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Some years ago we were talking to a new neighbor about gardening. “What kind of peas do you plant?” she wanted to know.

“Freezonians,” Julie replied promptly. “Because the seeds are easy to find!”

I rolled my eyes. Except for harvesting, my sister pays as little attention as possible to the garden. I’m the one who figured out that Dakota peas might be prolific, but they all ripen at once and the tough little pods proved time-consuming to shell, while the Alaska Early Bush variety we tried grew unmanageably tall while producing such tiny pods that we pulled the vines and fed them to the horses.

“Our Freezonians ripen early, grow a lot of pods that aren’t too hard to shell, and they freeze well,” I explained. “But our vines grow to seven or eight feet, so they weigh down fences, topple over, and even tangle with the next row.”

I still have vivid memories of crawling under canopies of interlaced pea vines, searching out pea pods, before we started setting the rows 50 inches apart and using chest-high fencing with numerous stakes. Only their reliability and prolific production has kept me planting Freezonians every year for three decades.

Since all our vegetables come from the garden, selecting varieties has an impact on our diets for an entire year. Like many long-time gardeners, I’ve tried a lot of seed varieties over the years. Most fail to live up to the old reliables I always plant, but every once in a while I make a score. For years we couldn’t find any peas that produced as well as Freezonians without the burden of such tall vines. Then one year I planted a few Knight peas. Although not quite a prolific as Freezonians, the shorter vines and big, easy-shelling pods made me switch half of our main crop to them. I still plant a half-row of a new variety every year, but the Sparkles and Galena’s, Eclipses and New Centuries never proved themselves.

For years Julie complained anytime I wasted garden space on any carrot other that Royal Chantenay. Carrots have always loved our garden, and the “RC’s” grew big and thick-rooted, sweet instead of woody, and kept fairly well. But they also grew too chunky for nice slicing carrots for freezing, so I kept planting a new variety or two every year. Denali Seeds’ Gold King fit the ticket: Although it produced fewer pounds per foot of garden space, the roots grew much longer and narrower, perfect for slicing.

I’ve also been sneaking in a half-row of Oxheart carrots, an heirloom variety available from Seeds of Change. The hugely thick, short roots are almost triangular instead of the classical carrot-shape, and although less sweet and juicy, they store so well I’ve pulled decent carrots from the root cellar even in June, nine months after harvesting.

Green Goliath broccoli likes our garden, and I’ve also grown quite fond of Small Miracle, whose foot-wide heads are often followed by secondary ones bigger than anything you’re liable to spot in a grocery store. Umpqua, Liberty, Arcadia, and other popular varieties did not do so well for me.

“Milky Way, furry heads, do NOT plant!” I noted of this variety of cauliflower. It tasted fine, but the tiny spicules all over the white heads gave it an unpleasant texture. I decided to stick to Snow Crown or Snowball, until recently when I succumbed to couple colored varieties. The Orange Cheddar produced a smallish light-orange head which faded to a stale-yellow when blanched. Graffiti also faded when blanched, but the huge, exotic, brilliant purple heads have a mild, pleasant taste, as well as making quite a splash with visitors.

I used to depend upon onion sets — the tiny dried bulbs — for starting our onions, but they never grew very big. Finally I preplanted several varieties of seeds and was startled at the grocery-store sized onions they produced. Although a lot more trouble, they all produced a higher quality product. The Alisa Craig onions seemed to rot in storage a bit sooner and the Norstars started growing stems in the root cellar by the following May, but of the Talon variety I wrote: “PERFECT!”

Of course, much of gardening success lies in the soil, the weather, and other factors that can affect the outcome. Maybe the poor germination I saw in the Rondo, Maxiglot, and Greensage peas had more to do with the weather those years, since peas don’t appreciate cold, hot, or wet weather and some varieties seem more sensitive.

Ruby Queen beets, Fordhook Giant Swiss chard, Great Lakes or Ithaca head lettuce, and a mixed packet of leaf lettuce all have proved themselves here. Polar Vee or Yukon Chief corn matures during warmer summers, along with Denali Seeds Frosty F-1 Pumpkins. Sometimes even bigger pumpkin varieties mature, too; my biggest weighed 50 pounds and make an awful lot of pumpkin bread and pumpkin pudding.

Of course, there have been a few missteps and disasters along the way, too. The asparagus peas did rather well, even if the plants grew into mats spreading out into the areas between the rows, but I didn’t care for the taste or the stringy texture. When I planted the Purple Trionfa Beans thinking that a “green” bean that was really “purple” might be amusing, I didn’t notice these were POLE beans, not BUSH beans. Without support, the vines sprawled out several feet into the next rows, tangling with themselves and everything in their paths. Then, because they didn’t bloom until August, they never produced any beans, anyway. (The horses did enjoy the vines.)

Two years ago I planted a few beetberries. At first the plants reminded me of strawberry spinach, with their “goosefoot” leaves. Then the mats began sprawling together and into other plants. When the “berries” ripened, I thought they tasted rather like melon, which would have been fine if you like melon. Since I don’t, I scratched them off my list of Things to Plant Next Year.

Well! That was easier said than done! The next year came, and with it, beetberries! The seeds from the plants had spread throughout several hundred square feet of the garden, popping up over and over no matter how many times I hoed them down. Sometimes I only spotted them through the other growth when their fruits turned bright red, meaning they were ready to re-infect the garden. They even popped up in the corral where the horses had declined my plant offerings the previous year.

Since I already have plenty of chickweed and lamb’s quarters, dandelions and pineapple weed and knotweed, I hoed aggressively and burned any ripe plants I found. Even this year, though, a scattering of beetberries have come up.

Then, too, so many of our plants have been here so long I don’t know what they are. I’ve re-planted seed potatoes harvested from our garden for so long I have no idea what they are anymore. I never recorded the name of the asparagus I planted a decade ago, so even it has slipped from memory. The rhubarb and tiny, sweet strawberries pre-date not only us but also our mother, who bought this land more than 50 years ago.

Of course, we always like to know the different wild varieties too — our wild red currants make wonderful jelly, for instance, but the very similar skunk currants, with their brilliant red but bristly berries — bleh! But that’s another story.