Dr. Bob Gough may have departed the gardening world last year, but he left gardeners with more than 17 books on horticulture including The Guide to Rocky Mountain Vegetable Growing.

I never had the opportunity to meet Dr. Bob Gough face-to-face, but I got to know him anyway. He was the author of the “Ask Dr. Bob” gardening column on the pages of Zone 4 magazine. One of his last books, written together with his wife Cheryl Moore-Gough, is one of my go-to resources for vegetable gardening in a tough climate.

Soon we’ll all be fretting over chilly days that delay planting, so now’s a good time to pick up a copy of this book and tap into some of Dr. Bob’s vegetable growing wisdom.

The book is a good guide for any gardener, but it was written especially for gardeners who grow in short-season climates like we have in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming,

I’m already thinking about which tomatoes to plant in my garden next year and I need some help.

What are your favorite varieties?

I’m collecting suggestions on my VegetableGardener.com blog in three categories:

Best medium-to-large tomato
Best small or cherry-size tomato
Best tomato for flavor

I’ve already received some great recommendations, but could use a few more. Please let me know your top tomatoes!

Thanks to a packet of free organic tomato seeds from Lake Valley Seed Company, I was able to grow some wonderful orange tomatoes in my vegetable garden this year. The tomatoes were beautiful to behold on the vine and equally lovely in salads, sandwiches and salsas.

You can read all about how the heirloom tomato Amana Orange got its name in a blog I wrote for VegetableGardener.com called “Orange You Glad I Asked?”

For 2011, I grew six different varieties of large tomatoes and here are the results for four of them. The other two, Amana orange (an organic beefsteak) and Aunt Ruby’s German green (large green beefsteak) aren’t quite ready to pick yet.

But until they are, here’s the big tomato round-up for 2011. (I posted the small tomato results in August.)

The Better Bush tomato seeds were a free sample from Botanical Interests. This variety is a short season tomato (70 days) and I grew it in a large container on the patio. The nice-size slicing tomatoes grew on a very stout stem. The tomatoes were similar to a beefsteak in taste, only smaller. No plant disease problems. It’s still going strong.

Congratulations to Carrie Fritz of New Prague, Minn., for taking the top prize in the 3rd Annual Weird Veggie and Funny Fruit contest sponsored by WesternGardeners.com. Her Love Apple is actually three tomatoes that grew into the shape of one perfect heart. “Love Apples” (La Pomme D’Amour) is an old French term for tomatoes.

Our contest judge, Geri Koncilija, chose Carrie’s entry saying, “I really grew to love this guy.”

There’s also a lot to love about the background of Carrie’s vegetable garden.  Last year her fiance was deployed overseas so they couldn’t plant a garden, but this year they were able to plant one together.  Carrie wrote, “Our garden started out of love and has blossomed.” She also mentioned that a September wedding is in the works.

Second place goes to Amy Lambert, also from Minnesota, for her Tomato Grinch. Amy’s tomato caused Geri to break into the signature song from How the Grinch Stole Christmas: “You’re a rotter, Mr. Tomato Grinch, you’re full of dreadful spots. You have no place in a garden, you’re scaring all the crops.”

The results are in for the 2011 pepper trials in my Rocky Mountain garden. Here are seven varieties I’d recommend for any kind of gardening. Just for fun, can you guess which is the hottest pepper of the bunch?

The Red Mini Bell peppers, grown from seed purchased from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, did especially well in my container garden. The plant is still loaded with small peppers that are exceptionally sweet. I wrote about growing these peppers on my VegetableGardener.com blog.

The Kung Pao peppers were grown from a transplant I purchased at a local garden center. I grew this variety so I could make my own Kung Pao chicken recipe, in addition to other Asian specialties. This plant, also grown in a container on my patio, grew to about 30 inches.  The peppers are long and skinny and have thin walls which helps them dry quickly.

Got basil?

Large leaf Italian basil like this can be whirled into a delicious pesto in less than 15 minutes. I cut back this plant by about half. Then washed and dried the leaves to fill 2 cups (tightly packed).

For a nice, creamy pesto I grated about 3 ounces of Parmesan in my food processor and then set the cheese aside. Then I finely chopped 2 cloves of garlic. I added the basil leaves, cheese, 1/4 cup pine nuts (or walnuts) and 1 teaspoon or so of salt.

Pulse the mixture until it’s combined. Then add about 1/2 cup of olive oil while the processor is running. Mix until smooth.

This makes enough pesto for 1 pound of pasta, like my favorite whole-wheat penne. Serve with a salad and crusty bread for an easy summer meal.

Pesto also freezes well and I’ve often doubled this recipe and filled small containers or ice-cube trays for the freezer. It makes an easy winter meal, too!

Every year I hedge my tomato-growing bets by planting both large and small tomatoes; heirloom and hybrids.

This was a good year to plant different kinds of tomatoes in the garden because it’s been an odd gardening season.

Many gardeners I’ve heard from are wondering why their tomatoes aren’t producing like they should.

We owe most of our problems to the unusual weather conditions we’ve experienced from a colder-than-usual spring, followed by drenching May rains, and then hot July weather. Tomatoes hate these kind of weather fluctuations. They prefer to grow under more moderate conditions.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a nice warm September into October so my big tomatoes will have the extra few weeks they need to finish growing.

Until then, I thought you might like to see the results of my small tomato trial. This year I grew five different varieties of small tomatoes, all from seed sent to me from seed companies or organizations.

The other evening I caught a glimpse of a sphinx moth darting from petunia to petunia in the patio garden.

John grabbed his camera and captured this wonderful shot of a white-lined sphinx moth enjoying some of the Wave petunias Ball Horticultural Company sent me earlier this season to trial in my garden.

I like the Wave Purple  Improved Spreading petunia and Petunia Shock Wave Coral Crush in a hanging basket as much as this sphinx moth does.

The white-lined sphinx moth is common to the Western part of the US. It’s a large moth that resembles a hummingbird during flight or while hovering above flowers in the garden. The moth’s wings beat so quickly it’s hard to tell what they really look like while they’re moving.

But this image shows the colorful pink, brown, and white patterns on its wings as it enjoys a midnight snack.

Each spring, the experts with Denver Parks and Recreation tend this raised planter in my neighborhood park. However, this is the first year for such an interesting combination of plants. Mixing yellow and red Canna lilies with ornamental peppers is a brilliant idea.

Right now the peppers are ripening and turning the same shades of yellow and red as the Canna flowers. Not only is it a great combination, but it shows how the gardening pros plan ahead so bloom times coincide. I wish I could I could that!

I’m going to keep this idea in mind for my garden next season. Using ornamental peppers with flowering plants is a beautiful approach for adding a blast of color to any dull spot in the garden.

What ideas do you have for using something like this in your landscape? Please share them here!