Top Ten Favourite Seeds

A NOTE ABOUT SEED AVAILABILITY: West Coast Seeds inventory changes constantly, and not every packet in the store is necessarily listed online. Please call IncrediGrow at 403-230-0065 before making a special trip or assuming that every variety mentioned in this article is currently in stock. We may have it, we may be getting it, or somebody may already have bought the last packet. 

---

My favourite seeds are not necessarily the rarest, newest or most historically important. I like plants that produce heavily, develop strange shapes, grow with some personality or become increasingly interesting as the season goes on. I want something that gives me a reason to go outside and look at it again.

1. Sweet Million Tomato

Sweet Millions is a common cherry tomato that is extremely good at what it does.

The indeterminate vines produce long trusses of small red tomatoes and continue yielding throughout the season. Once they start ripening, picking them becomes less of a harvest and more of a grazing habit. I walk past the plant, eat several tomatoes, look at the leaves, eat several more and then pretend I had intended to bring some into the house.

Some tomato varieties require an entire summer of staking, pruning, feeding and emotional support before producing four beautiful fruits that split the night before they are ready. Sweet Millions gets on with it. It grows into a tomato machine and keeps going until the weather stops it.

2. Tumbler Tomato

Tumbler is a tomato that actually belongs in a hanging basket.

This should not be remarkable, but many so-called patio tomatoes are just regular tomato plants being slowly punished in undersized containers. Tumbler has a compact, trailing habit and spills over the edge instead of immediately demanding a six-foot support system.

A good Tumbler basket becomes part crop and part decoration. The foliage hangs down, the tomatoes remain visible and the entire plant looks tidy and happy. It does not spend July attempting to strangle the railing or collapse under the weight of its own ambitions.

People see a basket covered in tomatoes and think they could grow one. They are correct! That is one of the reasons I like it. It is productive, understandable and genuinely suited to small spaces without looking miserable.

3. Trinidad Moruga Scorpion Pepper

Trinidad Moruga Scorpion peppers grow as though they are gradually becoming conscious.

The small fruits become increasingly puckered and irregular as they develop, eventually ripening from green through orange to deep red. They average around 1.2 million Scoville Heat Units, although individual fruits can be much hotter.

Of the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, Carolina Reaper and Ghost peppers I have grown, Trinidad Scorpion has always been the fastest grower. It gets moving while the others are still deciding whether they intend to participate. The plant develops quickly, and the fruits become more interesting every week.

4. Carolina Reaper Pepper

Carolina Reaper is what happens when a pepper stops trying to look edible.

The fruits mature from green to bright red and develop heavily wrinkled, bumpy surfaces, often ending in the distinctive pointed tail known as the stinger. The variety averages around 1.5 million Scoville Heat Units and needs a long, hot season.

This makes it an entirely reasonable choice for Calgary, obviously. I like to start them indoors in February.

A Carolina Reaper may require months of indoor starting, bottom heat, strong lighting and increasingly elaborate accommodations, only to produce peppers capable of contaminating several litres of food. I still think they are worth growing because the fruits look incredible and picking them is such a satisfying feeling until you rub your eyes by accident. They're actually amazing.

5. Ghost Chili Pepper

I just like peppers, okay? 

You probably know this if you've been to IncrediGrow, honestly. 

Ghost Chili, also known as Bhut Jolokia, produces peppers exceeding one million Scoville Heat Units. It is slower to get started than Trinidad Moruga Scorpion and tends to produce later in the season.

Once Ghost sprouts and establishes itself, however, it is definitely the sturdiest of the three.

Trinidad Scorpion races ahead. Ghost takes its time and then builds a substantial plant.

The fruits are not as aggressively wrinkled as Carolina Reaper or as broad and puckered as Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, but the plant itself has more authority. Once it gets going, it looks stronger and more structurally serious than either of them.

Once you get past the heat, it's sooooo tasty too. This one is my favourite for making fruit-based hot sauces. 

6. Indian Spring Hollyhocks

Indian Spring Hollyhocks grow into tall, old-fashioned flower spikes in shades of rose, pink, white, chocolate, purple and lavender. The mixture may produce single, double and ruffled flowers, and mature plants can reach two metres or more in favourable conditions.

Hollyhocks belong beside old fences, weathered sheds, alleys and houses occupied by women who know exactly which plants are medicinal but refuse to explain themselves.

They are not sleek or minimalist. They do not look as though they were selected by a landscape architect who owns only grey clothing. They lean into pathways, reseed into cracks and frequently develop rust on their lower leaves while continuing to flower gloriously above the damage.

I like plants that look as though they have been in the garden longer than I have. Hollyhocks can make a new fence look old and an ordinary yard look inherited. They are the ultimate "cottagecore" flower.

7. Bright Lights Swiss Chard

You may have seen these in our grow tower in Summer 2026.

Bright Lights Swiss Chard produces edible leaves on brightly coloured stems that may include red, pink, orange, yellow, white and gold. It is productive, attractive and much less inclined to collapse emotionally in warm weather than spinach or lettuce.

A row of Bright Lights looks as though someone has driven neon tent pegs into the soil. It is one of the few vegetables that can be planted directly among ornamentals without looking like somebody made a mistake.

Young leaves can be harvested as baby greens, while mature plants produce large leaves and crisp stems. The outside leaves can be picked repeatedly while the centre continues growing, which makes the plant useful for much longer than a crop that has to be harvested all at once.

Spinach reacts to summer by bolting. Lettuce becomes bitter and dramatic. Bright Lights keeps producing while looking better than half the flowers around it.

There is no reason edible gardens need to be green and apologetic.

8. California Giants Mix Zinnias

California Giants Mix produces large double flowers in shades of red, yellow, orange, lavender, maroon, violet and white. The plants may reach approximately one metre tall and work well as cut flowers while attracting pollinators.

These are not restrained little edging plants. They are large, loud flowers attached to plants that understand there is no prize for subtlety.

One zinnia is pleasant. A substantial patch of California Giants becomes an incident. The colours clash properly, the flowers rise above one another and the whole planting looks excessive in a way I find reassuring.

They are also tougher than they look. Once established, zinnias handle heat and relatively dry conditions well, which makes them useful in Calgary. The weather can be chaotic, but the flowers still show up looking like parade decorations.

They should be planted in groups large enough to become difficult to ignore.

9. Borage

Borage produces large, fuzzy, cucumber-scented leaves and vivid blue, star-shaped flowers. The flowers are edible, have a mild cucumber flavour and attract bees throughout the summer.

It looks correct beside a compost heap, between vegetables, against an old fence or growing through something that was supposed to remain a path. It becomes enormous, falls sideways, hums with bees and produces flowers in a shade of blue that looks almost digitally oversaturated.

Then it drops seed and returns with the confidence of a tenant who has already changed the locks.

People often describe plants as invasive when what they really mean is that the plant grew successfully. Borage can certainly become inconvenient, but I do not regard inconvenience as an automatic fail. A garden should contain at least one plant that is kind of a jerk sometimes. 

10. Regina Alpine Strawberries

Regina produces small, intensely flavoured alpine strawberries from summer until frost. The plants are compact and work well in containers, raised beds and small spaces.

The berries are not supermarket strawberries. They are smaller, softer and much more fragrant. They taste like somebody compressed the entire idea of a strawberry into a fruit the size of the end of your thumb.

The seeds can be frustrating if they are treated like ordinary vegetable seeds. Regina REQUIRES from cold stratification, which means the seeds need to experience an artificial winter before they are moved into warm germination conditions. 

Why These Ten?

There is no tidy botanical category connecting all ten of these varieties.

Sweet Million produces until harvesting becomes repetitive labour. Tumbler turns a hanging basket into food. Trinidad Moruga Scorpion gets moving faster than the other superhots and produces fruit that becomes stranger every week. Carolina Reaper makes little red biological threats with tails, while Ghost starts slowly and eventually becomes the sturdiest plant of the three.

Indian Spring Hollyhocks make a fence line look as though it has belonged to the garden for decades. Bright Lights Swiss Chard is productive, edible and offensively colourful. California Giants Zinnias have no interest in tasteful restraint. Borage behaves as though it already owned the property. Regina Strawberries reward anyone willing to follow the instructions instead of treating every seed like a radish.

That is the actual requirement for me. A plant should be productive, beautiful, excessive, structurally impressive, weird or slightly difficult to explain. Preferably several at once.

I do not want ten varieties that merely perform according to specification. I want ten varieties that make me go outside and look again.