Vegetables
| Vegetable | Variety | Comments |
| Bush Beans | Provider | Very reliable, tasty, and high-yielding. |
| Fava (or Broad) Beans | Planted–as early as peas–in future tomato bed. Used to fix nitrogen and to help disinfect soil for the upcoming tomato crop. | |
| Pole Beans | Kentucky Wonder | Highly prolific. Tastes better than any bush bean. |
| Beets | (Early Wonder) Tall Top | Yields good tops and roots. Reliable and early. |
| Formanova | An easy-to-grow, cylindrical beet. | |
| Broccoli | Bravo | An excellent germinator and strong grower. |
| Cabbage | Darkri Hybrid | Produces a small head, but matures early and offers good taste. |
| Early Jersey Wakefield | An easy-to-grow, pointy-headed standard variety. | |
| Carrots | Kinko 4″ | The sweetest-tasting carrot we’ve found. Matures early. |
| Nantes Fancy | A good all-around, easy-to-grow carrot. | |
| Cauliflower | Dominant LD | A strong, late-maturing variety. |
| Self-Blanche | You don’t have to wrap the leaves of this one! | |
| Snow Crown Hybrid | An All-America Award winner. | |
| Celery | Utah
|
Quite reliable. We’ve had no disease or bug trouble with this one. |
| Corn | Golden Bantam | A dependable standard variety. |
| Cucumbers | Marketmore 80 | The best and most disease-resistant cucumber we’ve found. Good for pickling or for eating. |
| Garlic | Silver Skin | A garlic’s garlic. Offers excellent taste in good-sized cloves. |
| Jicama | A big root crop that needs a long season (we start ours indoors in March) and tastes like water chestnuts. | |
| Kale | Dwarf (Siberian) |
A good compact variety. Not as curly as some, so it’s easy to wash. |
| Lettuce | Buttercrunch | A good “old standard”. |
| Ruby | A beautiful red lettuce that’s flavorful and tolerates heat well. | |
| Ithaca MI | The easiest to grow–and best-tasting–head lettuce we’ve raised. | |
| Onions | Wonder of Pompeii or Eclipse | Excellent for greens or as pearl onions. |
| Granex 33 | A sweet “Vidalia” onion. (Hastings) | |
| Yellow Globe Danvers | The one we grow for storage. | |
| Parsnips | Holly Crown | Our best producer. |
| Peas | Sugar Bon | The quality’s not as good as Sugar Snap’s, but it comes in super-early. |
| Sugar Snap | The best edible pod pea. Don’t pick it until the pod is filled out. | |
| Wando | Our favorite shelling pea. Heat-tolerant and high-yielding. | |
| Pepper | Anaheim TMR 23 | Mildly hot, good for stuffing. Our choice for using in chiles rellenos. |
Cayenne Long Red |
Our best little hot one. | |
| Yolo Wonder | A fine, reliable bell pepper. | |
| Potato | Kennebec | A good-tasting, easy-to-grow storage potato. |
| Red Pontiac | Great for an early crop. | |
| Pumpkin | Connecticut Field | A care-free, huge pumpkin that’s good for meat, seeds, or jack-o’-lanterns. |
| Radishes | Pontvil | Cylindrical, with excellent flavor. It makes for a nice break from all those little red globes. |
| Daikon Tokinashi | A versatile, all-seasons daikon type. | |
| Spinach | Bloomsdale Longstanding | A good standard variety. |
| Summer Squash | Yellow Crookneck | Our choice for the summer crop. (Johnny’s or Herbst) |
| Sweet Potatoes | Puerto Rico | A meaty, buttery bush potato that doesn’t sprawl too much. |
| Swiss Chard | Fordhook Giant | The most reliable chard we’ve found. |
| Tomato | Whopper | The most disease-resistant kind we know of (an important feature in our blight-prone locale). Whoppers are big and offer good–but not exquisite–taste. |
| Roma VF | The best paste tomato we’ve grown. | |
| Turnip | Purple Top White Globe | An easy-to-grow standard. We save and use the seed. |
| Winter Squash | Waltham Butternut | A classic beauty that’s relatively easy to grow. |
Flowers
| Flower | Variety | Comments |
| Acroclinium (Sunray or Everlasting) | Best Mixed | Annual. A small, bushy, long-stemmed flower that makes a most enjoyable everlasting bouquet. |
| Armeria (Thrift of Sea Pink) | Perennial. A compact, grass-like plant with clover-type blossoms. Good cut or dried. | |
| Calendula | Fiesta Gitana | Annual. Yields lots of small flowers. |
| Pacific Beauty Mixed | Annual. Early and tall. A good cut flower that also attracts beneficial insects. | |
| Cleome (Spider Flower) | Mixed Colors | Annual. Pretty, tall, self-sowing, and good for edging. |
| Columbine | McKana Giants | Perennial. An unusual flower (it looks like a falling star) that’s sure to be the talk of the neighborhood. |
| Cosmos | Sensation |
Annual. Extremely easy to grow. Offers long-lasting color. |
| Delphinium | Connecticut Yankees | Perennial. A light blue to purple long-lasting cut flower. Delphinium blooms early and long, but it’s not easy to grow, being fungus-prone and often needing to be staked. |
| Echinacea (Purple Coneflower) | Perennial. A striking beauty that resembles a giant purple daisy. | |
| Hollyhock | Annual. A tall flower that’s enjoyed by hummingbirds and is useful in marking off garden plots or as a backdrop for shorter plants. | |
| Iceland Poppy | Summer Promise | Perennial. An early-blooming and unusually long-lasting poppy. We haven’t had any luck direct-sowing them, though, so we start ours in flats indoors and transplant. |
| Larkspur | Giant Imperial Mixed | Annual. This self-sowing flower (good cut) is supposed to deter flea beetles. |
| Lobelia | Blue Stone (Compacta) | Annual. Easy to grow. Lobelia produces nice little mounds of intense blue. |
| Nemophila (Baby Blue Eyes) | Insignis Blue | Annual. A small, low-growing, quick-blooming, and beautiful blue flower. |
| Nicotiana (Flowering Tobacco) | Sweet-Scented Sensation Mixed | Annual. A very sweet evening-scented bloom that helps make late work in the garden pleasant. |
| Rudbeckia (Gloriosa Daisy) | Marmalade |
Perennial (but we treat it as an annual). An easy-to-grow, long-blooming dwarf cut flower. |
| Salpiglossis (Velvet Flower) | Dwarf Friendship Mixture | Annual. Temperamental and poisonous, but amazingly beautiful. Displays astonishing patterns in its tubular throat. |
| Snapdragon | Hybrid Rocket Mixed |
Perennial, grown as an annual. Exquisite and very dependable. |
Stachys (Lamb’s Ear) |
Perennial. An unusual, eye-catching plant with gray green woolly leaves and lavender flowers (which honeybees love). | |
| Statice Sinuata | Grandstand Mixture | Annual. An unusual-looking bloom that’s a “must” for dry flower arrangements. |
| Stock | Evening Scented | Annual. Lilac-colored, not very good-looking, but it gives oft a surprisingly strong, delightful fragrance in the evening. |
| Trysomic Giant Imperial Blend | Annual. A sweet-smelling cut flower. | |
| Strawflower | Helichrysum Monstrosum Mixed | Annual. The easiest to grow, most widely used dry strawflower. |
| Sweet Pea | Royal Family Mixture | Annual. A lovely, long-stemmed cut flower with charming fragrance and lots of color. |
| Tithonia (Mexican Sunflower) | Torch | A tall plant (up to six feet) with an orange flower. It makes a nice border plant. Bumblebees and hummingbirds favor it. |
| Valerian (Garden Heliotrope) | Perennial. An herb grown for making our own Biodynamic Preparation 507 (used in compost). The root attracts earthworms. |
For new garden ideas, see Favorite Flowers And Vegetables at the Ecovillage.
For seeds Park, Johnny’s, Stokes, Nichols and Thompson & Morgan.
