Friday, January 19, 2018

my tried-and-true, old favorite vegetable varieties

Bush beans, Jumbo, big flat pods
Mini broccoli, Happy Rich, broccolini that keeps producing all season
Green storage cabbage, Murdoc, a big storage variety, very mild
Popcorn, Robust 997, super yields, great popping and taste
Pickling cucumber, Salt and Pepper, small white cuke, chartreuse inside
Seedless cucumber, Diva, my favorite cuke for many years, can be finicky to get started
Asian mini eggplant, Hansel, awesome yields of small black Asian type fruits
Black round Italian eggplant, Barbarella, low yields but the best taste ever
Broad-leaved Escarole, Natacha, a beautiful plant mild enough for fresh salads
Leaf lettuce, Salanova, awesome! remove core of full grown plant for salad of baby lettuce
Snow pea, Oregon Giant, a very reliable performer with delicious peas
Bell pepper, Ace, very reliable, early bell peppers that turn red in a long season
Hot pepper, Thai Hot, lot's of peppers, small plants, nice and hot, and they dry easily
Zucchini, Costata Romanescu, my all time favorite summer squash, awesome flavor
Squash, Waltham Butternut, excellent yield, delicious, long storage, and grows up a trellis
Tomato, Opalka, a very large heirloom paste tomato
Tomato, Polish Linguisa, another very large heirloom paste tomato
Tomato, Carbon, delicious heirloom purple slicing tomato
Tomato, True Black Brandywine, another delicious heirloom purple slicing tomato
Tomato, Pink Beauty, F1 variety with excellent yields of pretty pink fruit, always my earliest

It makes me happy just to think about these - my favorites. I'll plant them all again this year. Hansel and Salanova I grew for the first time last year and loved them. They're not really "old" favorites, but I think they will become that. I can't wait to start planting! I'll plant Natacha soon (tonight, I hope) to go in my cold frame for very early spring. Maybe a couple Salanova and Cherokee too. I'll have to wait on the rest.

Please comment with a list of your old favorite vegetable varieties.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

In my northwest coastal garden growing warm season crops is close to impossible and the wind means only short vines, so here are the ones that I grow every year....

baby bok choy -mei quin
lettuces- tom thumb, tango, red sails, and merlot
snow peas - Oregon sugar pod 2
snap peas - sugar ann
leeks, bandit
swiss chard - fordhook giant
spinach - tyee
kohrobi - winner
beets- early wonder and cylinder
cabbage - Gonzales
potato - red thumb fingerling

I love lettuces and grow about 8 to 10 different ones each summer our mild weather means I can plant lettuces all season...am trying 2 new ones this year Nevada and cardinal. I also grow walla walla onions and shallots which do really well here.

Chrissy said...

Will you be winter sowing this year? And if so, when will you start?

kathy said...

Yes I plan to winter sow some common milkweed seed I collected. Not for my vegetable garden, but I have some small native plant areas I need to replant. I collected seed from my Mom’s yard. I will start my sowing the first week of February. Next week! I am collecting milk bottles. Only a couple. We don’t have snow cover right now so I’ll set the bottles along the north’s side of the house where temperatures are more constant.

kathy said...

PS. Thanks for the variety list!!! I also love that leek, bok Choi, and snap pea.