I just returned from the 2009 California Pack Trials. This is a weeklong event held every spring where the world’s commercial plant breeders introduce their new varieties of garden plants to the folks who will then, they hope, grow them on a big scale.

The plant version of the Detroit Auto Show, the California Pack Trials features plants won’t typically be available to you, the gardener, until the spring of 2010.

These plant professionals are definitely up on consumer trends and have caught on early to the renewed interest in vegetable gardening. Here are a few of my favorite things I saw.

Burpee live plants

Big news from this year’s Pack Trials event: Burpee, that iconic American vegetable seed company, now has a complementary brand of live vegetable plants, Burpee Home Gardens.

If you’ve missed the opportunity to grow your favorite Burpee seeds from scratch, or are just too busy to start seeds indoors, you can still grow your favorite Burpee varieties. You can find many of those popular varieties potted up at your garden center, ready to go straight into your garden plot.

Burpee Home Gardens will offer 23 Burpee varieties of tomatoes, 14 peppers, and 23 others, from broccoli to watermelon. The Burpee Home Gardens program will roll out in a limited test market for 2009, and will be available nationally for 2010.

Tomaccio cherry tomato variety

The Tomaccio cherry tomato was the coolest new vegetable plant I saw on the trip. This variety, developed by an Israeli plant breeding company called Hishtil, has been bred to dry naturally into a sweet tomato raisin.

Because it’s a cherry tomato, the Tomaccio raisin is much sweeter than a sundried tomato, and doesn’t really have that savory quality. The secret is in the fruit’s thick skin. A little tougher than a normal cherry tomato, the skin allows the tomato to dry without, well, turning into a really rotten fruit. Clip off a cluster of fruits to let them dry naturally, or speed up the process by placing them in a 105F oven for three or four hours.

The Tomaccio is a robust vining plant, too, perfect as a single specimen plant in the garden or as a patio container plant. The Tomaccio will be available as a limited release plant in 2009, so if you’re lucky to find one, definitely give it a try. I’ll be growing a sample plant myself and will keep you updated on its progress.

Tumbling Junior cherry tomato

Many of the plants from one UK plant breeding company (Vegetalis) are meeting the demands of small space vegetable gardeners. One of their new releases is Tumbling Junior, a trailing yellow cherry tomato plant with a compact habit.

Tumbling Junior is perfect for hanging baskets. One of the characteristics I like about it is that garden centers will then sell some with some of its fruits already on the plant. You’re that much closer to eating fresh tomatoes!

If you’re not up for a tomato in a hanging basket, Vegetalis has also bred upright versions of a compact cherry tomato in three different colors in the Sweet ‘n Neat line: Cherry Red, Scarlet, and Yellow. They’ve also developed compact versions of okra (Green Fingers) and eggplants (Ebony and Ivory), too.