Variety Recommendations
Sharon December 1st, 2009
Because I am on the mail and email list of every seed company in creation, I am spending a lot of time trying not to read plant variety descriptions. You see, I have other things to do. But it is hard. Seed catalogs are porn for garden people like me - I find myself beginning to enter into wildly unrealistic fantasies, in which I am harvesting bushel baskets of okra, and drooling slightly. It isn’t very attractive, but it is kind of fun for me. I want to curl up with a cup of tea and a pile of catalogs and let my imagination take me away.
But since I have told myself that I have to finish setting up the new blog before I do so, I will. But I didn’t say anything about not indulging in discussions of varities with my readers. This, of course, is important work, and wholly justifiable. Heck, I might even nobly help improve someone’s tomato or carrot harvest if we do this. It is all for you folks, really.
Ok, maybe not, maybe I’m just looking for an excuse to talk produce, but I do have to do a blog post, and I really do want to hear what you’ve all had good luck with. So here are some of my favorite varieties, up here in the cold, wet northeast. I’d love to hear what you’ve tried that you really like - do include your location and planting zone when you do it, so that we have a sense of the conditions of your garden.
On the subject of hybrid vs. OP/heirloom, btw, I have a general preference for the OP veggies, but no real objection to the judicious use of hybrids. The reality is that for my climate, a number of hybrids are better than the OPs - I simply can’t get lots of really good bell peppers with even any of the cold hardy OP varieties. That doesn’t mean I don’t grow and save seed from the OPs - I just separate them in the garden, and don’t plan to rely on the hybrids if times ever got really tough and I couldn’t afford or acquire more seed. My general rule is that I grow a hybrid only if it offers me something no OP variety can, and if I want the crop in the long term, I also save seed from an OP variety. If I can’t do both, I keep the OP. But I find I usually can - for example, I sometimes grow a hybrid sweet corn - but only after a bumper year of my preferred pop and dry corns, when I’ve got plenty of saved seed.
So you’ll see some hybrids, but a lot more OP varieties. As with everything, YMMV.
We’ll start with the tomatoes:
Unlike everyone else last year, I didn’t get the blight. It still wasn’t much of a tomato year, though - we had 26 inches of rain in June, and everything was stunted. It was cold until late July, and we had another 14 inches of rain in July. Still, tomatoes that did well in the crappy weather we had deserve their praise.
Paste: Orange Banana was the clear winner in productivity, but I still prefer Opalka and Polish Linguica for taste. Linguica didn’t do well in the cold and wet, but Opalka was respectable. Orange Banana is pretty good, though.
Slicers: My beloved early Glaciers came through like champions, producing early and often, despite disgusting weather. Prudens Purple and Pineapple did ok. Jaune de Flame didn’t do well at all, and neither did the Brandywines. Taxi was respectable early, but petered out.
Cherries: The one hybrid tomato I always grow is Sungold - there’s nothing like it. There was an OP variety circulating, but it just isn’t as good. Sungolds mostly shrugged off the weather - in fact, I got a respectable crop even from a garden area I’d totally abandoned because of heavy flooding early on. Black cherry also did well, with little cracking. Be My Baby Cherry was really tasty, although not super-productive The rest cracked constantly due to the wet conditions.
Peppers - it was just plain a crappy pepper year for us. The ones that did best were planted late, actually, they missed the worst of the rain and coolth.
Heirloom: Albino bullnose is not my favorite pepper, flavorwise, but it is a reliable and solid producer, and not bad. It has shrugged off bad conditions every year to go on and do well. The only other real success in this category was Amish Cheese, which was extremely tasty and productive. Chinese giant was passable, although very late, and are my favorites for flavor and size.
Hybrid: Sunbell and Flavorburst did pretty well for me.
Hot: Terrible hot pepper year, even for those in pots. I’m a pepperhead, and I like my peppers with good heat - not a great set of choices. Serrano de Sol did ok, So did Early Jalapeno, for a fairly kind definition of ok. Long red cayenne and Fish were passable. The habaneros totally tanked, as did most of the other peppers.
Potatoes: Some scab this year, because of the wet, but not a terrible year. Russian banana fingerlings were extremely plentiful, Purple Peruvian shrugged everything off, and Green Mountains did the same.
Eggplant: Surprisingly, it wasn’t a bad eggplant year - I have no idea why, since it should have been. Italian White produced very nicely, and has become a staple. Those little tiny ones “Hansel” and “Fairy Tale” did very well, and I think I’m going to sell the plants, but I just have no use for such tiny eggplants myself - I don’t have time to sit around stuffing midget veggies. Pingtung Long did fine, as did Rosa Bianca, so I’ll stick with them.
Carrots: Not a bad carrot year, even given the wet. Dragon did extremely well, was very sweet and my kids loved it. This was our first attempt with it. Oxheart gave its usual solid performance.
Turnips: We had the best turnip year ever. I realize this is not something most people would consider a delight, but I like them. Purple top white globe did very well, as did Japanese White.
Beets: This was the year of the Yellow Intermediate Mangel - they are delicious, easy to grow and did very, very well. Rote Kugel was a close second.
Broccoli: We really loved Purple Peacock - tasty and successful. Umpqua was a nice, reliable performer. Romanesco did well and was yummy, despite taking up space all year. Blue Wind, an early hybrid, came in nice and early when it was raining all the freakin’ time.
Peas: Alderman did very well for us, as did Sugar Ann. Blauschokkers did terribly - almost no soup peas this year.
Corn: We had a nice harvest of Northstine Dent corn, planted on the late side and it did very well. It is the best tasting meal corn I’ve ever eaten, even if not the heaviest yielder. We ate the Black Aztec in the green stage, because it was pretty clear it would never have matured all the way, given the rain. Tasty, but I wanted it more for grain than green.
Cabbage: Was slow to size up, but Early Jersey Wakefield did well enough, and January King and Glory of Enkuizen did great for me.
Kale: They all did fine. My favorite for flavor is Lacinato, my favorite for texture is White Russian. But I’ll eat any kale or collards happily.
Beans: Not a great bean year. The red noodle beans did very badly, which was a pain, since I love them. The asparagus beans did ok, but not up to previous performances. The dry beans didn’t all get dry enough - Mrocumier, Hutterite and Jacob’s Cattle did the best.
Green beans: The bush beans were late, but finally did pretty well. I got a good harvest out of Royalty Purple and Benchmark. The poles weren’t as good this year, but Northeaster, Fortex and Blue Lake did ok. I tried growing Genuine Cornfield up the corn, but it just didn’t work well this year - too much wet and cold early on.
Cucumbers - Well, there’s something that mostly liked the weather. Poona Kheera remains a major fave, while Northern Pickler did very well.
Ok, I can’t remember what else I planted 
. How about y’all?
Sharon
- seeds
- Comments(29)
I’m down in the South in Zone 6A or 6B, can’t remember which, and we had a heck of a year with Kentucky Wonder pole beans. We only had about 25′ planted, but we easily canned 50 quarts worth. We picked them every single day from early June to mid August. It was pretty unbelievable.
The marketmore cucumbers did very well for us also. We only planted 10′ of cucumbers, but again, we picked daily and canned probably 20 quarts worth of pickles.
We are in Okra country here and unfortunately we didn’t have much luck. We talked with a few friends about it and they all agreed that it was a terrible okra year. I’m not sure if we’ll do okra next year or not due to the lousy performance and difficult preservation methods.
Our bell peppers, CA Wonders weren’t much at all although the Sweet Banana’s did terrific. The pepper plants were massive early and that was a little unexpected. We might have to give them more space next year. We planted two rows in our standard 30″ wide beds.
My seed starting in the greenhouse didn’t pan out at all this year and it’s unfortunate because we had to rely on the more commercial varieties. I’ve got a new strategy for next Spring and I’m hoping to get some good OP varieties going of almost all vegetables. Regardless, growing anything is fun and rewarding. I can’t wait to try my hands at the Poona Khera cucumber, they look awesome.
SE Pennsylvania, zone 6b. Like Sharon, we had a very wet June and cool summer until very late July/early August.
We had blight on both tomatoes and potatoes this year. My favorite beefsteaks - Cherokee Purple and Brandywine - were total losses. The surprise was a new past variety I was trialing this year - Speckled Roman. This is a stabilized hybrid, so it’s now apparently OP. Interesting thing is it comes from Banana Legs and Antique Roman varieties, which makes it sound related to Sharon’s Orange Banana tomatoes that did well. These plants stood up to the blight and were astonishingly tasty for a paste tomato, as I found out in the absence of any beefsteaks. Not to mention, the fruits are strikingly beautiful. They would probably sell like crazy at a farmer’s market. The Peacevine cherry was as productive as ever, despite the blight, but the fruits never developed the usual excellent flavor.
We had a good year for eggplants. The Listada de Gandia did very well for us, all things considered. I will definitely grow this again.
My blue Solaize leeks did very well again this year, though I’m seeing some rodential gnawing near the roots. Next year I’ll go back to a proper deep trenching method to avoid this and produce straight white parts on the leeks up to 18″ long.
Overall a bad year for our winter squash though a volunteer sugar pumpkin produced very well.
The light colored beans (Hutterite soup and flageolet) failed in the wet spring, though the black Cherokee Trail of Tears came through strong. I learned (the hard way) that light colored beans are in general far more susceptible to rot than dark colored beans.
Spring Tuscan kale was a failure with the wet spring. Got a decent but not outstanding crop from it in the fall. Rainbow chard likewise did nothing in the spring but held on enough to produce a small crop in the fall.
The purple ruffles basil planted in spring neither grew nor died. Hardly anything to harvest from my favorite basil in this wet year.
We pulled six varieties of hardneck garlic by the end of June to prevent it from rotting. The German extra hardy took the most damage, though to be fair it was in the least well prepared bed of all the varieties. Chesnok red did surprisingly well, as did the Georgia fire and Rosewood.
I’m in MA and got hit hard with blight. I still managed to do well with Amish Paste tomatoes, the rest didn’t do so well.
My bell peppers did remarkably well. They were Quadrato di Asti and were heavy producers of large block peppers.
The hot peppers did pretty poorly all around.
Cucumbers were Boston Pickling and did extremely well as did Black Beauty zucchini. My winter squashes had an unusually bad year, but I normally do Waltham butternut and Boston Sugar Pie pumpkins. (I like all the new england squashes!)
The peas didn’t do well this year, but they were planted rather late. The beans however were amazing. I planted blue lake bush beans and from a 4×8 bed was picking 3 lbs every other day. It got a little silly.
We’ve had a mild fall and my chard is still going strong although I can’t remember what variety I planted. Its a white stemmed type.
Beets were also a big winner with Detroit Dark Red.
Late flat dutch did quite well for cabbages. Broccoli also had a good year with Green Goliath.
I’m going to be trying a few new varieties next year as well. The garden was expanded again and I’m looking more closely at season extension. Its too bad I wasn’t better prepared this year as it would have been a wonderful year to have more things growing late.
Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners:
This site compiles information from your fellow gardeners to help you decide what to grow. Read more about this Citizen Science program. The information you supply can also influence breeding efforts and seed availability
http://vegvariety.cce.cornell.edu/
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You asked about bell peppers, but I have to say that I like Lipstick red, sweet peppers from Johnny’s anyhow, even though they’re not true bells, as Lipstick fruits are large enough for me. I’ve been growing them for 2 decades now, and have been saving seed for about 8 years I guess, though I’ve mixed some purchased seed back into the mix once or twice. I find Lipstick to be a consistent producer, regardless of cool weather. We had plenty of Lipstick, even this past summer. They red ripen dependably and nearly everybody loves them. Even some coworkers that hail from Central America were impressed.
We got hit with blight very badly here and among our tomatoes, I found Thessaloniki to exhibit the most resistance, though this resistance wasn’t something I had looked for in the past.
I should add that I’m in eastern Massachusetts. Perhaps some readers and Sharon remember that, or perhaps not
In zone 5 in eastern Kansas, surprisingly I grow a lot of the same varieties that Sharon does! I was happy to see some familiar names in your list. Our summer was wet by Kansas standards, but not quite as cool as yours, so I’m sure some of my different experience this year is due to that.
Tomatoes - I tried polish linguisa and opalka for the first time and fell in love! Both produced respectably with the linguisa doing an exeptional job. We made a bunch of salsa and spagetti sauce out of these and are enjoying it so much this winter! I also planted brandywines which did about like normal. They’re never huge producers, but they’re my favorite tasting slicer. For cherry tomatoes, we had good results with Gardner’s delight - plenty of garden snacks!
Peppers - It was warm enough for all of our peppers to do pretty well. We didn’t get quite as many bell type peppers as normal. We use a pimento strain for bell peppers because they are thicker walled - more pepper per fruit. The strain we have puts on peppers the size of a bell pepper. Our hot peppers plants did well and bore tons of fruit, but we weren’t careful enough when we saved seed last year so some of them were crossed. The Thai/Serano cross was good enough that I may try to deliberately re-create it though. We grow a red paprika pepper that has consistantly done well for us. We haven’t bought paprika in years and we use a lot of it!
Turnips - did great. standard purple top white globe variety.
Leeks - didn’t grow as well as usual, but may have been the spot. We planted lancelots, I think.
Corn - we grew a multicolor popcorn this year that did fabulous - over 3 lbs of popcorn from a 4′x4′ spot. I’d be happy to share seed if anyone is interested. We also tried hopi pink flour corn and didn’t have great results with it. I’m going to try again next year and see if it was the spot.
Green beans - blue lake pole was the clear winner. I also tried puple triunfo violetto and it didn’t do well. I’ll be sticking with the blue lakes for next year, I suspect.
peas - Little wonder green pea did beautifully. We picked about 10 lbs of peas (shelled) from our 4′x12′ plot.
cabbage - we planted glory of eunkzen (sp?) and early jersey but neither did particularly well. I think the weather fooled them so they took forever to head. We ended up cutting the immature heads and using them because we needed the space for a late summer round of beans. I’m going to try again with them though. I planted a hybrid this fall for the short maturation time and it has done well.
Broccoli and cauliflower - did horrible this year. It was a widespread phenomenon though so I think it was just the weather. I don’t remember the varieties.
Chard - star of the garden. We planted it early in a cold frame and it kept going, and going and going. We planted rainbow mix. Its still going this fall through several hard frosts. Amazing.
Dry beans - we had great luck with black turtle black beans. They’re a consistant high yielder that matures early. We also did passable with red beans (scarlett something is the variety). The great northerns didn’t fully ripen in time (planted too late) and had a passable yield.
Squash - all the winter squashes struggled this year. I have one heirloom that I only have a few seed of from the year before last (no fruit this year). I hope I can save it. That said, Tennessee Sweet potato squash did great and the butternuts (waltham standard) did pretty well.
Sweet potatoes - beuregard (sp?) did amazing. We harvested over 200 lbs of sweet potatoes from 50 hills, although 50 of that came from just 4 hills(different location). These have earned a permanent place in our garden.
Garlic - music and bavarian purple (both hard necks) consistantly perform for us. We’ve been saving them for years and it shows - every year they get more consistant and high yielding. They also last well for us through the winter.
I think that’s all I can remember varieties for. Thanks for the thread - I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone else is using!
-Farmer Amber
I’m in Iowa, zone 5a (pretty darn close to 4!). We too had an unusually cool wet summer. That combined with trying to establish our homestead on our new acreage meant that lots of my garden was neglected this year.
Tomatoes- I also had Polish Linguisa this year and it seemed to be the most resistant to the blight that we were also hit with. My Mortgage lifters were the first to go. One bright spot in my slicers was an heirloom called Amana Orange, a huge yellow/orange beefsteak that produced heavily
Peppers- we had a HUGE hot pepper year, we had so many hot hungarian wax peppers that we hardly knew what to do with them all, and jalapenos, cayenne and anaheims as well. I did get several plants of Peter, Red peppers from a friend and they did well, although were late and few ripened. My bell peppers were all a bust though.
My peas and beans were decimated by bunnies so hardly produced anything. Note to self- work on the fencing!
For corn, we grew some hybrid sweetcorn and also an heirloom dent called Bloody Butcher. It grinds into a lovely lavender colored cornmeal. I didn’t try to save any seeds from it since the farmer across the fence planted corn this year. Maybe next year when he should rotate into soybeans.
We had chard that produced and produced, thanks to the cool weather and I had some broccoli that did well but I can’t remember what kind it was.
I’m working on some raised beds for next year and trying to do a ‘master plan’ for the farm layout. We’ve spent so much of this summer trying to get the house more livable that I didn’t have time to work on the permaculture.
NW of Atlanta, zone 7B/8 (depending on which version of the zone map you’re looking at). We had a soggy spring that delayed planting by 3-4 weeks, a dry July and August, flooding in September and October, and an unusually early freeze (19 Oct? I need to recheck the date to be sure). I grew most of the plants described below from seed, in our dining room.
For tomatoes: the best fresh-eating tomato this year was Cherokee Purple; Rutgers was the best cooking tomato, and the cherry tomato I’ve grown for a couple of years now, Matt’s Wild Cherry, did just fine.
Peppers: Spanish Spice (excellent for grilling, but a hybrid), Jimmy Nardello, and a yellow banana pepper I bought at a garden-supply store all did well and tasted great. California Wonder tasted good but was not especially productive this year. Our jalepenos were almost too hot to eat. No idea what happened there, because they are from the seed packet I used the year before. I also grew some MiniBelles, and they were extremely cute, but they didn’t have much flavor and I won’t grow them again.
Eggplants: Casper White produced like a champ; Rosa Bianca did less well for us this year.
Okra: Louisianna Short was productive and delicious.
Melons: I am on a quest to find the perfect melon for my yard. So far, the hybrid Sugar Nut is reliably sweet and productive. Schoon’s Hardshell was pretty good—not as sweet as Sugar Nut, but flavorful. Sakata’s Sweet was a bust.
Corn: Dakota Black popcorn grew well and mostly dried before the rains returned in September. It is a short enough variety that it didn’t look too weird in my front yard, where the garden is.
Beans: We like Burpee’s Tenderpod bush bean. It isn’t as productive as a pole bean would be, but I haven’t been able to convince my family that other beans are also good, even though they are different. This variety produced really well over many weeks.
Dry Beans: Pigott Family Heirloom Cowpeas (crowder peas) were productive enough in the little patch I grew them in that I have been able to both cook up a few batches for my family (good food!) and to share seeds with other gardeners.
Those are the basics. I grew plenty more veggies, but I am already using too much space here!
North Texas here, zone 8. We had an extremely hot and dry summer (and it came on early) and even so, I had great luck with Baker Creek’s Asian Red Lettuce. It was the last to come in, but did far and away the best in the heat and drought. Plus, it’s gorgeous! Also, pretty much any variety of Swiss Chard is a win for us - it was the last thing standing in the spring/summer garden and the first up in the fall garden. It seems to be happy to grow in virtually any conditions, since we’ve had 100+ degrees and drought, as well as freezing and torrential rains here within the last six months. The chard survived everything.
First, Sharon, thanks for being so selfless and starting this for us.
We’re near Peterborough in south central Ontario which is zone 5A on the Cdn map. Very cool, wet season this year.
Tomatoes: thanfully, we didn’t have a problem with blight like so many did. Had lots of Candy Isis cherry tomatoes and Bloody Butcher did well. Amish paste was okay. Brandywine cracked.
Beans: Bountiful Bean did well. Came along a little late but had lots of them.
Peas: Golden Sweet is a favourite for us and the deer. We didn’t get many as the deer have not learned to share.
Carrots: Little Finger grew beautifully. They were in a raised bed.
I live in the mountain west. We are officially zone 5 but zones are based on minimum lows for winter. Great info for perennials, not so accurate for summer annuals. We are at 5400′ altitude and in the desert, so the temperature drops significantly at night. The fluctuation between night and day in the summer is 40-50 degrees. So when it hits 100 during the day, the nighttime low will only be 50 or 60. The UV rays are also stronger up here which is great for the solar oven, but can be really hard on some plants (especially beans). The soil is alkali and saline. So for the few that may have similar conditions I have found a few veggies that not only survive but produce pretty well.
Punta banda tomatoes- They are about the size of a large cherry tomato, but are more like a sauce tomato. Very meaty, don’t split, and when I make sauce from them I never have to cook the sauce down. They are incredibly prolific.
O’odam peas- they are a soup pea but they make very good “snow peas” and if picked young make a decent shelling pea. They are hardy and alkali tolerant. I have volunteers sprout in the fall that survive the winter and produce in the spring. These also make great feed for livestock.
Both can be ordered from Native Seeds Search in Tucson.
A few other plants that grow very well here are rhubarb, winter wheat, and potatoes.
I’m afraid I’ve kind of soured on the whole heirloom/OP thing. My reality is that I have a very small amount of space for gardening, so I really need for every square foot to count. That means I need high-yielding varieties, and I need disease resistant varieties that actually will survive to produce a yield. In many cases, that means hybrids. Sorry, but it really does.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the end of the world is unlikely to come quite as quickly as some have been proclaiming, so for at least a while longer I’m going to take a chance and assume that the seed producers are going to be around for a while.
A few varieties I’ve had good, consistent results with year after year:
Beans: Provider bush and Fortex pole snap beans.
Beets: Lutz Winter Keeper
Cabbage: Early Jersey Wakefield
Onions: Copra
Squash: Waltham Butternut (apparently it is somewhat resistant to the dreaded squash vine borer!)
I’m still in a searching/experimenting mode for: Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, fall storage Cabbage, Carrots, Cauliflower, Chard, Corn, Lettuce, Melons, Parsnips, Peas, Potatoes, Spinach, Radishes, Rutabagas, Tomatoes, Turnips, Zucchini & Yellow Squash
While we probably don’t have that many vegetable varieties in common with the US, I’ve tried a few that stand out. I do grow a few hybrids:
Emerald Kohlrabi - I’ve switched to this from Purple Vienna and found it much more bolt resistant and faster growing.
Gold Rush zuchini - prolific yellow skinned zuchinni. Takes up rather a lot of space though.
As for the open pollinated seeds, for the brassicas I’ve had good results with the Romanesco broccoli variety Precoce, including one ridiculously large specimen which is almost as tall as I am, Red Russian kale (also known as Ragged Jack), and Lacinato kale (Tuscan/Cavalo Nero/Palma di Toscana all seem to be the same variety). The Red Russian is just allowed to go to seed and self-sow around the place. I find it a bit tough, but for precisely that reason it is very pest and weather resistant. I’m not that fussed with the Lacinato, but it does grow well. Attracts more whitefly than the curly and flat leaved types of kale though.
Last summer wasn’t very good for tomatoes but I did get good results with Black Cherry - complex flavors, quite split resistant, and Orange Roma. (Despite growing tomatoes for more than 15 years, I’m still “trialling” various varieties - there’s always just one more from the catalog
Most of my bean varieties are local heirlooms, but if you can get your hands on Roquefort bush beans I would thoroughly recommend them, especially for a small garden. Compact upright plants that don’t tend to flop over, and good crops of tender yellow beans. My favorite pea is actually a pink flowered flour pea variety which produces masses of tendrils and is a good climber that needs no human assistance. I got fed up with all the other pea varieties that I tried which would always fall over and refuse to climb, and end up needing to be tied to the poles. Trialled Wando, and Carouby peas last year and was very disappointed. Poor germination rate, and although the Wando had impressively large pods, there were no extra peas in the pods, so much of it was empty space. Trying Alderman this year and once again very poor germination rates, compared to the nearly 100% germination of my saved flour peas.
Ah, seeds! I LOVE seed catalogs, I’ve already got a stack 3 inches high. I sat down the other night and started writing out what I wanted to grow and ended up with over 100 things, lol. And I have about 40 square feet of patio on which to do it, hehehehe! I only have about 30 containers, so I’ll have to “contain” my enthusiasm!
I’ll be keeping my five types of garlic (Champoeg, one from the Corvallis Farmers Market, Chesnock Red, Killarney Red and Oregon Blue), my pie cherry and my apple.
I’m also planning on growing a small kiddie swimming pool full of Tom Thumb lettuce, Forellenschuss lettuce, scallions, Red Sails loose leaf lettuce and Bloomsdale spinach. I’ll also grow Alderman Tall Telephone peas and when they are done, I’ll put in Old Homestead Pole Beans. I’m growing Siletz and Willamette Tomatoes, Black Cherry tomatoes and maybe a yellow cherry. I’m planning on oregano, rosemary, Lemon Thyme, Old Mexican cilantro, Lemon basil, Genovese basil, German chamomile, and garlic chives. I’m gonna try Meadowsweet, Hyssop, Plantain and Mullein for my medicinals (and to see what seed saving would be like). I’m also planting Ireland Creek Annie soup beans, Cherokee Trail of Tears black beans, Cannellini beans and Old Navy soup beans in my limited space, utilizing vertical space. I am growing kale currently (Red Russian and Lacinato). I’d like to try La Ratte fingerling potatoes, but I didn’t have much luck with container potatoes last year for some reason. I’d like to try hops, to shade my trailer, but we’ll see. Oh, and I have some Mammoth Russian Sunflowers I’d like to get in. They’ll be grand!
I’d have to pull my planting journal out and I am too lazy for that right now. But despite a generally lousy garden summer - I did German heirloom tomatoes which were spectacular - very beefy, flavorful and almost purplish in color.
My winter joy is thumbing through the seed catalogs and fanstasizing.
Hey Sharon,
I wonder if our neighbours had diseased tomatoes too. Everywhere we went we saw the saddest looking brown tomatoes, except for ours (all started from home, except a few from a friends seedling CSA) and our friends to whom we gave some of our tomato starts to. Our tomatoes grew beautifully, just like normal.
I wonder if other folks got theirs at Walmart, etc and got diseased plants.
Anyway, I’ll just mention some super-great producing varieties for us…
Peas: Great luck with Oregon Sugar Pod II for snow peas, huge producers, super tasty
Beans: Fortex - gorgeous! Enormous volume and because they climb they were disease free. Delicious steamed and pickled.
Tomatoes - Amish Paste are nice all-round sort of tomatoes, disease free and delicious and nice for processing; we tried LongKeeper - they store for months and are not ripe yet. Taste wise I dunno yet, I hope they don’t suck. A homegrown “fresh” tomato in February would be a miracle.
Boy this was inspiring. I went back through my records (such that I have) and determined that last year was pretty good. I only got through the winter stuff, but I know we had a good year with tomatoes and peppers - unlike you, Sharon, but our eggplants went bust. Which is perplexing because if one goes great, the other should too. I can only think that the eggplants didn’t get off to a good start (for some reason?)… It was a good year. I’m glad I looked. We grow in different worlds. My problem is too little water - not only do we normally only get 12″, I haven’t seen 12″ for six years. Last year was 10″ but the year before was 2″! We are set up to irrigate always. And MULCH.
Thanks for a great post!
david
Lynne, it might have more to do with how well you support, space and maintain your tomato plants. We had 13 plants grown from organic seed, started in our living room. They were all affected by blight. The problem may have started with Home Despot or Walmar seedlings, but once the spores were in the air, there was no telling where they’d end up. I saw other organic gardeners with home produced seedlings with blight on their plants as well. And one of those had her garden on a hill for excellent drainage and a pretty sophisticated trellising system, with all the lower branches of the plants trimmed to improve air circulation. The spores, I’m told, can travel 60 miles in the air. There is no tomato or potato immune to the blight, though some varieties have developed resistance. Even if you didn’t select your varieties with blight resistance in mind, it could be that you had some that were resistant. I suspect the Speckled Roman that did well for us has some resistance.
Western Maine, White Mountain foothills. Zone 4a or b depending on the downdraft from Mt. Washington.
I grow lots of greens. One of the best performers is always Green Wave mustard. It lasts all season, falling over but putting out new tufts of greens all over. It almost burns your mouth raw, but is mild and succulent sauteed. They’ve just now gone by.
But my favorite greens are the chicories. Endives and escaroles are annual, and I’m eating the last of the Frisee endive as I write. The radicchios, catalognas, sugarloafs, and grumolos are perennial. They all die back to the ground at the end of fall and put up little heads, then leafy greens in the spring. Red grumolos are a favorite because they put up little radicchio heads in the spring. The sugarloafs make a nice slightly bitter salad leaf, then a nice loose head. The catalognas are OK in salad, but really shine as a quickly cooked green in olive oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes. The plants crowd out unwanted annual weeds, even the vile gallinsoga. I’ve taken to planting the perennial chicories in a mixture with parsnips and wintercress for a complete spring feast. Some of the parsnips go to seed and make a very tall, beautiful yellow umbel flower. I collect the parsnip seeds every fall. Most of the perennial chicories get tough mid summer, but everything else is ready by then. They perk up in the fall, and sometimes put out new leaves and little heads during a warm spell before the ground freezes solid. Keep varieties separated if you save seed. They will revert to the wild form, which is great, too, and I grow it for the ducks in the lawn because they love it. We call it duckery.
The other favorite green is rapini/rapa/broccoli raab. The early varieties are nice but small. The later varieties are big and prolific. I don’t even want to eat regular broccoli anymore. The only drawback is that they go to flower fast and need to be picked regularly.
My husband and I have gotten so we crave greens over other vegetables. Others are chard, beet & turnip greens, various chinese mustards, kale, and, of course, leaf lettuces.
Zone 6b according to the latest zone map, metro St. Louis, MO. Cooler than normal summer (delightful!), extremely wet October (12+” rain!!), longer growing season than normal due to very late first fall frost. I grow only OP seeds and save the easy ones, working my way gradually toward saving biennials.
Tomatoes: Arkansas Traveler is my mainstay slicer, Rose the other slicer I grew this year. Hungarian Italian Paste is my paste tomato. All three did OK though I planted them very late for this area (early June). I grow a yellow cherry whose seeds got mixed into one of my standards one year so I don’t know its name, but it tastes good. It did well this year too.
Sweet peppers: the most productive one for me again this year is a thin-walled Italian frying style whose name I don’t know. I also grow a bell (World Beater) which did OK this year. I am still looking for a productive pimiento and will trial some next year.
Hot peppers: my Ancho peppers weren’t planted till early June and waited till late in the season to set peppers, but they sure set them once they got around to it. In the end, the Anchos beat out all the sweet peppers in terms of number and weight set per plant, but very few ripened to red before I had to harvest them.
Eggplants: total failure this year. I cannot seem to grow eggplants for some reason.
Sweet potatoes: all rotted due to the excessive October rainfall and cold weather. Or maybe they were eaten by voles - lots of vole evidence in the patch.
Potatoes: a good year for the French Fingerlings I grew for the first time. I still have 16 pounds left to plant for next year, if they make it through winter.
Popcorn: excellent year because I managed to get the crop harvested during the few sunny days we got in October. I don’t know the variety name, but it’s supposed to be an heirloom Midwestern variety. I got it from a local farmer.
Dry beans: Midnight Black Turtle, seeds from the same farmer that gave me the popcorn seeds, very good crop this year although I grew only a small area. Must grow much more next year!
Pole Bean: Northeaster (a Romano type), excellent yield this year, beans even in November!
Asparagus bean: Red-Seeded, not quite as productive this year due to cool, wet October but still good.
Collards: best year ever from spring planting because the harlequin bugs didn’t kill them in July. Cascade Glaze plants are still full of leaves for December harvests! We couldn’t keep up with these plants! I’m leaving the plants to see if any survive the winter.
Kale: best year ever from spring planting, same reason as collards. We grew Beedy’s Camden from Fedco Seeds, and it is outstanding! In fact, the plants are still alive and I got a harvest off them last week! I’m leaving the plants to see if any survive the winter.
Storage radishes (planted in midsummer for fall): Round Black Spanish and Red Meat, both very productive in a really difficult fall when the other seeded-in fall greens did very poorly. I just harvested the remaining radishes of each to store in the root cellar.
Leeks: Blue Solaize, did very well this year. I finished harvesting them today, just before our first killing freeze that is coming in the next couple days.
Lettuce: Bronze Arrowhead (looseleaf) is my mainstay, last to bolt of those I’ve tried so far. Did as well as usual in spring, fall crop was a bust. Tried Pablo (Batavian type) this year, we liked it, did fine in spring, a bust in fall. Grew Jericho (romaine) in the spring, did well as usual.
Bok choy: I grow Prize Choy. Spring crop OK (bok choy bolts early here), fall crop just sat there in October, finally put on a little size in November but much less productive than usual, cool wet fall weather the probable cause.
Garlic: some of the crop rotted over the winter but that was my fault because I neglected mulching. I grow and like Inchelium Red (softneck) and Kaskaskia Red (rocambole).
Potato onions: much of the crop rotted over the winter due to neglect of mulching. Fortunately I had enough to replant for next year, but we ate very little this year.
Carrots: bad year for carrots (planted the wrong time and most got eaten by voles). I grow Danvers 126 as main crop, Jaune Du Doubs for its yellow color and different taste.
Squash: good year for both Waltham Butternut and Lady Godiva.
In the Willamette Valley of western Oregon, with composted raised beds on clay soil. After failing with pickling cucumbers two or three years in a row, I said I’d give it one last chance. Planted about a four-foot square with Homemade Pickles, underplanted with sweet alyssum, per a suggestion I read on your blog. Canned 11 quarts of dill pickles from that little patch. Could also have made plenty of pickle relish, but I ran out of steam.
On the other hand, lemon cucumbers, which my husband loves to munch and which always do beautifully for me, fizzled and died. Go figure. Most years, though, they are great in the garden, and we have more than we can eat from just two or three plants. Wonderful in salad, and I even made refrigerator bread and butter pickles from them one year when we had a wild excess. Delicious.
I also love the tiny yellow pear tomato, just because it’s wildly prolific and so pretty. Its flavor is fine but not spectacular, and the fruits turn mushy easily, so every year I swear I won’t plant it, and every year, somehow, I do. It is good in salad; I also take handfuls to work in my lunch.
Bright lights chard is another favorite; it lasts through most winters here, looks beautiful, tastes wonderful and thoughtfully reseeds itself, so I only have to bother replanting every few years. The rest of the time, I just dig up the handy volunteers and put them where I want them.
Redventure celery is a new favorite. I grew it for the first time the summer before last, and loved it. Did everything wrong, so the stalks were tiny, and the ones that got bigger were hollow, but it was great in salad, and it lasted until December dumped an extremely rare two feet of snow on it. The crowns survived that too, and popped back up in spring to make a second crop. This year I didn’t get around to planting it until August — several months late — and thought it hadn’t germinated, but it did, and there are several small plants out there looking thriving. I am quite excited.
Parsley root — hamburg, I think. Parsley and good cooking roots in one, and it produces through the winter.
Sorrel — I love for the flavor, and because it’s so hardy, and annually reseeds itself. During the great snowstorm of 08, I picked sorrel outside — from an uninsulated plastic pot! — to put in our Christmas raviolis.
Purple tomatillos - ridiculously prolific and make great canned salsa (picked green). I don’t much like the flavor when they ripen, but green, they’re rather lemony and quite nice.
Ground cherries — I planted these Years ago, and now I can’t get rid of them; volunteers pop up every summer in the garden. I think the variety was Aunt Molly’s. Our season isn’t really long enough for them, but they gamely persevere, and I love them for it. They make lovely golden, strawberry-flavored jam.
Red iceberg lettuce — gorgeous stuff, as pretty as red leaf lettuce, but crunchy! Also sweet and delicious, and absolutely nothing like the green iceberg from the store. It lasted nearly forever in the garden without turning bitter, and took a very long time to head, so for weeks I could pick off the outer leaves as needed. It also made enormous heads. My favorite lettuce.
Oh, we’re in zone 7.
wanting to add…that the story of how the findhorn gardens were started is very much an adapting in place experience!
We’re in zone 4b in Maine, and I had the most gorgeous snow peas this year. Oregon Giants have produced dependably year after year, and I can still harvest them deep into July, but the best part is their flavor - man! Sweet and delicious, even if they look to be past their prime.
Tomatoes were a blighted disaster, but the Amish Paste looked best of them all, and I was able to salvage a few Brandywine fruits to eat.
Got blight on the potatoes, too, but the Carolas seemed to do the best, and they made amazing roasted baby potatoes. The Green Mountains and Irish Cobblers suffered a bit more.
I’ve always had great harvests from Johnny’s Spicy Mesclun mix.
I’m in 4ish Anchorage, AK. We had an AMAZING summer this year after last year’s cool and cloudy weather. Then we had an astonishingly long fall - lasted practically into November with the first snow coming on November 8. Given that, some things did well and others did not.
Tomatoes - I’m using up seed I have on hand when I lived in Wisconsin particularly Martino’s Roma and Wisconsin 55 (a slicer). Martino’s Roma produced quite a bit but very late. Nearly every tomato was green when I cleaned up the plants in early October. Wisconsin 55 did poorly but then the seed is at least three years old. I grew Gold Coin Cherry last year and did so again this year. It did well but split easily if given too much water or rain. Tastes terrific and produces well so I’ll continue with that. Trialed Siletz this year and was just whelmed. It had a very poor germination rate and took forever to grow to any size, however, it produced ENORMOUS fruit if not very many. Even large mature fruits had few if any seeds so I’m not sure I’ll be able to use what seed I did collect for next year. I might try them again.
Peppers - I had tried Healthy peppers last year and they didn’t do anything but this year the two plants I started produced a fair number of fruits. The taste was similar to a sweet bell and I let them get to maturity before harvesting. This year I trialed King of the North and it just started to think about flowering in early September. It’s supposed to do well in cool weather and we didn’t have that this year. Will try again next year. I was gifted two pepper plants of unknown origin and my guess is that one was a poblano and the other either thai or tabasco. Both did very well but they were good sized plants when I got them.
Cucumbers - I got a little crazy and tried three pickling varieties - Boston Improved, Bushy and Northern. Given that only one or two of each type survived transplant, they all produced about the same, that being rather moderate. They flowered all over the place but were in a cobbled together greenhouse (of sideways storm windows and a piece of sheet plastic over top that was open on the ends) that seem to baffle the bees even though I placed two borage plants inside to attract them! I love cucumbers more than I love tomatoes and I’m going to continue to see what can be done to grow them here.
Beans - Tried several and none did very well. I bought 12 Provider starts and maybe got less than a quart of beans. I planted Ireland Creek Annie (a handful of beans) and Northeaster (nothing came up). Even in raised beds, the soil might not be getting warm enough for them.
Peas - I’ve been growing Oregon Trail shelling pea for the second year with seed from last year. It produced very well but doesn’t grow very tall - 28″ - 30″. It did, however, go into a second flowering this year that was even more profuse than the first. Unfortunately, the pods of the second flowering only got to the “snow pea” pod stage before freeze up but it was nice to have them. Last year I grew two types of fava (Broad Windsor and Negreta - Broad Windsor was a better producer) but I wasn’t that organized to plant them this year.
Squash - Tried growing Small Sugar pumpkin and Red Kuri as well as Success yellow straightneck. Got exactly one pumpkin that was only starting to think about turning orange when harvested in early October. Red Kuri produced about four fruits, the last two to be harvested actually had mature seeds in them. I had all kinds of problems with blossom end rot on the Success but still managed to harvest a few but frequently from two plants. These plants shared the greenhouse with the cucumbers so pollination will be the issue to address next year. Anyone for pumpkin sex?
Kale - Stuck with Lacinato and Red Russian again this year and both did well. I wish I could overwinter them but no such luck. If six months of cold and dry don’t do them in, the moose will.
Cabbage - Went with Early Green Primax and Red Express. Unfortunately, the Primax, while developing heads quickly, cracked badly. Every plant cracked and had to get harvested early. That didn’t happen last year so I’m wondering if they grew too quickly because of the exceptional weather. The Red Express developed nice but rather small heads that took almost all summer to develop.
Brussels sprouts - This the second year for Early Half Tall and Rubbine. Early Half Tall wasn’t at all early but it did produce a number of sprouts but most the size of a large marble. Rubbine produced about half as much on the same number of plants but the sprouts were larger. Both have good flavor and I’ll do them again next year.
Cauliflower - Second year for Self Blanching. It’s reliable and produces medium sized heads. Our problem is remembering to check them often to catch them before they start to turn green and start flowering!
Collards - Second year for Champion and they did splendidly two years in a row despite the dramatic difference in weather.
Kohlrabi - Early White Delicacy produced up to softball size and could have been harvested well before it actually was. I suspect the bottom third will be too woody to use but oh, well.
Corn - I grew Painted Mountain (14 plants) last year and got a half cup of seed. From that seed I grew 51 plants and got much better ear development. 4′ x 4′ was not quite big enough to get thorough pollenation though. What was fascinating about this year’s crop was the number of additional ear shoots that came up from the roots. Sort of like it’s reverting back to a grasslike ancestor? The ears from the root shoots were small and most didn’t develop kernels because the tassels were spent by then. I haven’t pulled all the kernels off the matured ears yet so I don’t know what the harvest for this year is yet but it’s substantially larger than last year.
Potatoes - I have no idea what I grew this year because I used very small potatoes purchased at the first of the farmer’s markets in mid May. Might have been Yukon Gold, some sort of long, thin yellowish white and a long, thin red with some interior red striping. The plants grew enormously and flowered all to heck. Harvest was surprising little but I noticed that an early mulch of chopped leaves created a waterproof barrier at the soil surface (later we had deeply mulched with straw) and all the tubers formed in and right above the leaves. No leaves next year!
I might add that all but the peas were planted in 18″ raised beds. The backyard has the best light but it’s also one big gravel pad. I haven’t yet figured out how deep the gravel goes but it was way easier to construct beds on top of it than dig it out and backfill with topsoil. At least I’ve got excellent drainage!
Kerri in AK
Does anyone have a source for Tenderpod bush beans in quantities larger than what Burpee carries?
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