60 Vegetable & Fruit Varieties for 2010

Heinz ketchup proudly trumpets its "57 Varieties."  I've got 'em beat by 3 this year.

In this post, I will list the 60 fruits and vegetable varieties that made my list for the 2010 growing season. 

All of these vegetables will be grown in raised beds, traditional soil containers/pots, or Autopot hydroponic pots. (placed outside with no additional lights)

So Many Veggies, So Little Space  

I think that many readers will be surprised by the large number of varieties given my limited suburban garden space.  The explanation is twofold:

1. I grow during all four seasons and rotate crops in my containers.  The varieties selected below cover multiple plantings.
2. In most cases, I grow only one or two pots of any given variety.  For example, this year, I am planting 8 varieties of tomatoes but will grow only 2 plants of each one.

At first glance, this may appear a bit extravagant since it means that I'm buying lots of seed packets and using very few of the seeds. (Seed packets are generally about  $3.00 each)

However, this practice is still much less expensive than buying tomatoes at the store. The average tomato plant yield 10-20 pounds of tomatoes, so 2 tomato plants grown with a $3.00 packet of seeds will yield 20-40 pounds of fruit ($.15-$30 per pound).  Yes, I know I'm not including other costs, but you get the idea.  It's pretty cheap to grow your own and the cost of the seeds don't really amount to much. 

And then there's the real benefit -- you get to eat varieties you can't purchase at a store or even at a farmers market and they will be at their absolute peak of freshness.

Benefits of Many Varieties:

If you have a small garden, I encourage you to consider maximizing variety for the following reasons:

• Eating the same thing week after week can be boring, even if you really like a particular variety.  Mixing it up, makes things more interesting.
• No matter how good a gardener you are, sometimes things just don't work out.  Planting lots of vegetable types and varieties hedges you against failure in any given crop.  If the cucumbers didn't work out this year, no big deal, at least you have a variety of lettuces to make salads interesting.
• Eating lots of different things is healthier for you.
  

As the season progresses, I'll provide product information and recommendations on specific varieties. 

If you have grown any of these varieties, feel free to post a comment to this blog about your experience (How did they taste?  Where they easy to grow? What was the yield like? etc.)

The 2010 List

Tomatoes:

• Brandywine
• Tomato Riesentraube
• Japanese Trifele
• Snowberry
• Black Krim
• Paul Robeson
• Cherokee Purple
• Oregon Spring

Greens:

• Bloomsdale spinach
• Arugula
• Dwarf Blue kale
• Siberian Red kale
• Mache/corn salad/vit
• Shanghai Green Choy (pak choi)
• Extra dwarf pak choi
• Ching-Chiang pak choi
• Joy Larkom's Midnight chard
• Bright Lights chard
• De Morges Braun lettuce
• Mignonette Bronze lettuce
• Brune D'hiver lettuce
• Forellenschluss lettuce
• Little Gem lettuce
• Miner's Lettuce
• Flame lettuce
• Watercress
• Chicory
• Upland cress
• Kyoto mizuna
• Purslane

Root Vegetables:

• French breakfast radish
• Watermelon radish
• White Icicle radish
• Saxa radish
• Chioggia beet
• Crapaudine beet
• Chantenay carrot
• Kral russian parsnip

Peas & Beans:

• Super Sugar snap pea
• Burpee's Tenderpod bean
• Etna bush beans

Squash

• Boston Marrow
• Cornell's Bush Delicata
• Galeux d'Eysines
• Blue hubbard
• Waltham butternut
• Black Futsu
• Zucchino Rampicante
• Scallop Sunny Delight

Cucumbers

• Delikatesse
• Beit Alpha
• Hmong Red

Others:

• Silver Choice sweet corn
• Sorrento Raab
• Roodnerf brussel sprouts
• Savoy cabbage
• Liege Giant leek
• Serrano chili pepper
• Costa Rican sweet pepper
• Shishito pepper
• Mammoth Island salsify
• Thai White eggplant
• Japanese pickling eggplant
• Ping Tung eggplant

Fruit

• Charentais melon
• Ali Baba watermelon
• Hardy kiwi
• Chandler blueberry
• Tulameen raspberry
• Alpine strawberry

Comments

[Indoor Fountains]

Great information!! I am so looking forward to getting out in my garden and getting my hands dirty!!This list is going on my fridge.

[H. Mark Delman]

Im glad this was helpful to you. If there are topics that you would like me to cover in upcoming postings, let me know. Im happy to help.

[Brenda Feltham]

I have planted Paul Robeson tomatoes in the past and they were very successful. They were a reddish brown tomato with a distintive flavor. They were the first tomatoes ripe and they were fairly prolific. They seemed to lose steam about half way through the season and then picked up in the late season.
I have also raised Cherokee Purples. They were also a nice flavor but not nearly as prolific.
For those of us who are not successful in planting from seed, I highly recommend getting plants from Love Apple Farm in Boulder Creek CA. I believe that she is selling all the tomato plants listed here. See the website www.growbetterveggies.com for a list of the plants for sale. While she also has a blog, it is not as good as this one.

[Brenda Feltham]

Also on the Alpine Strawberries, they are small bunches of plants. They produce a bit more than regular plants and the fruit really small but is candy sweet. I have 3 plants in 1 one medium sized pot and there is plenty of room. When I bought them, I was told they were Albino Strawberries but they are not and they do turn red when ripe.

[H. Mark Delman]

Hi Brenda! Thanks for providing perspective on these varieties. The Paul Robeson tomatoes are new for me this year. Ive heard great things about them from other gardeners and Im encouraged to hear that youve had luck with them in this part of the country. The Cherokee Purple tomatoes have a reputation for being delicious, but also a bit more stingy on yield. When I did my review of the top seed catalogs earlier this year, I noted that some of the catalog companies, such as seeds of Seeds of Change, were honest enough to note this in the product description. Many thanks for providing the contact information for those that live in the SF Bay Area for Love Apple Farm. Im sure they appreciate the mention.

[H. Mark Delman]

What made these a winner for us was the intense strawberry flavor. Given the small size of the berry, it was a real surprise. Not that my wife and I got to eat many because the kids would sneak into the backyard and eat them right off the plants. No matter, thats why we grow them.