Like Llaz, I had a challenging year; a few of my perennial favorites had to take a year off, to be replaced by shorter season alternatives. I'll list them all anyway. Snap beans: "Fortex". I also grow at least one other pole snap, including: "Emerite", "Pole 191" (a.k.a. white-seeded Kentucky Wonder), "Rattlesnake", or "Garafal Oro". Shell beans: "Ma Williams" (early pole) and/or "Bird Egg #3" (late pole) and/or "PI 507984" (very early bush). At least one of these, depending upon the weather. "PI 507984" proved itself this year, in a very short season. Dry beans: "Brita's Foot Long" or "Soissons Vert" (high yield, outstanding flavor) Sweet corn: "Miracle" hybrid (highly disease resistant, very large ears w/tight tip cover, great flavor) Summer squash: "Zucchetta Rampicante" (borer & disease resistant, excellent frozen quality) Eggplant: "Casper" and "Diamond" (cold & Verticillium resistant, high-yielding) Okra: "Pentagreen" (cold & Verticillium resistant, the only okra I can grow reliably this far North). Proved itself this year, with a short, cool Summer. Swiss chard: "Special Large White Ribbed" (flat leaves, easy to clean, very wide stalks) Other greens: Water spinach, Egyptian spinach, Moringa oleifera (tree grown as annual, high-protein leaves) Cucumber: "WI 5207" (highly disease resistant, parthenocarpic, good climber, great flavor) Tomatoes: "Sojourner South American" (very large red oxheart, prolific), "Elfin" (OP grape tomato, extremely prolific) Peppers: "Greygo" (very large cheese type, sweet, tender skin), "Beaver Dam" (large pointed Hungarian type, very early, medium hot), "Pizza" (highly prolific, gourmet green peppers just before frost, outstanding keeper) Soybeans: "Sapporo Midori" (edamame, early, very large seed) Pea: "Purple Podded Parsley" (table pea, purple pods) Watermelon: "Blacktail Mountain" (very early, high Brix, good keeper) Garlic: 10 varieties (mostly hardneck), plus Elephant Garlic & Pearl Onions (which are really bulbing leeks) Since I am a seed saver, many other vegetables are grown in a rotation... I never have the same garden twice. But I do grow varieties each year from the categories below: - one adzuki bean - one mung bean - Runner beans: 2 - Limas: 2 - Yardlongs: 3-4 (will include the bush yardlong grown this year) - Cowpeas: 2-3 - one C. maxima squash (buttercup, hubbard, banana, kabocha) - one C. pepo squash (acorn, naked-seeded pumpkin, spaghetti) - one hot pepper for drying - Tomatoes: one banana-type paste, 1-4 red paste types, one non-red paste, one potato-leaf, one non-red slicer - one basil - soybeans: 3-4 additional edamame In addition, there will be many other trials each year for pole beans, soybeans, peas, tomatoes, and peppers.

IÂve grown some of those, and the only ones I would grow again are Brandywine Sudduth and Cherokee Purple. Maybe worth the bother, even if you only get one or two tomatoes per bush for the season. As commented above, Stupice produces lots of supermarket flavored fruit. Jaune Flammee never sweetened up for me, stayed sour the whole season. Heidi was okay, but there are better tasting red cherry tomatoes. White Queen was pretty blah. Coustralee didnÂt produce anything. Other tomato varieties are just better. Goose Creek produced the earliest crop of large, flavorful tomatoes, took a short summer break, rebloomed in the fall, and is still green, loaded with medium and small fruit, while most everything else is frozen dead. San Marzano Redorato produced a small but steady crop of pasta tomatoes that made the most wonderful dried tomatoes in the dehydrator, for my sonÂs "sun dried tomato" recipes popular now. The flavor is far superior to the expensive bottles of dried tomatoes in the store. IÂve been ordered to plant lots of bushes again next year. Sun Sugar is the most wonderful yellow cherry tomato- one I would never be without. Momotaro has the best flavor for me of the large tomatoes, but doesnÂt produce much. The next best large tomato is Brandy Boy. It produced a good crop of large, tasty tomatoes early and consistently throughout the season. Your tastes may differ.

Keepers: Spacemaster cucumbers: Vines are only 3 feet or so long. I had them planted in the same hill as the hybrid Salad Bush, which are MUCH longer vines. The Salad Bush cucumbers are delicious and prolific, but every single one has little worms in them (is that Cucumber beetle?), but the Spacemasters do not. (They are very good tasting. No bitterness at all.) Next year, cucumbers are going on a trellis, as I have read they produce more heavily that way. I should think they'd be easier to find that way too. Pung Tung Long Asian Eggplants: Wow. I picked 5 or 6 every single week from my one plant. And they are absolutely delicious. I doubt I will ever grow any other kind. The plants are nice looking too. Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans: This was my first year for them. They make really long vines, but they waited much longer than my others to stop producing in the heat, and have picked up again even though temps are still in the low nineties. They're yummy too. (not stringless) The vines still look super healthy. Louisiana Purple Pod Pole Beans: Still my all-time favorite tasting and beautiful looking beans. However, they looked so bad by July that I pulled them up and re-planted. I am going to try Fortex next year, but I will always grow these too. Zipper Cream Crowder peas: They are lovely plants, easy to pick, and crop up fast. I had two complete crops this summer. Love them. Still looking: for a tomato that doesn't get early blight, but is productive and delicious. I've had lots of fruit, but the vines are so ugly... SVB resistant yellow crookneck squash....sigh. Maybe next year I'll grow them under row covers and pollinate them by hand... Won't mess with cantaloupes again. What the worms didn't eat, the critters did. Not a single edible ripe melon. The vines were LONG, Long, long, and messy. No way did they earn their space. :( All in all, it was a beautiful and productive garden this year. I started planting fall veggies this week.

I live about two hours north of you in Mendocino County, but I'm not sure how similar your weather is to ours. I have grown some of the tomatoes on your list. Stupice: great production all season; average taste (for an heirloom, that is). Brandywine, Sudduth's: poor production; wonderfully complex taste more than compensates. Kellogg's Breakfast: great production in mid-season; superb taste and amazing color. Cherokee Purple: perhaps the most popular heirloom up here; great production and taste. Riesentraube and Olena Ukrainian: spectacular plants, no disease problems, and great production and taste. Most of us--well, I at least--owe Carolyn a debt of gratitude for her book, which introduced us to these and other varieties.