I remember that like you, we also raised Rutgers varieties of tomatoes. Lots of green beans (varieties now forgotten by me) for canning, and sweet corn. The only sweet corn variety I remember is Illini Chief (a little before the supersweet hybrids of that strain). Concord grapes for juice and jelly, raspberries for jam, peaches, pears, winter squash, parsnips (which I hated as a kid, but now love), sweet peas, kohlrabi, lettuce, spinach, asparagus. All this on the back half of a 1/3 acre yard in Des Moines. We collected crabapples and elderberries from the public Waterworks Park along the Racoon River, for pickling and more jam. Unlike most kids, I loved most vegetables, maybe because I had that appreciation for where they came from, and got to eat them fresh from the garden.
