Cautious fox gingerly samples his first tomato!

Okay all of the food and drink ones for the oc ask game- can be any oc!!!! Love them all so-!!

PANCAKE - what is their comfort breakfast? d BIRTHDAY CAKE - when is their birthday? do they like celebrating it?

DONUT - favourite sweet treat?

FRIES - do they order food often? or they prefer to cook their own food?

HOT BEVERAGE - do they prefer hot or cold drinks? what is their favourite drink?

STRAWBERRY - do they eat their fruit & veg? what is their favourite fruit or vegetable?

CAKE SLICE - favourite cake flavour? are they specific about types of cakes?

SHAVED ICE - do they still have any objects from their childhood? what significance does it have to them? what would their reaction be if they lost it?

Pancake:

(monio) she loves pancakes or waffles with strawberry syrup and berries! hot pancakes btw! they doesn't like them cold

Birthday cake:

(neoma) their birthday is April 12th. she has very mixed feelings on celebrating it. on her birthday she goes to visit her family, and there are some family members she doesn't like which can make her uncomfortable. they also sometimes have a small celebration with friends but she doesn't really like parties or any big social things anyways

Donut:

(bloopsy) she lovessss cotton candy and sour gummy candies!! also anything bubblegum flavoured

Fries:

(val) he doesn't mind cooking but he isn't the best at it, he usually forgets the order of how to prepare meals so she has her partner help her! but he definitely prefers take out food, especially pizza. they could eat it all day

Hot beverage:

(amista) she prefers cold drinks! her two favourites are iced coffee/mocha and bubble tea! specifically strawberry milk bubble teas or fruit teas

Strawberry:

(Chrys) he LOVES fruit especially citrus fruits, vegetables he's a bit iffy about, he can take or leave them. but he adores fruits, they're probably his favourite thing to eat

Cake slice:

(Bellemuerte) her favourite cake is orange! but she also likes marble cakes (multiple flavours like choc/vanilla)

Shaved Ice:

(AI.mor) it has a teddy with a worn out like voice box in it. it used to sing a song that would calm her when she was younger, so it's kept it all these years.

Thunderbird Headcanons

Thunderbird headcanons I just kinda forgot to post.

Scott

Not a single brain cell.

Like 6’1”

Is like really not down with the kids as much as he thinks he is.

Fully believes he is cool.

Writes a letter to his Mum every year and just puts it in a drawer.

Did have a mullet at one point.

Dimples and some moles.

Hates strawberries.

He really loves pies (not made by grandma though)

Good hugs.

He was rebellious as a kid, still got good grades at school but skived a lot and smoked probably.

Wears double denim.

Close to all his brothers due to him helping his dad raise them.

Especially close to Alan as he was only 8 when their dad went missing and kind of hand to become a parental figure in his dad's place.

Wears crocs and socks.

If he needs support will go to Virgil or John, but since he feels comfort in physical contact he tends to go to Virgil.

Full on had grey hairs at 25 from taking over IR.

Really likes porridge.

Reads/watches something for an hour before bed, unless the rescue literally causes him to pass out as soon as he gets on the bed.

Favourite tic tac flavour is lime and orange.

Really bad with spice.

Not allergic to bees

Virgil

Mans built, a good mix of both muscle and fat, bulking him out more than his brothers.

Was a bug kid, used to draw them all the time, he still remembers bug facts.

Really interested in scarab beetles

Moles on face as well as scar near eyebrow.

Like 5’9”-5’10”

Probably could lift the sofa with one hand if given the chance.

Can easily pick up Scott and John at the same time.

Usually the brother Gordon and Alan hang around or ask for emotional support.

Close with Gordon as he was the main brother who cared for Gordon after his accident due to his medical knowledge. Was around when Gordon had his breakdowns and Virgil knows a lot of Gordon's fears or insecurities, he knows most of his brothers insecurities as well, and always checks up on them if they are faced with something that could bring up their insecurities.

Virgil covers up alot, he can be quite insecure about his body, it fully depends on the day, if there is a day where he is more confident with his body and shows more skin, his brothers make sure not to comment on it as that can throw him off and make him insecure again.

Best hugs ever.

Can bake okay, can kind of cook, nothing too hard.

Has his own soup recipe that tends to be used when one of his brothers is ill.

Gay.

Close with all his brothers but tends to end up hanging around Gordon and Alan.

Is allergic to ibuprofen and aspirin

Sarcastic humour.

Full on had a crush on Kip Harris and Tycho reeves.

Can fill a sketchbook in a week.

Landscapes and figures are his favourite things to draw.

Has a birthmark on his palm

John

Tall an lanky.

Good at gymnastics.

Light freckles all over face.

Very close to Alan due to their shared love of space.

John used to teach Alan about space when they were younger, and used Alan as an audience (as well as Jeff) for when he had to practice for a presentation.

Like 6’1”

He had a punk phase when he was a teen.

Has severe hay fever.

Social anxiety isn't good with crowds, unless one of his brothers is with him, they help distract him from the crowds. Alan usually does space talk. Scott and Virgil tend to talk to him about mechanics and coding, usually asking John to babble about it. Gordon usually makes jokes or asks him about what he did that day, half the time Gordon doesn't understand what he's talking about but he's respectful and listens.

Does not like physical contact as much, he will hug his brothers but he has to be in the right mood, his brothers always seem to know when he is in the right mood.

Always hugs Alan and Gordon though.

Tends to keep a level head but if someone were to hurt one of his brothers he would get angry.

Was a generally quiet kid.

Was good at getting a baby/toddler Alan to stop crying.

Has a mole behind his ear.

Gordon

Little, like 5’6” to 5’8”.

Big shoulder from all that butterfly swimming.

Jokes about a lot, not only because he is funny but he is insecure, he hates seeing family so sad, it reminds him of when he was in his accident.

Is actually kind of insecure about his body, he has a lot of scars from accidents and from being in WASP.

He is shaped like a dorito and has little body fat.

Bisexual

Massive crush on Penelope, eventually asks her out and they hang out as much as they can, which isn't much since they both have very busy lives.

Has a mullet.

Also wears crocs and socks but does it better than Scott.

Is a mess.

Military lad but if you didn't know him you would not be able to tell.

Suffers from depression but again you wouldn't be able to tell, he hides it well.

Nothing but bright clothes in his wardrobe.

At one point he did have a crush on buddy.

He did have a good relationship with Jeff but from ages 14-16 they just didn't get on, Gordon just seemed to get on Jeff's nerves a lot and also seemed to just keep making the wrong decisions. This all got better when Gordon talked about going to work with WASP. Too bad Jeff never got to see him there since the accident happened before Gordon started.

Gordon naturally feels relieved when Jeff comes back, they start again and so far they are getting on well.

Is actually a really good cook.

If not swimming or on a mission he will spend the day cooking if given the chance.

Likes veg more than fruit.

Catch him munching on a carrot whilst listening to the info on the mission.

Always has tic-tacs in his pockets, both suit and civvies.

Really good with spice and heat, he survived eating a carolina reaper pepper.

Knows how to do the hoedown throwdown.

Knows origami.

Alan

Was only 1 when his mum died, he blames himself sometimes due to him being the one his mum was trying to save in the avalanche. [All versions]

Pansexual [All versions]

Never had a good bond with his family until he was 14 and the hood attacks, sure he liked them and they cared for him they just never gelled as well. Despite this he is close with John. John was the main one to actually listen to him and actually let him speak through his issues and John never judges him [04].

He has a boyfriend who he meets at whartons, they meet before the hoods attack and get close whilst Alans in recovery via video calls and when Alans is allowed back into school they start dating. [04]

Freckles :)

Is very little, between 5’4” and 5’7” depending on the version.

When Jeff comes back Alan is iffy around him, Jeff manages to get back in to the father figure role quickly but Alan hasn't seen Jeff for years and has forgot a lot about him, Alan naturally goes to Scott with any issues, isn't used to Jeff being around. It takes a few months for him and Jeff to actually bond properly by themselves.

Has a prosthetic leg, the story behind it depends on the version, 04, his leg was severely injured after falling and catching his leg on the moving mole during his fight with the hood in the bank. In TAG it's a situation of explosion in space that nearly kills him. (Sometimes this is a thing sometimes it's not idk)

Has a bed full of stuffed animals.

His room is filled with rocket posters and models.

Has a shelf that's just the rockets in mission order.

Loves the mercury 7.

Alan's baking ability is making those cookies that you just add like milk into.

Used to copy Gordon a lot.

Still copies him sometimes, like him keeping sweets in his pockets at all times and sometimes copies his reactions in conversations cause he zones out a lot

Will tear up if someone shouts at him, usually he hides it and when alone he lets it out. His brothers know this and will usually try to prevent the shouting from happening.

My Favourite Vegetable Varieties - A Retrospective

When we first started gardening we tried lots and lots of different varieties. That's part of the fun of getting started gardening, and we still like to trial at least a few new (to us) things each year. As time has gone on though, certain varieties have moved into the position of being regulars, or even "the one". While I hope my sharing this list with you will be helpful when you make decisions about varieties for your garden, keep in mind this is a personal list. It's the varieties that suit our garden soil, our climate, our exposure, our gardening habits, our cooking style, and our personal tastes both in vegetables generally and specific varieties in particular. One persons ideal garden may look absolutely nothing like anothers. We lean towards heritage varieties, and things that are indeterminate and need support. Partly this is determined by our personalities (we both like to do work up front to save labour later), our locality (short tomatoes don't produce for us, due to septoria leaf spot fungus in the garden), and our tastes (many people including us think pole peas and beans produce better-tasting vegetables). Our near-by gardening friends prefer f1 hybrids as a matter of their personal culture, and short, determinate plants due to their exposed hilltop location - anything staked is likely to blow down pretty quickly, and the list of varieties we each grow has hardly any overlap at all. Something else to keep in mind: when you grow a variety for a while, you form a relationship with it. You learn how to grow it, how to store it, and how to cook it. Some varieties that have been disappointments to us may have been so because we don't understand them and what they need. I will mention a few things that I suspect fall into that category.  Still, now that we've been gardening in this site for nearly 10 years, we can tell you what works for us and to some degree, what doesn't, and why. Of course this is a work in progress, and our garden will continue to evolve. Some of these are obscure and hard to find; for that I apologize. Most of them are sold by at least one Canadian seed house. For now though, these are our favourites: LEAFS: Broccoli: Broccoli in general has not done that well for us; our soil doesn't suit brassicas. However, we have had some success with Green Sprouting, Di Ciccio, Solstice, and Goliath. Purple Peacock (a cross between broccoli and kale) is the only broccoli that has overwintered for us (once) and produced in the spring. I keep meaning to plant it late and try again, and keep forgetting. Brussels Sprouts: Again, not a lot of success with Brussels sprouts. Catskill (aka Long Island) are widely available and do okay. Red Ball (aka Red Bull) and Roodnerf are red sprouts and have been even more iffy for us. Kale sprouts (a cross between Brussels sprouts and kale) have done reasonably well for us; the ones I've grown have been home-made hybrids. Cabbage: One of the better brassicas for us. Chieftain Savoy is the only savoy we've tried; it's done okay enough for us to persevere with it but I'd be open to trying another when the seed runs out. Early Copenhagen and Early Jersey Wakefield have both done well as mid-summer, eat-now cabbages. January King and Late Flat Dutch have been good late storage cabbages. Our best cabbages however, have been grown from seeds of January King crossed with Chieftain Savoy in our own garden. Presumably even in that one year of growing we got seeds better adapted to our garden, so if you can get cabbages to overwinter I believe it is well worth while to save your own seed. Mind you don't get a sterile hybrid if you want to do that though. In red cabbages, Kalibos has been moderately successful, and Red Express not at all. The only Chinese cabbage we have grown was Bilko hybrid, and it did very well. Cauliflower: Results have been mostly dire. On occasion, we have gotten a cauli, mostly from Early Snowball and Amazing. Expensive hybrids have not done any better for us, if even as well. Romanesco types seem to be easier and more reliable (for certain values of "easy" and "reliable") than the white ones. Celery & Celeriac: Bog standard Utah52, Golden Self Blanching (preferred) celery and Giant Prague celeriac have done well for us, which is not to say they have done really well. Again, our soil is not friendly to plants of marsh origins. In general, celeriac does much better for us than celery. Various red celeries in particular have been poor - tough and hollow - and pricey hybrid celeriacs such as President, Mars, and Prinz have been good, but not so distinguished as to really justify their hefty prices. Kale: Not our favourite veg, so we haven't grown a lot of it even though it is probably the easiest brassica for us to grow. Red Russian is practically a weed. We let it go to seed 7 years ago, and still had a self-seeded plant pop up last summer. Black Tuscan (lacinato, dinosaur) was a bit harder to grow, but it did, and I like it better for flavour. If I was inclined, I suspect it would improve for our garden through seed saving. Groninger Blue is another one that did very well. Kohlrabi: As usual with brassicas, generally a slog in our garden. Gigante has done better than the more commonly found Vienna White and Vienna Purple, which have done poorly. Leeks: Giant Musselburgh has been our standard since we first started gardening. Bluer leaved varieties such as Bandit are supposed to be winter hardier, but we've never had a leek of any variety that hasn't pulled through (except Inegol, which isn't available in Canada anyway, and even then about 95% made it). Verdonnet is one we got from the U.S., also not available here at this time, but which has done well. Lettuce: We've had some problems with lettuce too. Yes, this is a theme throughout the leaf crops - our soil is sandy, fast draining, low in organic matter, and a bit on the acidic side. On the other hand, lettuces have proven to be more adaptable than the brassicas, on a more varietal by varietal basis. Ones which have done well include Tom Thumb, which will stay edible even as it starts to bolt - the only such lettuce I know of. Adriana is a fine standard leaf lettuce, as is Black Seeded Simpson. Aussie Yellow is very similar but does not seem to do any better in my experience even though it is described as heat tolerant. May King (sometimes known as May Queen) can be planted earlier than most varieties and has done really well for us. If you are looking for red leafed lettuces New Red Fire, Ruby, and Red Sails have been the best for us. All of the varieties which are green with red spots (freckled) that we have tried so far have done really well. Amish Deer Tongue and Taiwan Sword Leaf did not suit us; we found them tough and uninteresting. Notably, they are traditionally varieties for cooking not eating raw. Dixter MI grows beautifully for us, but we find the flavour bitter. Likewise Merlot is beautiful and probably the darkest red variety out there, but again, we find it too bitter. Spinach: Bloomsdale is widely available and grows well. We find it a little thick and firm for raw eating, and prefer Giant Winter. There are a lot of strains of Giant Winter; I don't know that any of them are all that different. We've tried various hybrid spinaches at times, and have found them no better; just more expensive. Swiss Chard: We have grown and liked Bright Lights (Rainbow or 5 Colour), Green Perpetual, and Lucullus. All of them are good and easy to grow. Bright Lights is the prettiest, Green Perpetual stands the latest in the fall, and Lucullus is the best tasting in our experience and opinion. Miscellaneous Greens: In general, although we love them, we have found Chinese greens hard to grow. Many of them are small plants, slug magnets, and inclined to bolt to seed. Container growing has worked best for us. Tatsoi has been the easiest to grow by far; alas we find the least desirable for flavour. Rapini has been mixed. We get the "40 day" variety and in cool springs it is fabulous. If it turns hot though, your rapini will be bitter. We don't bother with the "60 day" varieties because the odds of it being ready in cool weather are even worse. Arugula does well for us. Mr. Ferdzy doesn't like it. We tried Astro, which is a milder version, last summer and Mr. Ferdzy's verdict was that he "dislikes it less". So I guess I will continue to grow it, and sneak a little into salads for my own tastes. It grows just as well and as quickly as the standard. Orach has in theory grown well for us. In practice the deer eat it. I guess I should mention I have no corn recommendations for the same reason (well, raccoons rather than deer, but yeah. Gone before harvest). For turnip greens I actually like any rutabaga variety instead. I've been growing Spigiarello like broccoli and have not been happy with it but it occurs to me I should be growing it like it's a turnip green. I will try and report back this summer, maybe. Does that apply to Piracicaba too? Possibly. We haven't found any fennel all that different from any other fennel thus far. FRUITS: Cucumbers: For pickling, Sumter has been best but if you can't get it Chicago Pickling is fine. Kaiser Alexander had excellent flavour but lacked disease and insect resistance. Tante Alice is impressively productive and hardy. Muncher is an easily found and grown Beit Alpha (Persian) type that will grow outdoors very happily. Telegraph Improved has done well for us. We grew Yamato Sanjaku for a few years but it's hard to get and we ran out of seed; I will be trying Shintokiwa which looks very similar in its place. Little Leaf H19 is one I remember doing well in our allotment days; hard to find now but a good choice for container growing. Eggplants: Ping Tung is probably our favourite eggplant. Kamo and Listada de Gandia also did well for us. We were unimpressed by Little Fingers. Melons: Melons can be pretty iffy with many doing well one year but not another. Consistent performers for us have been Gnadenfeld (orange fleshed), Early Hanover (green fleshed), Collective Farm Woman (white fleshed - a winter storage melon, actually) and Sweet Freckles (an orange fleshed Crenshaw type melon). Peppers - Mild: Like tomatoes, peppers are awfully subjective. They are a little harder to grow in Ontario than tomatoes though, so some of the best are the best just because they grow well here. Anyway, our regulars are Cubanelle (getting to be hard to find), Hungarian Sweet Banana (more reliable than exciting), Doe Hill, Alma Paprika, and Chervena Chushka. We liked Jimmy Nardello but somehow it has not become a regular. Alma Paprika is productive and good fresh or dried and ground. Peppers - Hot: We don't go for anything too crazy. In order of hotness, we seem to have settled into growing Ancho Poblano, Aleppo, Fish, Early Jalapeño, Long Red Cayenne, Aji Rojo and Orange Thai. One plant of that last will produce enough very hot little dried peppers to last us several years. Squash, Summer: Zucchini to you, but also scallop squash (those little flying saucer shaped, uh, zucchini). These are pretty much all of the species pepo, which means that with each other they will cross. Black Beauty is the standard but Costato Romanesco tastes better, even if it produces a little less. Golden is very popular here, but productivity is not that great. Ronde de Nice looks like a novelty but again, it has excellent flavour and works well for stuffing. Lebanese White Bush is another good one. Tatume is a bit different in that it is one of the few long vining (as opposed to bush) varieties available, but if you have the space it's terrific. Pattison Panaché and Woods Early are two good scallop squash. Squash, Winter: In general varieties of moschata and maxima species are considered better tasting than pepo varieties, but people's tastes do differ. Acorn squash have gotten to be the only pepo varieties we grow for winter keeping, and they don't really keep past January. Table Queen is the standard, and it's fine, but we have liked the smaller, golden-skinned Thelma Sanders and Gill's Golden Pippin (in particular) better. Galeux d'Eysines and Baby Blue Hubbard are the stand-out maximas we've grown, and Waltham Butternut has been the standard in moschatas for a long time for a reason. You are starting to see smaller versions such as Nutter Butter which work better in smaller modern households, and which are just as good. In the other direction, we really liked Pennsylvania Neck Pumpkin. We are letting our moschatas all grow together and saving seed, which produces variable results but is a lot of  fun. So far it's all been decidedly edible. Tomatoes: These are so much a matter of personal taste it's hard to make recommendations, but I'll try! Note that there are a lot of terrific tomatoes we will not grow or try because the plants are too short to cope with our septoria leaf spot problem, but which may be the perfect tomatoes for someone else. I'm thinking, for example, of Bellestar as a canner, and Mountain Princess, which is an early, determinate, heavy producer of good slicers - kind of useless for the home gardener, but if I was a market gardener, I'd be all over it (along with other varieties for later in the season). In cherry tomatoes, we like Snow White, Ildi, Sun Sugar*, Isis Candy, Matt's Wild, Black Cherry, and Dancing with Smurfs. Why yes, this does give you a nice little rainbow selection. Green is the only colour not represented here, and there are certainly green cherry tomatoes out there. I haven't found one because I admit I'm not looking very hard. I'm also growing either a sport or a cross of Isis Candy that is a plain red and the first red cherry tomato I've really liked. In salad sized tomatoes, Stupice and Bloody Butcher (which I havne't grown) are the standards for earliness. Garden Peach and Green Zebra are novelty colours but really good tomatoes nevertheless. My favourite red is my own variety that I developed from a cross between Jaune Flammé - awfully good in it's own right - and an unknown red beefsteak. Goose Creek and Cosmonaut Volkov are maybe a little large to be in this group, but a little small for the next. They are both very fine tomatoes. The big slicers are the royalty of the tomato garden, and there's quite a list of ones we want to grow: Persimmon, Pineapple, Great White, Striped German, Paul Robeson, Franchi's Red Pear,  Japanese Black Trifele, We've kind of given up on Mammoth Cretan and Carol Chyko's Big Paste - they were impressively huge tomatoes with good flavour, but production was a bit variable, and once you've marveled at how enormous your tomatoes are, well then what? Three tomatoes that we tried and really didn't like at all were Marmande, Eva Purple Ball, and Sasha's Altai - but lots of people love these, so again, it's an awful lot to do with personal taste. As for paste tomatoes, Opalka has been a mainstay. Amish Paste is hugely productive but too watery to be a real paste tomato and we are slowly moving away from it. San Marzano Redorta and Hungarian Italian were a bit short but showed some septoria leaf spot resistance. Federle just didn't produce well, and Speckled Roman, much as we liked it, was too susceptible to the septoria leaf spot and had to be dropped. We've only grown Kosovo and Donskoi once, in a bad year; they looked promising enough I'm planning to try them again this year. Romeo can be hard to find but it's a fine paste tomato. Santa Clara Canner we got from 2 different sources because we couldn't believe how terrible it was the first time, but second time was same as the first, so no, that's what it's like - sour and watery. Martino's Roma are a really cute size, but thick tough skins make them hard to peel and too much work, and they are too juicy to can nicely as whole tomatoes so they too are rated as a bust. The last few years we've been saving seed from our best paste tomato plants and mixing them together without regard for the variety. There is definitely some crossing going on, and we are happy with the tomatoes we've been getting. We will continue to do this, perhaps occasionally throwing something new into the mix. Watermelon: Well you all know by now that I am now letting things cross and seeing what happens, but having grown a lot of watermelons in the last few years there are definitely a few that stand out. Golden Midget is amazingly early and better for flavour than it's reputation, especially in a cool summer. Small Shining Light is better than the look-alike Sugar Baby. Early Canada did very well for us. Grover Delaney is a very small watermelon, but with excellent texture and flavour. Sweet Siberian is a reliable small orange fleshed variety. Crimson Sweet is an extremely common watermelon as it is indeed the best and most reliable of the larger open pollinated red oblong watermelons. I haven't grown Early Moonbeam but hear nothing but good reports about it. Cream of Saskatchewan was sweet but bland and not productive for me, Moon and Stars was coarse fleshed and had a tendency to fail to close up properly and then rot, Orangeglo is really too late for our shortish season, and Blacktail Mountain didn't do much for us either. ROOTS: Beets: Early Wonder has been our best standard red; for some reason Detroit Dark Red refuses to grow in our soil. Cylindra is great for pickled beets or if you really want nice even slices and it grows well too. Touchstone Gold is the best yellow and Chioggia is the classic red and white bulls-eyed patterned beets; both well worth growing. MacGregor's Favourite requires long cooking but is a really lovely garden plant. Carrots: It took us a while to acclimatize our garden soil to carrots and to learn how to grow them, so we probably should go back and try a few varieties that didn't impress us at the start again. However, we have done well with St. Valery and Flakkee (Autumn King) as standard broad-shouldered winter storage carrots. Amsterdam Maxi is marketed as a baby carrot - and indeed you can pick them very small - but they grow to be a nice slender but substantial carrot that holds well in the ground if left. Pfalzer Yellow has been the best of the yellow carrots we have grown. We have not been impressed by white carrots in general (although we will keep trying) and for some reason have not really gotten into other colours. Onions: For sweet onions, we've been growing Siskiyou Sweet, a strain of Walla Walla. Early Yellow Globe was a reliable if slightly unevenly sized yellow storage onion. Rossa di Milano is an excellent red storage onion. I just saw it listed in Canada for the first time this year, but I've been growing and loving Rose de Roscoff (Kereval) which I don't think is exactly the Pink Onion that was available a few years back, but similar, for the last 2 years. Best French onion soup ever! Shallots: Most seed-grown shallots are hybrids, often sterile hybrids. Look for Zebrune (Banana) shallot which is a French seed-grown heirloom variety. Otherwise, shallots and potato onions are usually grown from sets. There are a lot of strains being passed around and I don't have much experience with most of them; also amateur hybridizers are playing around with seed from them. The true French Grey Shallot (allium oschaninii) is presently impossible to get; Richters is the only company in Canada listing them and they have been out of stock for the last 2 years. (If anyone has this, I would love to get some!) Parsnips: Are mostly fairly indistinguishable; Hollow Crown, Harris Model, Guernsey and Turga have all been good. Kral is the only one a little different; it is very wide at the shoulders and tapers down quickly, making it a good choice for heavier soils. Potatoes: My favourite potato ever is the good old Russet Burbank, and it grows well but needs steady moisture. Envol is an excellent fast summer potato, but it doesn't store well. German Butterball is similar to Russet Burbank, but yellow fleshed. Purple Viking is beautiful and delicious, but not a good keeper. Pink Fir Apple is an excellent fingerling, but it took us some time to figure out how to grow it and how to use it. Blue Russian and Red Thumb are pretty and we continue to grow some, but they are not staples for us. Radishes & Turnips: In summer radishes Cherry Belle is widely available, and has been very reliable for us.  French Breakfast and White Icicle are also good. Ostergruss Rosa are large and carrot shaped, but tender and good growers. We're still experimenting with different winter radishes; in general the Asian types are the best. The Black Spanish radish is a bit dull but improves with storage. Watermelon always looks so tempting but refuses to grow in our garden. I'm not a fan of white turnips, so no recommendations. I really like Goldana though; it's so sweet and nice it can be eaten raw. We grew Red Round very briefly and have not been able to get seed for it since but it too was excellent. I don't know if Scarlet Ohno Revival is similar or not; I haven't been able to get my hands on that either. Rutabaga: We have only grown Laurentian and York of the standard widely available rutabagas, and both were okay but struggle in our soil. We've saved seeds and I think they are doing better. Gilfeather also struggled a bit, but had an interesting more potato-like quality to it. Maybe a good choice for low carbers who want a potato substitute? And again, rutabagas make better turnip greens than turnips, for my taste. Sweet Potato: Georgia Jet is by far the best for productivity and reliability in our climate. Toka Toka I prefer for flavour. Frasier White was very nice but it took me a while to get used to it. Tainung 65 and Owairaka Red were similar to Georgia Jet but less productive. Purple Flesh is another one that will take some getting used to - the flesh really is an amazing purple. None of the sweet potatoes we have grown have had the strong orange colour of most commercial varieties. LEGUMES: A note about legumes in general - there is no other class of vegetable that is so easy to save seed from, and none that has shown such HUGE improvements from doing so. When we plant a new-to-us dried bean we expect to DOUBLE our subsequent production through careful seed selection. Peas are not quite so improvable, but we see steady increases in average number of peas per pod and general productivity as well. Beans, Bush, Fresh: We quickly gave up on growing these. Provider was pretty good, and Pencil Pod Black wax was delicious but diseases prone. Roma II was a good flat green bean. Goldrush was okay. Royal Burgundy was not at all impressive, as I recall - I can't recommend it. We have switched to pole beans without regret. Beans, Bush, Dry: A much more viable option. We've tried and liked Soldier, Kahl, Hidatsa Red, and Arikara Yellow which has become our favourite. Thibodeau de Comté Beauce has done okay, but always seems to get some nasty white fungus on it, so it's off the list. Beans, Pole, Fresh: Early Riser is our earliest pole bean and keeps going all summer if you keep them picked. Blue Lake S7 is our absolute favourite and the best for freezing. Other family members loved Fortex; we thought it was just okay and it struggled a bit with yellow bean mosaic virus the year we had it. Grandma Nellie's Yellow Mushroom bean is tasty and fun, but we seem to be gravitating to Annelino Yellow more these days. This one also makes a terrific dry bean if you leave them. Cherokee Trail of Tears is also a good dual-purpose bean. Purple Podded is probably better than Purple Peacock or Trionfo Violetto, but they are all good purples. Beans, Pole, Dry: In additon to Cherokee Trail of Tears and Annelino Yellow mentioned above, Blue Lake S7 makes a surprisingly good dried bean. Dolloff and Deseronto Potato Bean are our best beans just for drying, and they are terrific. I'm also giving more room to a Deseronto - Something else cross that showed up in the garden 2 years ago, as well as Anseloni's Bologna, which I don't believe is commercially available so oops for you. Snowcap was beautiful, as was True Red Cranberry but both of those struggled with diseases before bean diseases were a widespread garden problem here; we no longer grow them. Other Beans: Lima beans have not done well; we are still looking for a good variety. The same with long beans; Farmers Long did well the first year we grew it but struggled a little in last  years extreme heat and seems to be no longer listed anyway. We will be starting to look more at cow peas in general but right now I have no tried and true varieties (other than another one that is not commercially available). Peanuts: Valencia is pretty much the only thing available. It did only so-so but has improved a lot through selection, both in yield and mould resistance. Unfortunately we lost our improved seed and are starting from scratch again. Peas, Bush, Fresh Early: Strike is the earliest pea we know of, and determinate; we've been growing it to harvest within a 2 week period and then pull them out and replace them with bush dry beans. We tried Knight last year for the first time. It was a few days later but more productive and, we thought, better tasting peas. We will be planting more of it. We tried Misty a few years back but hadn't developed this technique at the time - it got discarded for being too early and too determinate; but it might work in this scenario. We've given up on Tom Thumb as and not quite early or determinate enough. Peas, Bush, 2nd Early: Laxton's Progress is very determinate and too late for the above plan. Large Manitoba got planted next to it by chance and my conclusion is that it is a selection out of Laxton's Progress, and the better of the 2 peas. Sutton's Harbinger, Harrison's Glory, Carter's Daisy - all great peas and hard to decide between.  Green Arrow and Homesteader are the standard varieties grown around here, but Green Arrow doesn't grab me for flavour and Lincoln (Homesteader) had serious disease problems the one time we grew it. Peas, Pole, Mid to Late: Ne Plus Ultra and Mrs Van are very similar, and overlap a little. Both excellent. Next come Tall Telephone and Champion of England. Carruther's Purple Pod is eye-popping, but the peas are an old fashioned olive colour, and a little bitter when raw - an acquired taste. Spanish Skyscraper is so late that the weather may be too hot for good fresh peas, but no problem - it's just as good used as a dry soup pea. In fact, they can be used in recipes that call for chick peas as they are very like them. Peas, Snow & Snap: Norli is a terrific little snow pea for early peas. Carouby de Maussane is our favourite later on, but it's a pole pea for sure. Golden Sweet is pretty but something of a novelty. People keep saying it's a good soup pea but I'm not impressed. We grow a few just to have a different colour. For snap peas, we glommed onto Amish Snap before we tried anything else much, and that was that. They are SO good. We also grow a few Sugar Magnolia, not quite so good in flavour but an amazing colour. Peas, Dry: Blue Pod Capucjiners is the only bush dry pea we've grown, and they can get pretty high actually. They have brown skins and seem more bean-like than pea-like when cooked. Zeiner's Gold (dries yellow) was not as productive as St. Hubert, which is a green pea when dried, but we think the taste is better. St Hubert is still good enough that we grow it regularly! I've just started selecting Zeiner's Gold for better production so we will see how it does over the next few years. from Seasonal Ontario Food http://seasonalontariofood.blogspot.com/2017/02/my-favourite-vegetable-varieties.html