LOOKING through next year’s seed catalogues can be frustrating, as well as inspiring. There’s a long, dull winter to get through before most of the varieties listed can be sown or planted. 

So I’ll start with a vegetable suitable for sowing at any time. Suttons Seeds (www.suttons.co.uk; tel 0844 326-2200) offers a sweetcorn called Bodacious which is grown for its seed shoots. 

Sown indoors in complete darkness, the resulting bright yellow shoots are said to taste something like beansprouts as well as corn on the cob, but with an extra sweet-and-sour flavour.

Suttons is also listing an orange tomato called Honeycomb as seed or as plants. Anyone who’s ever tried Sungold will know it as a uniquely tasty tom and a good grower, but with a strong and annoying tendency for the fruit to split. Honeycomb is described as a “Sungold variety with less fruit splitting.”

An old friend of this column, amaranth, is currently going through a spell of being in fashion, though mostly for its leaves, rather than its grain. 

Amaranth Superfood Mix at Dobies (www.dobies.co.uk; tel 08449 670-303) is a mixture of three amaranths — red, green, and varicoloured.  

It’ll look lovely when it’s growing, is a pretty easy crop to succeed with and can be used when young as a salad or when mature as a cooked vegetable.

Thompson & Morgan (www.thompson-morgan.com; tel 08445 731-818) are so confident about their new courgette, Sure Thing, that they’ve already named it their Vegetable of the Year 2019. 

It’s parthenocarpic — meaning it doesn’t rely on insects for pollination — and claims good resistance “until late in the season” to powdery mildew, which is probably the most troublesome courgette disease. T&M says the dark green, speckled fruits have a stronger flavour than many other varieties.

Downy mildew sounds like she might be Jacob Rees-Mogg’s head of research but is actually a disease which can ruin onion crops, particularly in wet years. 

Santero, sold by The Organic Gardening Catalogue (www.organiccatalogue.com; tel 0844 9670-330), is an early maincrop onion promising “excellent resistance to downy mildew.” It’s also said to have good resistance to bolting, and to store well.

Spangles is a variety of chilli, described by Plants of Distinction (www.plantsofdistinction.co.uk; tel 01449 721-720) as having “fairly mild heat and a sweet fragrant flavour,” particularly recommended for making sweet chilli sauce. 

The name presumably refers to the fruit which ripen from purple to white, then orange and finally red, with all colours often being found on the plant at the same time.

Of course, your preference in chilli peppers may not be for “fairly mild heat,” in which case DT Brown (www.dtbrownseeds.co.uk; tel 0333 0030-869) can sell you the seeds of a chilli called Armageddon. 

Just in case you missed the clue in the name, this high-yielding plant promises “sensational heat” which is “not for the faint-hearted.”

After which, perhaps you’d fancy the same company’s watermelon Little Darling, ideal for a greenhouse or polytunnel and “incredibly juicy.”

Mat Coward’s book Eat Your Front Garden is currently crowdfunding at unbound.com/books/eat-your-front-garden.