At the beginning of last summer’s gardening season, the folks at Harris Seeds invited me to participate in the company’s home garden trials. I got to choose which vegetable and flower varieties I wanted to plant in my garden and then evaluate their performance.

I wrote about my experience planting ‘Manny’ cucumbers and shared my positive experience with Harris Seeds at the end of last season.

Apparently other garden writers also liked ‘Manny’ because this gourmet cucumber is now available to all gardeners as a new addition to the Harris Seeds Home Garden Catalog for this year.

Other vegetable varieties that garnered a high number of positive evaluations included ‘Cortes’ pepper, ‘Sweety’ pepper, and ‘Red Satin’ radish.

The colorful catalog is filled with other new introductions, too. For example, ‘Nature Bites’ tomato is a short-season (70 days) cherry tomato touted as “the most delicious cherry tomato” the company has tired. 

Another interesting addition is ‘Peppermint Swiss’ chard that features pink-and-white, candy-cane striped stems and dark green leaves. 

Vegetable gardeners may also want to add ‘Honeynut’ squash to the garden. This butternut squash is a personal-sized mini squash (110 days). 

Harris Seeds, based in Rochester, N.Y., has worked to help home gardeners (and professional growers) since 1879. The garden catalog is filled with vegetable seeds and transplants as well as herbs, flowers, fruit, gardening supplies, fertilizers and everything else a gardener needs to grow a successful garden. 

One unique product that is rated a customer favorite is the pelleted carrot seed. Each tiny carrot seed is coated to make it easier to space and plant in the garden. Better spacing means little or no thinning is needed once the carrot seedlings come up. Harris also offers pelleted lettuce seed.

In addition to the new vegetable and flower introductions, the company has added a product called Worm Power to its offerings. Worm Power is a certified organic fertilizer made by worms and can be used on vegetables, flowers and houseplants.

Harris Seeds is a new addition to the catalog roundup featured on VegetableGardener.com.