sort of ‘cuticle’ barrier that stops the seeds from browning once the fruit is cut.”

In the garden, ‘Meatball’ grows about 2 to 2½ feet tall and wide in full sun. Fruits are oval, glossy purplish-black in color, and about 5 inches in height.

Cherry tomato ‘Chocolate Sprinkles’

Here’s a new cherry tomato that looks as sweet as candy.

“The fruit’s red color with a dark-green overlay striping give it a ‘chocolatey’ appearance,” says Katie Rotella of the Ball Horticutural Co., which is growing this new PanAmerican Seed variety. “It’s received positive feedback on looks, taste and plant performance in trials across the country.”

‘Chocolate Sprinkles’ produces early (55 days from transplanting) and continuously to frost. The sweet, 1½-inch fruits are crack-resistant, and the plants are resistant to fusarium and tobacco mosaic diseases as well as nematodes.

Figure on a height of 7 feet.

Peppers ‘Escamillo,’ ‘Cornito Giallo,’ ‘Cornito Rosso’

Maine-based Johnny’s Selected Seeds hit the pepper jackpot with a 2006 award-winning, Italian-style “bull’s-horn” pepper called ‘Carmen,’ which became a lot of gardeners’ go-to sweet pepper.

New for 2016 is a yellow-fruited version of that red favorite called ‘Escamillo,’ which was good enough to earn a 2016 All-America Selections award based on independent nationwide trials.

Johnny’s Andrea LaBonte says ‘Escamillo’ produces 6-inch-long, sweet peppers that ripen yellow 80 days after transplant.

Also new from Johnny’s is smaller-fruited versions of both of those, which the company has dubbed “cornito” type peppers. (The larger originals are corno di toro peppers, which translates to “horn of the bull” in Italian.)

‘Cornito Giallo’ produces 5-inch-long sweet peppers that mature to yellow in 75 days, while ‘Cornito Rosso’ produces 5-inch-long sweet peppers that mature to red in 80 days.

Strawberry Delizz

This is the first strawberry ever to win an All-America Selections award, and what apparently turned enough heads was its heavy yield (about 45 fruits per plant) and ease of growth.

Delizz is also exceptionally heat-tolerant, has a long harvest span and produces sweet orange-red berries that average about an inch and a half in size.

It’s also a variety that starts fairly easily from seed, which is a cost savings over buying young plants.

And the plants are compact enough that they’re suitable for growing in containers, window boxes and hanging baskets in addition to in the ground.

Grow in full sun 18 to 20 inches apart.

Bean ‘Prevail’

I test-grew this new bush bean being carried by a variety of catalogs (Burpee, Park, Stokes, Territorial, etc.), and I don’t see how beans are going to get any better.

‘Prevail’ produced quickly (50 days from seed) and heavily, it ran into no bug or disease issues, and the pods were tender and stringless.

The beans were even all almost the same perfect size, which canners and commercial growers also will appreciate.

You won’t go wrong with this one if you don’t already have a favorite bean. It does everything but grow its own fence when groundhogs are lurking.

Tomato ‘Chef’s Choice Green’

Besides blue tomatoes, this year’s other interesting new tomato color is one that ripens a subtle lime-yellow with green shoulders.

It’s called ‘Chef’s Choice Green,’ and it’s also a flavorful-enough variety that it was the only new full-sized tomato to win a 2016 All-America Selections award.

The fruits are 9 to 10 ounces each and dense and meaty with a hint of citrus flavor. They mature about 90 days after transplanting.

If this one is as good as its sister namesake, ‘Chef’s Choice Orange,’ it’ll also be disease-resistant and one of the longest-producing tomatoes in your garden.