Descriptions written by paid propagandists. My favorites from previous years include:

tomatoes: celebrity, sweet million.

peppers: flamingo, tequila, jimmy nardello.

To save wear and tear on our digestive systems in 2007, all listed pepper varieties are sweet or have very little heat.

TOMATOES:

Beefmaster

One of America's favorites for the solid, meaty, flavorful red fruit that weighs up to 2 lbs. Vigorous vines and outstanding fruit taste and quality. Indeterminate. 80 days

Campbell's

Campbell's 1327 VFA. This open-pollinated, determinate, red tomato sets large (7 oz.) fruits that are globe shaped with smooth skin. The interior is firm and meaty and it has good leaf coverage and is disease resistant. 73 days.

Celebrity

A 1984 ALL-AMERICA SELECTIONS WINNER. Absolutely incredible set of exceptionally flavorful, firm 8 to 12 oz. fruit on strong vines with good cover and outstanding disease resistance. Large clusters of consistently large, beautiful tomatoes. Determinate. 70 days.

Costaluto Genovese

Old Italian variety that grows 6-8 ounce large, meaty, semi-pleated red fruits in abundance. While it is not the prettiest of the tomatoes, this variety rated among the very highest in our taste tests with a very earthy, old-fashioned tomato flavor. Needs trellising. When frost threatens, entire plant can be lifted, including roots, and hung upside down indoors to ripen remaining fruits.

Druzba

75 days. (Indeterminate) Bulgarian heirloom. 'Druzba' is a productive variety with excellent juicy sweet flavor. Fruits are borne 2 to 4 to a cluster, weigh an average of 5 oz. and measure 2" high by 3" wide. Although the fruit walls are tender, they are resistant to fruit diseases, cracking, and blossom end rot. Produces a large percentage of uniform ripening, high quality blemish-free fruit. Well liked at farmer's markets.

Early Girl

Early Girl VFF Hybrid. Comes in first as an early slicing tomato and our customers' favorite early variety. Dependable large harvests of flavorful, solid 4 to 6 oz. fruit. Disease resistance is good, contributing to its excellent performance in almost any climate. A proven variety for delicious, early tomatoes. Indeterminate. 52 days.

First Prize

A VFFNT Hybrid. Exclusive release of Tomato Growers Supply Company. The kind of tomato home gardeners would love to grow for a county fair entry. Vigorous plants produce loads of delicious 10 to 12 oz. fruit, even when conditions are not ideal. This one was a winner in our trials for its high yields, good disease resistance, mid-early maturity, and great flavor. First fruit mature early and low on the plant, which continues to bear tomatoes over a long season. Indeterminate. 75 days.

Kellogg's Breakfast

1 lb., deep orange beefsteak tomatoes that are thin-skinned, meaty, and have a fantastic sweet, tangy flavor. Juice and inside flesh have the same bright orange color as orange juice. Indeterminate. 80 Days.

Lemon Boy

Lemon Boy VFN Hybrid. The first lemon yellow, not golden, tomato variety, and still one of the best. Extremely vigorous plants produce large harvests of attractive fruit that weighs 8 ozs. or more. Flavor is outstanding, mild and sweet yet tangy and definitely not bland. This one is easy to grow and understandably one of our most popular yellow tomatoes. Indeterminate. 72 days.

Marianna's Peace

Marianna's Peace is a late season, indeterminate, potato-leaf variety (80-85 days) from Czechoslovakia that produces relatively lower yields of 1-2 lb., pink/red, beefsteak-styled fruit. It's plant and fruit structure and the taste of it's fruit remind me of an old favorite, Brandywine. The sugary nectar of it's creamy, dense, flesh also reminds me of Sandul Moldovan, another great tasting variety originally from Moldova. Overall, it's flavors are exceptionally rich, with good sweet/acid balance and luscious complex flavors reminiscent of the finest of those "old-fashioned" tomato flavors, the memories of which is the stuff-of-dreams for all tomato lovers. In my taste trials with friends and chefs in 1999, "Marianna's Peace" was judged the "best tasting" tomato.

Old Colossus

Heirloom Tomato. An old time favorite from the hills of Arkansas that bears huge orange tomatoes over 2 pounds regularly. Indeterminate.110 days.

Peppermint

Beats the heck out of me. No Google hits. But Bill Bird insists the name of this tomato seed is Peppermint. And he is a paid propagandist for the Republican Party....

Bill Bird responds:

"From Morningsun Herb Farm: Peppermint: Indeterminate. 81 days. Heirloom. Excellent yield of 8-12 oz tomatoes with yellow stripes before ripe. Fruit is meaty with very good sweet taste. Outstanding! Of course, the Peppermint plant that Fred is growing, that came from our garden last season, did not have any sort of striping. This was a very productive cross, red in color, incredibly sweet, rich tomato. They were also smaller -- 4-6 oz. tomatoes.This plant will start yielding ripe fruit before Early Girl and will continue to yield fruit through heat waves, cold snaps, tornadoes, tropical storms, meteor impacts or nuclear meltdowns (sorry Fred)."

Sweet Gold

FT Hybrid. Vigorous vines produce abundant clusters of 1/2 oz. bright yellow-gold cherry tomatoes with delicious sweet flavor. These tomatoes are naturally sweeter than red cherry varieties with a fruitier taste. Once you taste them, you'll be spoiled forever. Indeterminate. 60 days.

Sweet Million

Early maturing hybrid cherry type tomato. Clusters of tiny fruit are well rounded, deep red in color with a delicious sweet flavor. Tolerance to cracking and good holding qualities. Tall Indeterminate plants grow tall and require support. Maturity is 60 days from transplanting.

Tomatoberry

New! Unique strawberry-shaped fruits.

High yielding plants. Fruits have a beautiful, deep red color with broad shoulders tapering to a blunt point at the blossom end, giving them a heart-like appearance. Fruit on later sets will have more of a point at the tip end. Firm texture with excellent sweet flavor. Fruits avg. 1" x 1" and weigh approximately 10-15 gm. Indeterminate.

Viva Italia

The best tomato for soups and ketchup. Vigorous plants yield an abundance of 3 oz. fruits. 80 days. The best tomato for soups and ketchup. Vigorous plants yield an abundance of 3 oz. fruits. Disease resistant. Determinate. Burpee exclusive.

Zapotec Pleated

A prolific and exotic Mexican Indian variety. Deeply pleated, almost triangular in shape, pink-red fruit with hollow interior. Indeterminate. 85 Days.

PEPPERS:

Ariane

This fancy, deep orange bell pepper with sweet, crunchy flavor has been our most popular pepper variety for years. Ariane would cost you a fortune at the market, but they are easy to grow at home. The vigorous plants are high yielding; in late summer they are covered with delicious, bright orange peppers. T.M.V.(race 0) resistant. 66 days.

Carmen

Carmen was a 2005 All-America Selection that was praised by the judges for its delicious, sweet flavor. It produces impressive crops of attractive, uniform, brilliant red bull's horn type peppers. The peppers are up to 10" long and 3" wide on bushy plants that grow up to 30" tall. Carmen is widely adaptable to a variety of conditions and may also be grown in containers. 60 days green. 80 days red.

Chocolate Beauty

Incredibly sweet and delicious, medium-large, 3 or 4-lobed bell peppers mature from green to an attractive chocolate color. Eat them at the fully ripe stage and you'll know that they're something special. Plants are tobacco mosaic virus resistant. 67 days to green, 85-88 days to chocolate.

Corno Di Toro

Italian 'bull's horn' colorful sweet peppers are 8 to 10 inches long and curved like a bull's horn. Ripen to deep red or bright yellow and are delicious fresh in salads, but more often are saut,ed or grilled. Prolific tall plants. 68 days.

Early Sensation

Big, blocky bell peppers are a mature green in 70 days, then turn to a beautiful shade of golden-yellow in just two more weeks. The peppers are about 4-1/2 inches long and nearly that wide, and are smooth and consistently well shaped. As a bonus, plants are tolerant to most pepper virus diseases and 3 races of bacterial spot. Extra sweet when fully yellow.

Flamingo

Flamingo, from Harris Moran, is truely unique with fruit that mature from a light yellow to pinkish-orange, then to red. This sweet bell pepper has concentrated fruit set and can produce high yields. Similar to Gypsy, Flamingo is well sized and shaped to produce brisk sales in the fresh market. Flamingo's mostly 3-lobed fruit are medium large, smooth and tapered. Its thick walls add weight and resist bruising and breakage. Flamingo performs well in most pepper growing areas and its earliness makes it a stand-out in the northern U.S. and Canada. Outstanding for its type, Flamingo is the clear choice with earliness, yield and resistance to Tobacco Mosaic Virus.

Jimmy Nardello

These bright green and red sweet peppers fry beautifully. Originally from the Basilicata region of south Italy. Brought to this country by the Nardello family, who grew them for generations in Connecticut. The plants are 24" tall, and festooned with 10-12" peppers.

Lilac

Beautiful new color in peppers is truly lavender with ivory-yellow flesh. Bell shaped fruit is 3 to 4-lobed and blocky, measuring 4-1/2 inches long and 3-1/2 inches wide. Peppers mature from ivory to lavender and finally to crimson, but they remain in the lavender stage longer than other purple peppers. Their thick flesh has a mild, sweet flavor. 70 days.

Purple Beauty

This is an open pollinated variety developed from the hybrid pepper Purple Belle. The fruits have a mild sweet flavor and are thick walled and meaty. Plants are compact with lots of protective foliage to protect the peppers from scalding. 70-75 days. Open pollinated.

Purple Marconi

Deliciously sweet Italian peppers turn a rich shade of purple when they are fully ripe, adding a beautiful new color choice to Marconi peppers. Expect plentiful harvests of these peppers, which become about 6-in. long with a tapered shape ending in a blunt tip. Traditionally used for frying, Marconis are also wonderful when eaten fresh. Create a beautiful salad with Purple Marconi, either by itself or in combination with the red and golden versions. 90 days.

Red Knight X3-R

King Arthur type with better disease resistance in a more compact, open plant. Get a jump on the season with a large, early, green-to-red pepper. Big, blocky, thick-walled, and turns red early. Fruity and sweet. Widely adapted. Days to Maturity or Bloom: 57 days green, 77 days red ripe.

Tequila

This beautiful amethyst pepper from Holland is the best lavender variety we've seen. Fruit sets early and grows to a blocky 4-1/2 inches deep and 4 inches across. Peppers begin as lavender and stay that color for a long time before fading to a lovely orange, then finally red. All colors are jewel-like and very attractive. Strong plants are tobacco mosaic virus resistant and tolerant to blossom end rot. 72 days.