# Your go to garden varieties?



## Woody (Nov 11, 2008)

Folks always seem to ask what to grow so I thought I’d start a thread with what the gardeners here have. My main garden is 30’ x 40’. I don’t fill it all up I have 12’ rows on each side with a big pathway down the middle. Rows are 2’ to 6’ apart, depending on what is being grown and how busy they are. I have a few guerilla areas around the yard and also plant some veggies in the herb garden. The corn and squashes are around the perimeter of the yard with a rotation of each from one spot to another each year.

These are my choice for varieties. I do try new things every year but always seem to come back to these, I like the flavor and they just do well for me in my area.

Radish: Cherry Belle
Carrot: Danvers half long
Spinach: Boomsdale Longstanding
Lettuce: Butter crunch, Black Seeded Simpson and a romaine I don’t remember what its name is
Peas: Wando (bush) and Tall Telephone (Pole)
Lima (butter beans): King of the Garden and Christmas, both pole types
Green Beans: Kentucky Wonder, pole
Dry beans: Rattlesnake, Jacobs Cattle and a Red kidney of unknown name
Summer Squash: Unknown Yellow, looks like Early Prolific and Black Beauty (green)
Winter squash: Blue Hubbard and Table Queen Acorn, trying Baby Blue Hubbard this year!
Tomatoes: Brandywine, German Johnson Pink, Amish Paste and love the hybrid cherry: Jelly Bean
Cucumber: Straight Eight
Corn: Country Gentleman and an unknown ‘butter & sugar’ type	
Sweet Pepper: California Wonder
Hot Pepper: Orange Scotch Bonnet. I think in another post I said habanera, I was incorrect!

I think that is about it.
This year we are trying Amana Orange tomato, Isis Candy Tomato, Vintage Wine tomato, Aunt Molly’s Ground Cherry, Bhut Jolokia hot pepper, and Baby Blue Hubbard squash.

For trellises I use metal fence posts with jute twine between them. I have some tomato cages, the round ones, but always seem to need large stakes to tie them to also.

For peas and beans I plant half a row (6’) every two weeks. This gives me a longer fresh harvest. If I was putting things up I would plant a full row at once so I had more with each harvest. Beans and peas I plant a double row. Plant one row 6” apart them move over 3” or 4” and plant another row parallel to it so all seeds are 6” apart. Seeds are spaced like a triangle. I tried using 3 rows but the plants were pretty crowded, I stick to double rows now.

Carrots, lettuce, spinach and radishes I have a long wide row, 16” wide and plant 8” to 24” sections. I’ll plant 8” of radishes, 8” of carrots, 24” of spinach… And repeat every two weeks. Again, this stretches out my harvest, they are smaller but I can get fresh for many plantings. I plant these areas using the square foot method. If they are supposed to be 3” apart I plant one row 3: apart. Then I move over a few inches and plant another row, so the seeds are in kind of a triangle or checkerboard shape, all 3” apart. Repeat until the designated space is full.

I always plant a few partial rows really early. If all goes well I can have a small early harvest. If the seeds rot or freeze I am only out a few seeds.


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## squshnut (Sep 5, 2011)

I plant the less expensive open polinated varities. And some of my seed is no longer labeled because i started saving them years ago and have forgotten the variety. 
Bloomsdale
Burgess Buttercup
CAMBELLS 
BEEF STEAK 
table king
potatoes
YELLOW DENT
KENTUCKY BLUE POLE 
LOGANS GIANT
UNCLE STEVES
kentucky blue
table queen
northern giant
purple glaser
egyption walking onions
MARTINS
Italian
GEORGE
romainain garlic.
korean red
rainbow
brown tempest
SASHAS ATAI PRIDE
BRANDY WINE pink
Better Boy
yellow pear
LRG RED CHERRY 
BRANDY WINE black
CAMBELLS 
WI55
Cherokee Purple
EARLY DOLL
ACE 55
Corn Salad Dutch
romain
LETTUCE BLEND
Red Romaine
OAKLEAF
Y. SW SPANISH
ruby queen
Detroit Dark Red
Cylindra
PURPLE TOP TURNIPS
SOUTHERN GIANT CURLED
POTATO- yucon gold
Top Crop
roma 2
Korean Small Cabbage
pac choi
Pei Tsai Round Leaf
GREEN WONDER
Ching-Chiang Cabbage
mizuna
komatsuna
siberian KALE
VATES BLUE CURLED
collards georgia
CHARD
lincoln peas
danvers
MARIGOLDS
ECHINACEA
CHINA ROSE
DAIKON
CHAMPION
Black Spanish
iciclcle
ALL AMERICAN parsnips
CILANTO
SUMMER SAVORY
BIRD SEED for green manure
asparagus
fenugreek
florence
BASIL
fenugreek
SAGE
WALTHAM
Golden Acre
Early Jersey Wakefield
EARLY DIVIDEND
oregon snow peas
RED CORE CHANTENAY
whole peas for green manure
SHALLOTS
Red Beard bunching
Evergreen White Bunching
RED DUTCH SHALLOTS
SERRANO
long red cayene
burpless cukes
YOLO WONDER
tomitillo
Oriental Cucumber
BOSTON PICKLING
Chile de árbol
TOMATILLO
SERRANO
market more 76
hungarian
BANNANA
SERRANO
TABASKO
ANCHO
premium crop
WALTHAM
COPENHAEN MARKET
Green Sprouting
premium crop
VATES BLUE CURLED
Green Sprouting
Early Jersey Wakefield
Golden Acre
ARCADIA
PARSELY
SAN MARZANO
straight neck
zuke-striped
BUTTERCUP
SUNBURST
Lemon Basil
ROSEMARY
proggress
BLUE LAKE POLE 
purple pod 
rye for green manure
BLUE LAKE POLE 
green sprouting
DE CICCO
tam dew MELON
BOSTON PICKLING
MARGLOBE
gardeners delight
MARION
way ahead
MARIANNAS CONFLICT
RUDGERS 
roma vf
ANCHO
german pink
MANITOBA
ANAHEIM CHILLI
wv 63
mint
I plant my 1500 sq foot intensive garden in a wide bed style. The beds are mostly 7 foot wide. sounds dificult but it is the easiest system I have found for the type of garden I have,


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## goshengirl (Dec 18, 2010)

Good idea for a thread, Woody. This will be our fourth year having a garden, so we're still in the process of figuring out our 'standards' for planting. Our plan is to give everything we try at least a 2 year trial (to account for bad growing seasons and rookie errors) before we give up on it. 

Our good standards are (southern Ohio, zone 6):
corn, sweet - silver queen and northern xtra
corn, flour/feed - bloody butcher
tomato - bellestar, heinz 1439, new zealand pink
beans, dry - rattlesnake, anasazi, black turtle, cranberry
pepper - sweet banana
potato - goldrush (other good ones, but goldrush is excellent)
carrots - minicor

Everything else we haven't settled on our standards yet. And even in the above categories, we're still trying new varieties, just to see. I'm really trying to work with native varieties in terms of edible landscaping (black cherry, american plum, hazelnuts, etc.), and work with heirloom garden varieties that have a history of doing well in our area. The only hybrids I have are sweet corns, and I want to break away from those....


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## PackerBacker (Dec 13, 2012)

I have at least 16 varieties of spinach.

I'm indecisive.


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## pawpaw (Dec 21, 2011)

Wow, SQUSHNUT!!

I was gonna post that I've already started a few tobacco seeds indoors, but not now! I'm glad nobody's started a thread about 'What kind of car do you drive'....Tow trucks follow me around, too.


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## kejmack (May 17, 2011)

Like Squshnut, I have been saving seeds for so long that I have forgotten the name of most of them. I do remember that I have Kennebec potatoes and Yukon Gold potatoes. I did recently discover Chandler strawberries which grow like weeds in Texas.


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