How do you decide what to grow?

[Tomaddict]

I appreciate the previous posts... and see myself in some ofthem! The madness to my methods includes several considerations: What varieties...
do I need to grow out for fresh seed?
do I want to have available to market?
do I want for this year's garden trials?
can I not live without having to eat this year?

Since I have also taken the approach of digging up the yard to have more garden (it was NOT a mistake, but is more work than mowing grass), I have more space to grow, but there is a limit. Knowing I can budget space for about 50 plants, I try to arrange it so that there are at least a few varieties each of yellow/oranges, pinks, reds (of course), bicolors, other colors, cherries, large-fruited varieties, potato leafs, early varieties, mid-season varieties, late varieties, etc. In my experience it pays to have a good mix, because you never know what the weather will have in store for you, and having a mix of varieties insures that there will be some successes.

If you have less space, instead of having several of each of these categories, you cut back to one or two of each.

And BTW, once you start trying to manage a lot of varieties, spreadsheets are the way to go, IMO. Makes it MUCH easier to find old data and keep track of notes and details. Just taking one instance, I had an unexpected cross, and was able to go back to the last time I grew the variety, identify what it grew close by, and make an educated guess about the unknown parent of the cross.