Varieties For Cold Climates.

[Bigmallly]

In Scotland, the only months that are usually frost free are June, July, August and September, about 120 days. I always look out for quick growing varieties to cope with this.

Can you suggest any tried & tested varieties?

[Tomato Head]

I have some polar baby tomato seeds - I'm hoping they live up to their name

[Ananke]

By coincidence I've just had a mailshot from Fr@nchi seeds saying that Alpine conditions call for Alpine seeds - not seeds produced in hot countries. They produce all their own seeds in the Alps and also have a specific Alpine range Leben Alpine Seeds

Och, I wish I hadn't looked at that site, I want to live there.

[Feral007]

I've just got seeds for mizuna, mitsuma, tatsoi, komatsuma, bok choi, and some other suma/oi thing
I love chinese greens, and now I've discovered they are awesome in our climate I shall probably be turning a shade of green

I put some pak choi seedlings in about 10 days ago and they are charging away. Thinking I must get out and get a few seeds happening, so that we can get successional greens happening.
The heritage seed place we use gets their seed mainly from southern part of Aus, including Tas, so very suitable for us. I'm just waiting for that darn sweet potato tuber they have. You have to pre order, it's so popular, by the time it comes in, it's already gone.
The other thing I'm doing, is trying to save my own seed, from plants that have done well here. And letting some plants self seed. Interestingly, most of the reddish veg grow really well. So the chard with the red veins does better than the yellow or white. It self seeds happily. Interesting to see what natural selections happen with self seeding.

[Peppermint]

Last year our last frost was in the middle of June. I'm hoping that's not going to be the norm.

[marcofez]

This looks interesting, with the weather the way it is! Will have to save all info and digest later. Thanks for topic BM!

[SarzWix]

Real Seeds do a quick maturing broccoli/calabrese which is good. The heads don't get as big but it keeps producing side shoots. Their Oskar early pea seeds are good too.

Minicole cabbage is a small fast white cabbage from T&M that grow almost year-round, and Mini Green iceberg matures much quicker than big ones, both from T&M.

We only really have June, July and August frost free, if we're really lucky we get a week or so in May and a couple in September as well. A layer of fleece topped with a layer of polythene can do wonders at keeping the frost off though. A bit harder to deal with is the lack of light we had last year; you can't install lights over a whole allotment...

[Two_Sheds]

the chard with the red veins does better than the yellow or white.

That's interesting. I like the red best, it's prettiest.

I let things self-seed too: I discovered a cluster of onion seedlings yesterday up the plot. No idea what variety they are, of course, because any label the mother plant might have had, has long gone.

I shall rename them, in my honour !