You can get varieties of string-less sugar snap peas like "sugar sprint" and "sugar bowl" instead of the "cascade" snaps.

The "sugar sprint" is less sweet and the "sugar bowl" i believe you can only get through Johnny's Seeds.

The "sugar sprint" is less sweet than the "sugar bowl" i mean.

The most successful green beans I've grown for 3 years now is Contender. I gave up on the pretty purple and wax beans - just not as plentiful as the green.
Sweet Corn in the South has to be Silver Queen. Delicious.
Peppers for frying and Mexican stuffing - Corno de Toro (Horn of the Bull) a dependable heirloom, and Red Beauty for sweet bells for stuffing green and charring when red, fresh for salads either color.
Summer squash - the tastiest yellow crookneck I've found is Butterstick and do try some Patty Pan.
Tomatoes are another story. I grow many heirloom varieties and only organically. There's so much more a variety of tastes than hybrids. I sow seeds outdoors when soil has warmed instead of transplants - the fruits ripen at the same time either way so why bother with indoor sowing? However, I have a longer growing season than you do, but you can use the earliest ripening like Celebrity. Principe Borghese is the best all around tomato, small but taste is everything, and its a heavy bearer so I always have lots of toms.
Winter squash - Queensland Blue because of the color - the raccoons seem to ignore them in favor of the bright skin colors of other squash.
And don't forget the easy herbs to grow - Basil, Dill, Sage, Thyme and Parsley.
Strawberries make great ground covers around your shrubs or lining a walkway.

Aren't seed catalogs fun? Do check out your local farmer's market for veggie transplants. They are grown locally compared to those shipped in that you get from your local nursery or big box store. Farmers know what grows well in your immediate area and only offer those sure winners. I should know, I'm a farmer's market seller, born out of the necessity to find homes for the overabundance of organic veggies I love to grow.

Evergreen bunching onions are great. My plantings are now 15 years old. But they don't take the place of a crop of regular onions.

I had been working on a large new expanse of perennial gardens, but I've decided to go ahead and make it all edible/herbal.

So I have a few seed catalogs in already and impatiently waiting for Johnny's and Baker Creek. I usually focus on heirloom vegetables, but because this is a front yard vegetable garden, I'm going to try some hybrids this time around. I'll follow the same color scheme I would have used if planting all flowers - mainly green and purple foliage which isn't hard now with the huge new array of deep foliage colors. Things like black pearl peppers, Johnny's purple leaf mizuna, Parks purple leaf boc choi, Asian and middle Eastern bred lettuces which hold in heat and low water, more black tomatoes, zebra strip tomatoes... plus some more fruit. Bush butternut squashes, green beans, purple podded pole beans, beans striped green and purple...

Oh, there is such an array!

GGG

I've grown Pinetree's Lettuce Mix in the past with decent results.

I've also grown Horn of Plenty and plan to grow them again next year. They don't get as big as other crooknecks, but they keep pumping out the fruit. The male flowers have very little pollen. In the past, I have noticed a better crop from the ones planted near the pumpkins, so that's where they get planted from now on, for cross-pollination.

For zucchini, I plant Jackpot. They're parthenocarpic, so don't need pollination, however they crop better with it. They also get planted near the pumpkins.

For Winter Squash, I will be planting New England Pie Pumpkin, Connecticut Field Pumpkin, Sweet Dumpling, an heirloom 5-10 lb blue/grey/green hubbard, and a 1-2 lb heirloom butternut, along with several trial cultivars. Except for the trial cultivars, all of these have proven to be good reliable croppers. Even so, I don't beleive putting all my eggs in one basket.

For carrots, I will be planting Oxheart (SSE strain) and Red-Cored Chantenay. They both grow well in my soil.

Beets, I will be planting Giant Half Mangel. It grows well in any soil, has good greens, and it resistant to nematodes, unlike other cultivars which are supposed to be. In good soil, it will grow HUGE roots, but in poor rocky soil, it will still crop dependable parsnip sized roots. It is white and yellow, no red to stain anything. It is often grown for fodder, however it cooks up fine, better than some other beets.

Onions: Topsetting onions. We have problems with onion maggots so cannot grow regular onions. We also grow leeks in the form of elephant garlic, which is just a cultivar of bulb-multiplier leek, usually grown for the bulbs. We just harvest some for the greens instead of the bulbs. We also grow ramps.

Cucumbers: For main crops, we will be planting Lemon (Fedco), Cross Country, Sweet Success, and Sweet Slice. They all do well for us. In case you're interested, we have found that the black spined cultivars grow best for us in the open-pollinated category. Don't know why, they just generally do much better than the white spined ones.

Good luck.

Red Ruffled pepper from Seeds of Change is my favorite "green bell of some type. Very productive, thick walled and sweet. Even better when red.

It may help for us to know where you are in zone 4/5, Hines. If you've got a successful gardener over the back fence, that person is probably your best source of info.

Here in the arid West zone 5, I grow Green Arrow, Oregon SugarPod 2, and Super SugarSnap for my 3 types of peas, every year for quite awhile. Jade has been a very good snap bean for me.

Red Ace has been a dependable beet for a number of years. Early Wonder was fine before then and I'm not sure why I switched. Early Wonder had better greens but Red Ace baby beets are wonderful, too.

Nelson Nantes would be a very good choice in my garden. Johnny's ran out of pelleted seed last year and it was one of my mistakes of 'o7, to have not quickly have found another source.

Premium Crop worked fine for me for a few years but our dry, hot Julys would sometimes be a little difficult for that broccoli. I went to Packman and haven't had a complaint.

You may just want to stay with the Italian sweet peppers, Hines. They are dependable. Regular Marconi will give you a larger crop but not quite as sweet of a pepper as Giant Marconi (my favorite :o). Peto is a good dependable bell and you probably wouldn't go wrong to order a packet of Park's Whopper with your other things.

Sounds like you are going with a store-bought tomato, right? There's a good reason for Early Girl being the most popular variety from one side of the country to the other. Big Beef is great but you may not find the plants. There are others of the hybrids that are dependable  I would choose an indeterminate of 75 days or less.

Aristocrat zucchini has always grown well for me. Early Butternut is fine and has done better for me than Waltham but I grow Burgess buttercup because it has been so dependable and tastes real good, too!

And, there we have the subjectiveness of tastes . . . You'll always really want to grow some varieties. Hopefully, they'll do well for you. Here's wishing you the best of luck.

Steve

Hi,

I would love to see more posts to this thread... so to keep it posted, I'll post my latest plans.

Tomatoes (my main interest)
Omar's Lebanese
Carbon
Aunt Ginny's Purple
Aker's West Virginia
Aunt Gertie's Gold
Marvel Striped
Sweet Quartz
Winsall
German Red Strawberry
Earl's Faux
Black from Tula
Stump of the World
Black Cherry
Black Krim
Super Sioux
Polish
Cherokee Purple
Dona Hybrid
Japanese Black Trefele
Mexico
Kellogg's Breakfast
Pruden's Purple
German Johnson
Neves Azorean Red

Peppers (another fav):
Camelot Hybrid Bell
Valencia Bell
Ixtapa Japaleno
Serrano
Golden Greek Pepperoncini
Holy Moly Pasilla
Chimayo
Ancho San Martin
Kung Pao
Numex Big Jim
Thai Hot
Giant Marconi Sweet Italian

Eggplant (yet another fav):
Neon
Antigua
Vittorio
Fairy Tale
Florida High Bush
Pingtung Long
Long Purple
Ichiban

With more space this year, I plan to branch out into other things including:
Jersey Supreme Asparagus
Pikant Shallots
Rubicon Napa Cabbage
Super Red Cabbage
Gonzales Cabbage
Ambrosia Canteloupe
Bush Sugar Baby Watermelon
Zefa Fina Fennel
Dawn Giant Leek
Fordhood 242 Bush Lima
Raven Zucchini
Diva Cucumber
Holland Long Cucumber

Still have to make all of my selections for beets, carrots, radishes,greens, etc. as well as other beans plus peas. Also hope to do onions, potatoes, corn, and artichokes this year!

I've got the space to do it all (we're just a family of two so don't need oodles of each thing), just hope I have the energy and we don't get any surprises this summer in regards to water rationing. (I'm planning to plant closely, mulch, and use drip irrigation to conserve water).

Anyway, I hope other people post what they're planning to grow this year!

Anne