This week I’ll begin offering some suggestions for vegetable varieties to plant in this climate. Most of my recommendations are not the least bit exotic, and there’s a reason for this. While it’s fun to experiment with the unusual, most of us are more interested in the tried and true.

Our erratic climate and the soils we contend with here also place some limitations on what grows best in our gardens.

Seeds for most of the varieties I describe can be bought at local garden stores, although they also are available through seeds catalogs. The catalogs I turn to most frequently, as long-time readers can attest, are Pinetree, Territorial, Vermont Bean Seed, Totally Tomatoes, Shepherds and Shumway’s. All of them have Web sites you can find through quick searches on the Internet.

This week I’ll be discussing the most common vegetables that start with B and C, and we’ll work our way through the alphabet during the next couple of weeks.

• Beans. When it comes to green beans, it’s hard to go wrong. Blue Lake, Kentucky Wonder, Top Crop, Florence — they’ll all grow here and in most cases they’re available for both bush and pole habitat. One variety I really like is Brio, a reliable, good-tasting bush bean that I get from Vermont Bean Seed. I always plant a row of Royal Burgundy as well, because I like the splash of color in the garden once the pods have set.
• Beets. I don’t eat ’em, and I don’t grow ’em. In 1997, I toured Hoyland Farm, the haunt of Bob and Joy Lominska, who in my book are the King and Queen of Beets. Mostly I just nodded politely as they talked about the wonders of beet farming. Detroit Dark Red was the beet variety that got two thumbs up from the Lominskas. That’s good enough for me.
• Broccoli. Cole crops do best when most of their growth happens before the warm weather hits, so short-growing varieties are what you look for. Packman, an early, 50-day variety, is my favorite.
• Brussells sprouts. Jade Cross is a good 80-day variety. Brussells sprouts attract mites, so the faster you get them in and out of the garden, the better. Plant them in March and you may avoid the bug problem.
• Cabbage. Frost actually enhances the flavor of cabbage. Again, we’re dealing with a cole crop here and you want short-season varieties. I’ve grown Stonehead Hybrid, a 55-day, cabbage, with good luck. Unless you are planting late with the expectation of harvesting after the fall frost, steer clear of storage varieties, such as Danish Ballhead, which takes at least 90 days to mature.
• Carrots. Your choice of carrot depends entirely on your garden soil. Because I have a lot of clay in my dirt, I stick with Royal Chantenay, a 70-day carrot that widens to about two inches at the shoulder and doesn’t attain a length of more than six inches. The harvested root looks sort of like a blunt instrument. If you have nice sandy soil, you can branch off into the Nantes varieties, such as Nantes and Bolero, which look more like the pretty, skinny carrots you buy in the bag at the store.
• Cauliflower. Early Snowball and Silver Cup are good early cauliflowers that mature in 50 to 55 days. This season Pinetree Garden Seeds is promoting a cauliflower called Graffiti, a 75-day variety that purportedly holds its bright purple color during cooking.
• Corn. After fiddling around with a number of varieties of sweet corn, I settled on Kandy Korn. Period. It’s as reliable as corn can get, it doesn’t starch up quickly, and if you plant rows in 10-day intervals, you can keep the harvest going through the middle of the summer.
• Cucumbers. Cukes come in two types, picklers and slicers, and from these two categories we have compact plants and those that spread out a bit, and those that are burpless and those that aren’t. I’ve never been clear on why anyone would not opt for a burpless cucumber, but you need to double-check your seeds unless you want to risk an upset stomach. It’s hard to screw up growing cucumbers, regardless of the variety. Two reliable cukes are County Fair for pickling and Marketmore for slicing.