Zone 7 - What to Plant in January

Zone 7 - What to Plant in January

January is go time for zone 7 gardeners. January is your first window to start your indoor sowings and order your seeds for the spring season. The next two months are the most important for starting your vegetables on time. Start your tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables to be ready for spring transplant!

The classic Burpee's Bush Big Boy Tomato is the same large, juicy favorite but has been made even better, especially for small-space gardeners. With this variety, you get the same number of tasty, big red tomatoes (10 to 11 oz. each), with the same sweet, aromatic, melt-in-your-mouth juiciness as the original, but the compact plants are only half the size!

Caribbean Red Habanero is one of the hottest peppers available! This habanero is a wrinkled, red hot pepper that needs to be handled with caution! This variety can be picked green at around 70 days, but for a sweeter flavor, allow them to turn red!

The Sweet Hungarian Wax is a great pepper for pickling and adding into salads or sandwiches. This pepper variety produces light yellow peppers that can be picked early or let ripen to an orange-red color.

Glacier tomato seeds produce a cold-tolerant, early-season tomato variety that thrives in cooler climates, making it ideal for short growing seasons or northern regions. Known for its ability to set fruit even in lower temperatures, Glacier tomatoes offer small (2-3 oz.), round, bright red fruits with a balanced, sweet-tart flavor. These tomatoes mature early, often within 50 to 60 days, providing a quick harvest and the opportunity for multiple crops in one season. The plants are compact and bushy, making them perfect for small gardens or container growing. Glacier tomatoes are not only valued for their early productivity but also for their resilience to cooler weather, which allows gardeners in less predictable climates to enjoy fresh, homegrown tomatoes with a classic taste. This tomato variety is wonderful for salads or sliced up for fresh eating!

Serrano is a hot, sweet pepper with a great taste! This pepper variety is a pungent pepper that can grow up to 4" long! These skinny peppers have medium thin walls that mature to a bright red color on thirty inch tall plants.

The prolific Louisiana Long Green Eggplant is an attractive banana-shaped variety that has a delicious full-bodied nutty flavor. This Southern heirloom variety is best picked young, with its white slightly green-ish skin, for optimal texture and flavor. This tall eggplant plant produces 8-9 inch long fruits that are slender and easy to cook with.

The Long Purple eggplant is considered a favorite productive Italian type of eggplant! This eggplant is a an old heirloom that was first brought to America in the 1870's by B.K. Bliss of New York. This variety produces good yields of mildly flavored eggplants that are 8-10" long by 2" wide. The Long Purple has a dark purple and glossy skin with pale white flesh that has few seeds. This variety is the most flavorful and tender when harvested young at 5-6" long. The Long Purple is a great variety for slicing and adding to different Italian dishes, such as lasagna.

The Sweetie Tomato is a prolific variety that produces an abundance of super sweet, small cherry-sized tomatoes, perfect for patio containers. This cherry tomato variety is one of the sweetest cherries around, as it boasts 12-14% sugar content and can be used for making juice or preserves without adding any extra sugar. This tomato grows exceptionally well in the home garden and will continuously produce until the first frost in fall. Sweetie produces .5-1" inch fruits in clusters of 15-20.

The Black Sea Man Tomato is a fantastic tasting Russian heirloom that has a wonderful rich flavor when added to different dishes. This tomato variety is a small plant that produces good yields of medium-sized brownish-pink fruits that have a beautiful olive green shading. The Black Sea Man has a beautiful marbled flesh that gets even more attractive when blanched and peeled.

The Yellow Pear is a plentiful yellow pear-shaped tomato that is vigorous and an extremely old heirloom. This tomato variety is very popular for both home gardens and markets, as it is as rich in vitamins as it is flavorful! The Yellow Pear's growth is fairly tall, so provide some staking or caging. This deliciously tangy tomato adds as pop of color in salads, sliced on a plate or in preserves, as it looks great on a summer hors d'oeuvre platter. The large plant of the Yellow Pear prolifically produces oodles of tiny yellow pear-shaped fruit with its favored flavor!

The Trip-L-Crop Tomato is an extremely long and productive heirloom tomato plant variety that thrives in a greenhouse setting! This tomato produces huge yields on a 15 foot vine that needs a trellising. The large 1-2 lb. tomatoes are red, meaty and great for canning.

Interior texture is smooth and dense with bright white color, even when roots get large. Exceptional quality and taste when picked young, but still tasty if allowed to sit in the garden longer, giving gardener an extended harvest opportunity.

The Pumpkin on a Stick will have you asking "is it a pumpkin, a gourd or a tomato?" but it's actually an ornamental eggplant! This unique delight has been baffling gardeners for over 125 years! These ribbed fruits will resemble a tomato and then a pumpkin once it dries out. This beautiful plant will need to be staked as it can reach 4 feet tall. This prolific plant will yield dozens of little orange fruits. Pumpkin on a Stick is perfect for any indoor decorations or arrangements as it is an autumn staple!

The Salsa Pepper is a mid-early variety of sweet Kapia for open field and greenhouse production. This pepper variety is very strong and productive, with good flower setting in warm climates. These peppers are relatively short and wide with thick juicy walls. Salsa is suitable for roasting, grilling, fresh market consumption and of course for making a sweet salsa!

With their wide, slightly flattened shape, the Mater Sandwich Tomato is great for slicing and layering, making it the perfect sandwich variety! This tomato is a large, slightly flat deep red tomato that lies across a piece of bread perfectly, tempting you with bits of bright red showing on all four sides! It stays together well too, so you get its juicy-meaty flavor in every bite. The Mater Sandwich is the king of sandwiches!

The Sparkler Radish is a bright scarlet colored radish with a sweet, juicy flesh and snappy flavor. This variety's scarlet skin fades to white on lower 1/3 of its round, to round oval bulb. This radish's medium tops are perfect for both home and market gardens. Sparkler can grow up to 1.5" diameter.

The Marvel of Four Seasons is a French butterhead lettuce with bibb-type rosette leaves. This butterhead, also known as Merveille des Quatre Saisons, is tasty and beautiful. The Marvel of Four Seasons has a robust shape with leaves ranging in bronze, gold, red and green.

Fordhook Giant is a popular standard for many home gardens. This variety is one of best tasting Swiss Chards! The Fordhook Giant grows to be a dark glossy green color with a deeply savory leaf.