I’m curious what everyone’s non-negotiable variety is. I keep getting distracted by new seed packets every year, so I’m still searching for mine.
Do you have that one tomato, bean, or pepper that earns a spot in the garden every single season, even when everything else gets swapped out? What makes it worth keeping?
first, welcome to the Discourse! (I’m new here myself, lol)
To answer your question, I’m not sure there is a single variety that I have been loyal to - even before I heard about landrace / adaptive gardening, I was drawn to growing diverse grexes and trying out multiple varieties together (just because it’s cognitively easier, I was inspired more by “chaos gardening” of just throwing lots of seeds out and seeing what works).
Of those that have consistently been in my garden the longest, I would say Red Russian kale has been a good performer - it grew well in the Great Appalachian Valley (zone 7b where I lived), and now it grows well here in the Rock River till plains (zone 5a). I’m not sure I even particularly adore or love Red Russian kale more than other types, it’s just what I have found grows easily and so it’s what I end up using the most.
Cherry tomato volunteers (often from cold compost piles) also show up consistently in my gardens, so they come to mind - but that’s not a particular variety, per se, and I don’t choose them as much as they choose me.
What about you - do you have a favorite variety?
hello, thank you for the question, although I am not sure about “variety”.
We are a bunch of people who grow preferably grexes and populations, we tend to not stick to variety, did you notice ?
So I read your question as if you asked what “crop” do you always grow ? Sorry if it is not what you ment.
I realize that the one species I always grow every year no matter what, is my giant garlic (elephant garlic) . This is a food I love, and a crop that always works, but most of all its origin if very dear to me. My strain comes from south Chile, island of Chiloe, and I don’t want to loose it. Each time I plant, harvest, store, eat it, it reminds me of the years I spent sailing the chilean channels.
I have several fully “heirloom” varieties especially in tomatoes and beans but not many that I’ll grow no matter what because I don’t have space for all of them every year and don’t need that many every year.
On tomatoes I like, Mr. Stripey, Willard Wynn, Cherokee Purple and my own Hoosier Rose. One we prefer for juice and sauces I guess is also mine is one I call Hoosier Heart. I got it ten, maybe twelve years ago from Joseph Lofthouse and originally called it Utah Heart but after all the years in my garden I changed it to Hoosier. It was in the earlier years of his work and due to his dislike of red tomatoes he probably considered it a reject, but we really like it. It never segregated at all, so I think it is probably just another heirloom whose name was lost. Then there are the many cherry types that originated with a random cross between current and something else and have grown mostly as volunteers ever since.
Two favorite beans are Kentucky Wonder pole and Blue Lake pole. I almost always grow one or the other or both. In bush types we like Contender, Provider, Top Crop, and Fowler, among others. I also have a big collection of greasy beans, just all mixed up. And a big collection of others that mostly just get planted if I think my seeds are getting too old.
I’ve grown and saved seed from some of these varieties for thirty years or more.
Thank you for this insightful question! A list of must-have varieties would be a good starting point for crossbreeding efforts, rather than relying solely on chance.
I’m more open to populations than specific varieties, like many people here… yet there is one heirloom variety that always makes a comeback in my garden: the sweet Jimmy Nardelo pepper. It’s a high-yielding pepper, as beautiful as a chili pepper, and above all, it has a culinary quality I’ve never found anywhere else: something creamy, smoky, juicy, and subtly spicy.
The best thing to do for the future would be to develop a hybrid using Jimmy Nardelo as the mother and a variety of larger, thicker-fleshed peppers as the father—to correct its few flaws and add a bit of diversity and surprise! 