Seeds to sow directly in the garden

Originating from the large family of spring radishes, the Cherry Belle has become a classic in vegetable gardens for its earliness and consistent quality. Its round, bright red roots quickly emerge in the still-cool soil at the beginning of the season, providing the first crisp notes of a vibrant garden.

In welcoming, well-loosened soil, it produces small, uniform radishes with white flesh, best harvested young to enjoy their full sweetness. This reliable variety, well-suited to staggered sowing, naturally finds its place in a diverse garden. Cultivated using respectful methods, it integrates easily among rows of lettuce and other slower-growing vegetables, participating in the cycle of seasons as one of the first signs of spring's renewal.

Originating from European market gardening traditions, the Petit Provençal pea is a dwarf variety of garden pea that has naturally found its place in gourmet vegetable gardens. Its green pods, neatly arranged on compact plants, offer small, round, sweet peas that are harvested in the freshness of spring or early summer.

In the garden, this variety stands out for its low, regular growth habit, which makes it easy to care for and harvest in a manageable, productive space. It integrates well into a vibrant garden, whether planted along a border or as a low hedge, and contributes to the cycle of the seasons by gently and undemandingly enriching the soil with nitrogen. It's a reliable plant for anyone wishing to rediscover the age-old practice of sowing peas as soon as the soil becomes receptive in spring.

Originating from the temperate regions of Eurasia , Verdil spinach has become a staple in vegetable gardens , for both amateur and professional gardeners. It is prized for its supple, deep green leaves , its mild and delicate flavor , and its natural resistance to cold , making it a choice leafy vegetable as soon as the first frosts arrive .

In the garden, Verdil is a generous and fast-growing plant , perfectly suited to cool climates like that of Quebec . Its low, dense growth habit effectively covers the ground, limiting weeds while promoting biodiversity . Its easy cultivation, requiring no special care, makes it a reliable ally for gardeners seeking simplicity and productivity .

The Miyama turnip is a Japanese variety of white turnip, carefully selected to be eaten very young, when the root is still small, crisp, and delicate. At this precise stage, it develops a very fine white flesh with a mild and slightly sweet flavor, prized both raw and lightly cooked.

It's important to remember that a turnip isn't a botanical variety in itself, but rather a horticultural and culinary term : a turnip harvested before it's fully mature. In this sense, the Miyama variety naturally falls into the turnip family, not because of its geographical origin, but because of its morphology, texture, and intended flavor. In Japan, it's known as a kabu , a high-quality turnip, prized for its simplicity and precise aroma.

Miyama is the result of decades of meticulous selection by the Noguchi Seeds company, whose goal was to develop a salad-type root vegetable with an incomparable texture and flavor. This variety is now considered a true local treasure in its region of origin, to the point that an annual festival is dedicated to it.

In the garden, Miyama is undemanding and particularly fast-growing. It adapts to various soil types, provided they are loose and well-drained, and offers early harvests in both spring and autumn. Harvested young, it fully expresses its flavor potential and is a perfect fit for vegetable gardens seeking to diversify their quick and delicate harvests.

Native to North America, Parris Island Cos romaine lettuce is known for its hardiness and its ability to add crispness and freshness to salads. This variety has become a staple in organic vegetable gardens thanks to its majestic appearance and dense foliage, offering excellent resilience to the vagaries of the climate.

In the garden, it stands out with its upright habit and elongated, light green leaves with pronounced veins, promising a firm texture and a mild, slightly sweet flavor. Versatile and prolific, it integrates harmoniously into a vegetable garden where it adds a touch of verticality and a constant source of flavor.

Native to the Mediterranean region and cultivated for centuries, 'Rainbow Mix' Swiss chard is renowned for its foliage in a variety of colours, ranging from bright yellow to deep red, including orange and pink, which brightens vegetable gardens with a cheerful and vibrant touch. This colourful mix pays homage to the natural diversity of this nutritious and robust plant.

In the garden, 'Rainbow Mix' Swiss chard unfurls its large, wavy leaves with an upright habit, making it easy to grow even in small spaces. Its role as a versatile leafy vegetable makes it a valuable companion, providing a regular abundance of harvests for salads or cooking, while also contributing to crop biodiversity.

Native to North America, the Provider dwarf bean is an heirloom variety that has won over gardeners with its vigor, reliability, and remarkable earliness. Its compact, upright habit makes it ideal for small spaces, raised beds, or companion planting.

This hardy bean is distinguished by its tolerance to spring cold, allowing for early sowing as soon as the soil has warmed up. It forms vigorous plants that produce numerous green, straight, fleshy pods, about 14 cm (5½ inches) long. From June to September, its small flowers discreetly attract beneficial insects, contributing to a balanced ecosystem.

Easy to grow, reliable, and highly productive even in less than ideal conditions, it fits perfectly into a productive garden where simplicity goes hand in hand with consistency. Its ability to fix nitrogen also makes it a valuable ally for soil health.

The Halblange parsnip is a variety renowned for the quality and uniformity of its roots. It produces long, slender, smooth, well-formed roots with a creamy beige skin and white flesh with a very mild flavor. This mildness intensifies considerably when the roots are harvested after the first autumn frosts.

The roots can reach up to 25 cm in length and retain a fine, pleasant texture when cooked. Very hardy, this parsnip tolerates light frosts without difficulty, allowing for staggered harvests late in the season and even after the first frosts.

In the garden, Halblange parsnips require deep, loose, and well-drained soil to allow for healthy root development. Germination is slow and can take about three weeks, during which time the soil must remain consistently moist. Once established, the plant is robust and undemanding, providing a reliable and abundant harvest.

Originating in the United States , the National Pickling cucumber is an iconic variety , developed specifically for making homemade pickles . Its short, fleshy, and very crisp fruits , with a slightly warty skin, are perfect for pickling : they absorb flavors well while retaining the firm and juicy texture so sought after by pickle lovers.

In the garden, this variety stands out for its rapid and vigorous growth , its creeping or semi-climbing habit , and its ability to produce continuously throughout the summer. It adapts well to cultivation in rows, in the ground or on small supports, making it ideal for compact and productive vegetable gardens . Highly productive, it allows for frequent harvests , encouraging both fresh eating and artisanal processing .

National Pickling is therefore a reliable and generous companion , perfect for extending the flavors of summer in colorful and tangy jars.

Native to North America, the Northeaster climbing bean stands out with its slender form and exceptional vigor. This heirloom variety, prized for its productivity, has been passed down through generations, contributing to bountiful summer harvests for gardeners here.

In the garden, its supple, climbing stem twines easily around supports, unfurling dense, dark green foliage that creates a slender and generous silhouette. Highly productive, it yields flavorful, long, and thin pods, ideal for those who love fresh vegetables for cooking or preserving. This bean is a valuable ally, structuring the verticality of the garden and promoting space-efficient landscaping.

In a communal garden, this variety embodies dynamism and resilience; it thrives among other crops, promoting biodiversity and soil fertility thanks to its nitrogen-fixing capacity. A generous and sociable plant, perfect for gardeners whose patience is rewarded.

Known as French Breakfast , the Petit Déjeuner Français radish variety belongs to those early root vegetables that faithfully accompany the start of the season. Its elongated, bright red root, ending in a white tip, easily finds its way into the rows of the vegetable garden and then naturally finds its place on the table, for a simple and nourishing snack.

In a thriving garden, it's a reliable plant: sowing takes place early in spring in already receptive soil, and the harvest follows in just a few weeks. Its light foliage covers the ground and participates in the cycle of seasons, making way, after harvest, for other light-loving crops. Easy to integrate into a diverse growing area, the French Breakfast radish is well-suited to respectful cultivation practices and careful observation of living things.

Garden rocket, also known as cultivated rocket, is a small annual native to the Mediterranean basin, now thriving in the organic vegetable gardens of our cooler climates. Its deeply lobed, deep green leaves add a touch of vibrancy to any available patch of soil, whether in a flower bed, a pot, or a planter on the balcony.

In a harmonious garden, arugula establishes itself as a discreet yet generous companion plant: it germinates quickly, covers the ground, and offers a succession of young leaves with a peppery flavor. By allowing a few plants to flower, you'll discover a white bloom with purplish veins that attracts pollinators and accompanies the cycle of the seasons, while also providing seeds for a truly sustainable approach to seed saving.

The watermelon radish, often called the watermelon radish , is an old variety originating in China, a cousin of the winter radish. From the outside, it appears as a round root with white or greenish skin, rather inconspicuous. But when cut, it reveals a bright pink to red heart, reminiscent of the flesh of a watermelon, hence its evocative name.

In a vibrant and nourishing garden, this radish finds its place among the late summer and autumn crops. It thrives in cool, well-worked soil and consistently accompanies the cycle of the cooler seasons. Its crisp, mild flesh, less pungent than that of small spring radishes, makes it an excellent addition to colorful salads, marinades, and crudités platters. Grown with a soil-friendly approach, it contributes to crop rotation and integrates naturally into a harmonious and diverse vegetable garden.

Native to the warm regions of Mexico, the Mexican cucumber ( Melothria scabra ) has earned a prominent place in organic gardens for its resilience, productivity, and unexpected charm. Its light green mottled skin , small size , and oval shape are reminiscent of tiny watermelons, and offer a bright, fresh, and subtly lemony flavor .

In the garden, it displays a climbing, twining habit , ideal for trellises and elevated corners. Its dense foliage forms a light, green screen that shelters the soil and attracts pollinating insects , while its discreet yellow flowers punctuate the summer with successive blooms. This plant grows vigorously in warm temperate climates and often continues to fruit late into the season.

At once nourishing, decorative and generous , the Mexican cucumber is an ideal companion for summer crops , offering an abundant harvest of small, crunchy fruits to nibble on, pickle or surprise guests around a colorful plate.

The 'Envy' edamame soybean is a short-season variety that has found its place in northern gardens, where warmth is precious and every week of growth counts. Developed by Professor Elwyn M. Meader of the University of New Hampshire, this variety was designed to offer a reliable and flavorful harvest in climatic conditions similar to those of Quebec.

In the garden, 'Envy' forms compact plants about 60 cm tall , well-branched and easy to incorporate into a diverse vegetable garden. Its glossy green pods , slightly downy with a fine buff fuzz, develop early in the season and promise a bountiful harvest. The beans are harvested while still tender, when their texture is firm and their sweet, vegetal flavor is at its peak.

In the local area, this soybean variety proves particularly interesting for gardeners curious to explore new food legumes without excessive complexity. It thrives both in open ground and in well-drained beds, contributing to the diversification of food crops while enriching the soil thanks to its natural nitrogen-fixing capacity.

Dwarf Blue Scotch kale is a compact and hardy variety, prized for its finely curly blue-green leaves and high cold tolerance. Its low, dense growth habit forms a well-structured rosette, ideal for vegetable gardens of all sizes, including container gardening.

This variety is distinguished by the quality of its leaves, which are thick yet tender when harvested young. With the arrival of cooler temperatures, their flavor mellows and deepens, making it a particularly prized leafy green at the end of the season. Its steady growth allows for leaf-by-leaf harvesting, extending production over several months.

In the garden, Dwarf Blue Scotch adapts well to cool to temperate weather conditions. It prefers rich, well-drained soil and consistent moisture. Its hardiness makes it an excellent choice for gardeners seeking a reliable crop that is relatively unaffected by climatic variations.

Golden Bantam is an old, yellow sweet corn variety, long cultivated in North American home gardens. More of a "sweet corn" type than a field corn, it offers golden ears that add a beautiful presence to the vegetable garden, standing upright above bright green foliage.

In the garden, its plants reach a moderate height for a corn variety, making it well-suited to small-scale vegetable gardens. Its full ears of yellow kernels are harvested for milk and eaten immediately after picking. In a vibrant and productive garden, it thrives in strips or small squares, contributing to the garden's vertical structure and naturally fitting into the seasonal cycle, from sowing to the decline of the stalks in late summer.

The Superprécoce du Roc melon is an old variety of the "rock melon" type, selected to produce flavorful fruit in regions with shorter summers. Modest in size, with well-defined segments and the reticulated rind typical of cantaloupe melons, it naturally finds its place in a productive vegetable garden that prioritizes early harvests.

In the garden, this variety forms a creeping plant that spreads close to the ground, seeking out warm, welcoming soil. Its round to slightly oval fruits ripen faster than those of many other melons, making it a valuable ally in a gardening approach that respects the natural cycles of the climate. In a harmonious garden, the Superprécoce du Roc pairs well with other cucurbits, contributing to the diversity of the vegetable patch while offering the daily pleasure of fragrant fruit in the heart of summer.

Originating in Northern Europe, the 'Copenhagen' cabbage is an old variety particularly prized for its earliness and hardiness , well-suited to cool climates. Its dense, tightly closed head of a bright, light green color makes it a reliable and generous vegetable, sought after as much for its consistency as for its flavor.

In organic gardens , this cabbage stands out for its natural vigor and its ability to provide a nourishing harvest in early to mid-autumn . Its compact, well-structured head captures the freshness of shorter days and becomes a staple of winter cuisine , both raw and cooked.

Sturdy, consistent, and easy to grow, 'Copenhagen' is a perfect fit for a diverse vegetable garden . It brings structure, abundance, and resilience , while integrating harmoniously into a food crop based on natural cycles.