 Hi, my name is Julie Gardner Robinson and I'm a food and nutrition specialist here at NDSU Extension. And I'm happy to welcome you to our second in our series of 10 Wednesday weekly webinars. Our speaker today will be Tom Kelp. But before I introduce him officially, I have a few notes to share. I welcome you to attend any and all of the upcoming webinars. So I just wanted to remind you what's coming up. Of course, these are all free and they're all at 2 p.m. central time. So next week will be Chandra. She's a family and consumer sciences agent in Burleigh County. And she's going to talk about regulations when you're preparing food for the public. And the 15th, we will have Dave Sikowski talking about U.S. food law. And that's becoming more and more complicated, I guess, as we have some new rules coming into play. On the 22nd, if you are a fan of wine, you'll be happy to hear from Steve Sagacer, who's a Hort agent in Grand Forks County. On the 29th, we have a special guest from the Entrepreneurial Center for Horticulture at Dakota College at Botnall. Holly Moby talking about growing herbs. And rounding out our sessions will be some information about CISMA from Kim Koch. He's a CISMA production center manager. And he's taken a lot of courses in CISMA. And then we'll be hearing from Esther McGinnis with an update on fruit flies, Spotted Wing Drosophila in North Dakota. And Cliff Hall on the 19th, How to Can, Low and High Acid Foods. And finally, last but not least, Todd Weinman will be talking about introducing youth to gardening, which is an important thing for all of us to be thinking about as we are spreading the news about gardening and all the wonderful things we can grow. So some logistics. I think you've kind of figured this out. But if you're new to this, just so you know, everyone will be in the listening mode. Please type your questions in the chat pod. That's right to the left of the screen. And I'll keep an eye on it. And I'm sure Tom will keep an eye on it as well, just to be sure that you get your questions answered. And of course, you're free to contact any of us after our sessions as well. We do archive all the sessions and they're on our field to fork website, which grows and grows by the day. We are just adding two more things today, a couple of field to fork handouts that happen to be on the topic of growing and preparing edamame, which are soybeans. And the other one was summer squash or zucchini. So some new stuff that we just put up today. A special request from me. Just so you know, what we're doing in this field to fork project was all made possible by a grant from the North Dakota Department of Agriculture. So please take a short survey. It's taking about two minutes. It will be shipped out to you through your registration form. So you will be getting that as a follow up. So please fill that out. And to make it worth your while, I do have some prizes and we'll do some prize drawings. But it's very valuable for us, especially when it's time to share the reports and to apply for further funding. So thanks in advance. And now I'm happy to introduce Tom Kelb. He's from the Department of Plant Sciences and he's located in Bismarck. Tom was raised on a family farm in Minnesota where his family grew over 20 acres of vegetable and fruit crops. Tom received a master's degree in plant breeding from the University of Minnesota and a PhD in horticulture from Virginia Tech. When he arrived at NDSU in 2008, Tom launched the North Dakota Home Garden Variety Trial. And he's worked with over a thousand families in the Midwest to evaluate promising vegetable varieties for gardeners and small scale producers. And today he's going to share some of his team's findings. So thanks for being with us Tom and it's all yours. Okay, thank you Julie and welcome everybody. I don't know how you feel but today I feel great. We're into March. The worst of the winter is over. It's sunny outside, spring is common and it's time to seriously think about gardening. And I think today is a good topic for this time of year in that I feel the first key, the first step to having a quality crop this year will be to select a quality variety. And also I'll be using the term variety and cultivar interchangeably. So don't worry about that, cultivar just stands for cultivated variety. Now our target audience today will be serious gardeners and small scale producers. And you know here's a typical good quality garden here in North Dakota and the performance of your crop this upcoming year is dependent on two things. One is the environment and the second is the genetics of the crop. So just going with the environment. For example here you go. You know if you're going to care for your garden like this it doesn't matter what variety you choose. It's going to be miserable. So the environment makes a big difference. You know do you weed the crop? Do you water the crop? Do you fertilize it? Do you control pests? Well let's see on this case we have a well maintained garden. And again we're controlling the weeds. We're controlling pests. We're caring for it. We're watering, fertilizing. So how can we make a good crop a great crop? And I think here is where the genetics of the crop come into play. Now just use this example of beans. There's red beans and white beans. There's pole beans and bush beans. There's early ripening beans and late ripening beans. There's ones that have good yields and ones that have not so good yields. So the genetics can make a big difference in taking your garden to the next level to achieve the ultimate success in your garden. So then how do you find the best variety? You know you go to a seed catalog and my goodness you know everything's perfect in a seed catalog. You know they don't see in a seed catalog don't buy this. It's a terrible variety. They just say everything's good. So this is where a place like a university in this case North Dakota State University can be helpful in providing you science-based answers to finding superior cultivars. This is why we started the North Dakota State University home garden variety trial program in which we work with a network of gardeners across North Dakota. I saw we had a Minnesota in here. We allow Minnesotans. A few Minnesotans are okay in the northern part of the state, Montana, South Dakota. We're trying to find out what are the best varieties for gardeners in North Dakota. And we think that the best way to do this is to test the varieties in gardens. So we're trying to find the best varieties for gardens. So let's test them in gardens and let's test them under the actual management condition of gardeners in our state. And we've been so pleased in getting the response from the public. We've worked with over 1,000 families since 2008. We work with over 200 families every year and many of them have been in the process for years after years. And we've been getting outstanding results from them. Now, just briefly talk about how this process works. If you look to the right there, you'll see one of our trials. And we do about 50 trials per year. And these are side-by-side trials, each comparing two varieties. So in our early Nantes carrot cultivar trial, last year we compared Goldfinger against Yahya. So we'll be publishing a catalog and our catalog for 2017 is coming out next week. And when you get that catalog, you can choose which trials you want to participate in. And all gardeners are welcome to participate. If you want this particular trial, you'll get two packets of seeds, one for Goldfinger and one for Yahya. You will give you enough seed to grow a 10-foot row of each. And because this is intense scientific research, we will give you a 10-foot string to measure out your plots. And also we'll give you labels so you can remember which row is which. We're now looking for complicated data. We're looking for straightforward, simple, and powerful data. And so we want to know, for example, you're going to grow these side-by-side. We want to know which variety germinated best, which variety was healthier, which one matured first, which one had a higher yield, which one tasted better. And then we ask you, which of the two varieties do you prefer? And then which of the varieties do you recommend to other gardeners in the state? So, for example, this trial, I'm sure we have over 30 families participate. I'll get the results after the frost. I'll get 30 sets of trial results. And from that will come our trial results report. You see that in the upper left. This is about a 100-page document every year in which we have all the data there in an easy-to-read format, and we have comments from all the participants. And from that information, we synthesize into a simple two-page handout that you see at the bottom there, vegetable cultivars for North Dakota. And these are the recommendations of gardeners in North Dakota. So, what I'm telling you today isn't what I think necessarily. It's what gardeners across North Dakota, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of gardeners in North Dakota feel about what are the best cultivars for gardens and small-scale producers in our state. Does anybody have any questions about our process before we start moving into it? Also, I always welcome, you know, if you have any questions as we go by, just put them in the chat box and we'll get to them. There's so many crops that we can talk about, but I'm just going to highlight some of the major crops and some of the principal findings. And also, I strongly encourage you, if you're interested in growing a particular crop, to look at our trial results. And it's at our website. And also, you've got a handout of the recommended vegetable cultivars that's available for downloading. Look at that. And also, on the back page of that, we have a list of several seed companies where you can contact them and get their free seed catalog. And that can be a very good source of information. Okay, here's our target audience. In North Dakota, about three-fourths of the adults in North Dakota don't eat enough vegetables for a healthy diet. And then I look at this kid in a green shirt here. He's a normal kid. There's about 90% of the kids in North Dakota don't eat enough vegetables, but they certainly, like this child, eat plenty of Doritos. And I see he's got an upside-down Doritos bag staring at a pepper plant, not sure what that is. And so we really put an emphasis on getting children involved in our trials, too. It's a very simple scientific approach. And they work with their parents. And, you know, so, again, our project's open to everybody. And we all need to grow a more productive garden and eat more vegetables. When we look for a superior variety, here are some key factors. I think the most key factor is the limitation of that brutal, brutal, brutal, actually brutal North Dakota winter. When I look at a seed catalog, anything that says more than a hundred days, you're just, it's very risky, okay? It's 40 degrees today, but it could be 40 below in two weeks. So our growing season is very short, and so look for the early variety. That's always key. Look for something that has high yields. We want to make it worthwhile, right, to do our work. We want to get productive garden. We want to look for varieties that can resist diseases, and that way we can reduce the need to use fungicides in our garden. Of course, you want something that tastes great. And if I'm a small-scale producer, the shipping quality will be a factor for me. This is one of my crack team of personal researchers doing a highly technical snowflake test. The variety has to ripen before the snow falls, and you catch it on your tongue. So those are two of my kids there, and this was mid-September in one of my first years in Bismarck, and they're out there in their winter coats catching snowflakes. So that really finds something early. I'm going to just go over some of the main vegetable crops now, and when I'm in an audience, I obviously don't know who knows what vegetable this is, and most people think this is a type of cherry tomato or maybe a current tomato. But actually, this is asparagus. These are asparagus berries, and many people don't know this, but there's both female and male asparagus plants. And the female plants, they live a balanced life. They produce spears, which is good, but also they spend a lot of their energy producing berries, you know, the offspring, the seeds for the next generation. Now, most people don't grow asparagus for seeds or for ornamental beauty. Instead, they grow asparagus for spears, and so if you're interested in spear production, this is one case, maybe the only case, where men are superior. We want the all-male varieties, and the program from New Jersey, I call them the Jersey Boys, are really, it's the leader in the nation. So like Jersey Giant, Jersey Supreme, Jersey Night, go for an all-male asparagus variety, and you'll get quicker yield because the plants will get established earlier, so you can get a decent crop after the second year, and then also you'll get much higher yields because the plants are wasting their energy producing seeds. Okay, look for the all-male asparagus varieties from Jersey. All kinds of beans out there, and we test it, all kinds of beans. And I just, you know, Julie just mentioned edamame, you know, we test edamame beans too, and the top variety just came out last year is called Toya, T-O-H-Y-A. So if you're in the edamame, I strongly recommend Toya, a new variety that was really a strong performer in North Dakota. And I noticed from Vanessa, how do you know if asparagus plants male or female? Well, the females have the berries, the boys do not. Boys don't produce any offspring, that's how you tell the difference. But you don't know until, you don't really know until the plants mature. So you can't just go to a garden center and pick a female plant or a male plant. But if it's one from New Jersey, it's, well, it's supposed to be all male, but sometimes a few females mixed in. You can't tell before you're planting, sorry. So you pick the all-male varieties and that's your highest odds. The standard varieties like Mary and Martha Washington, you got a 50-50 option there. Okay, so go with the Jersey boys. But with beans, there's all kinds of fun beans. There's green beans and wax beans and there's purple beans. I like purple beans for kids because it's kind of fun because they turn green when you cook them. That's kind of magical. But over the years, we've found in our trials that these are the key traits. The pod color, people like green and preferably dark green. They want their beans straight and they want their beans slender. Okay, and so this leaves a lot of what we call filet beans are becoming popular now. I think the varieties that are getting most excitement among our testers are Crockett and Serengeti. These are filet beans cut types. And I would encourage you, if you've never tried these slender beans, to give them a try, they're really superior quality. It's something you just can't get at a grocery store or frozen. So try them Crockett or Serengeti. Another concern is whether they want to concentrate or an extended harvest, some varieties will give you a big-time harvest. And these are more for commercial producers who want to pick their crop one time, either mechanically or not, but they just want to harvest one time. The most gardeners like an extended harvest will have a few harvest during the year. So keep that in mind when you read the catalog descriptions. And that's the thing, maybe I should be spelling out a few of these. And they're all in that variety that we eat. They're all in that cultivar guide that I shared with you that you can download. You know, another thing is tri-yard long beans and they really do grow about two feet long. And they're beautifully grown on a pole. They're ornamental and they're just amazing. I always, my joke here is always tell my kid Joe, he only has to have one bean for dinner and I show him the two foot long bean. And the nice thing about yard long beans is they have a different, they're just very popular in Asia and they taste like asparagus. So it's kind of fun to try it. And you can grow them here in North Dakota. Orient Wonder is the variety of preference here. Again, I like to explore all different types of vegetables. Here's one carrot and they're with the high interest in super nutritious foods and high in antioxidants, purple carrots have become of interest. But sometimes these new super nutritious crops aren't all they are cracked up to be in that they may be super nutritious, but also they taste kind of bitter. So this is a nice thing about a variety of trials is that we're not only measuring yield, but we're also measuring the quality, the eating quality of the vegetable. And purple carrots, a lot of purple carrots varieties are quite bitter and not very, not maybe too flavorful. This is what most people like. They like the orange carrots and especially Nantes carrots. That's the most popular one, excuse me. So the Nantes carrot has a blunt tip. It grows easily in a wide range of soils. If you look at the far left, the imperator types really need a loose soil. So it's not all gardens can provide that. But the Nantes types, and we especially like the varieties Goldfinger and Nelson, they're really the highest quality varieties. If you have a heavy soil, the shantinette types are good and Hercules is outstanding for that. These grow like big clubs and they're especially useful if you want to make carrot juice, the shantinette types. A lot of people are interested in sweet corn and there's been a lot of advancements in sweet corn over the last 20, 30, 40 years. Okay, I'll try to get too technical here. Let's just start in the beginning. In the beginning, like when I was a kid, like every night I would pick a hundred dozen of sweet corn and all we had was the normal sugary types. Okay, here we go, the normal sugary types. That's all we had. And the thing about them is that they were sweet, but I'd have to go down to the Minneapolis Farmers Market and sell all that corn the next morning because that sweet corn will be starchy in 24 hours. And so that was a great limitation. And as our vegetables became more and more produced outside of local areas like the Texas and California, there was a strong demand of finding sweet corn that can hold onto its sweetness. And that led to the second phase, so I'll skip around here, is the super sweet types. Okay, super sweet. And especially the shrunken two kernels. These were very sweet corn and they would hold onto their sweetness for longer than a week, two weeks. And so this is the type that you'd buy at your grocery store, shipped in from Texas or maybe Illinois or someplace warmer. Drawbacks from the shrunken two corn is that a couple of them. One is the corn was kind of crunchy. I mean, it's not like you're going to break your teeth over it, but it was kind of crispy. The other problem is in growing it, the kernels are all shriveled up. So the kernels are small and it was hard to get them to germinate because there's just nothing in that seed that's shriveled up seed. And so we have to wait until like May, mid-May, when the soil is warm to a plant it. And also the super sweets have to isolate them away from other sweet corns, otherwise the pollen will get mixed up and you'll get hard kernels. So, I don't know, the corn was getting, it was sweet but too crunchy. And so that led to the evolution of the sugary enhanced types, which are tender and sweeter than the normal types. And this is the way the corn industry went until recently. Most of the superior varieties were sugary enhanced types and there's still lots of great varieties like this today. But then people wanted to go, can we just get it a little bit sweeter? And so that led to the synergistic types and that's a dominant type today where it's 75% S-E sugary enhanced and they added just a little bit of that shrunken super sweet kernel in there. They're crisp and sweet. Highest quality corn. But even so now, there's a lot of research going on and maybe the latest one is the super seedware types, SSW. It's a true super sweet, but the kernels are large and full, so they will germinate in a cool soil. So just, I would just say for corn, scale weight, you don't need to grow the old-fashioned normal types. There's much sweeter types out there of superior quality and just kind of explore and see what's good for you. Okay, I promise not to be so technical in the rest of the vegetables. Let's talk about cucumbers. I'm fighting it cold here. I apologize if I'm sniveling and coughing and stuff. Excuse me. I show this picture of cucumbers because as far as... I'm just going to pause here for one. Okay, here we go. I show this picture of cucumber, of burpless cucumbers because it's by far the preference of our team of researchers. It's so much superior than the classic slicers of the past. They're long, they're thin, they're burpless. They're bitter-free. They have small seed cavities. They mature early. They resist diseases. It's just, it's just, this is the way to go. And some of the best varieties would be, Tasty Green is the standard. And last year, Summer Dance was an outstanding performer. So that's the one I'd recommend to you, Summer Dance. But again, there's really no benefit for those classic American slicers when we've got burpless varieties available now. They're snacking cucumbers. These are ones you harvest at about six inches long. You don't, their skin is very thin. You don't have to peel them. They have a small seed cavity and some are even seedless. These are popular in our trials, too. And the standard is muncher, muncher. Just a nice thing to munch on. I turn on a picture of kale because there is a lot of interest in nutritious foods and kale chips and kale smoothies. Kale, generally, when it's grown in the spring and summer, is kind of a bitter-tasting crop, in my opinion. It's not especially popular for flavor. So I recommend you wait until the frost arrives and that will tone down the bitterness and have a mild taste. Cuskin kale, or sometimes called dinosaur kale because the texture of the leaf looks like a dinosaur skin. This is generally considered the superior quality kale. And so this is the type I would grow in a backyard garden. But again, I wouldn't harvest this until after a frost. And then you enjoy some fine-eating quality. Among lettuce, what we look for is we look for varieties that can tolerate the heat. And there's been a lot of advances in that as far as heat-tolerant lettuce. I like butter crunch. Our team of gardeners like butter crunch lettuce as an outstanding selection. It's got a nice texture. It tolerates the heat. But our favorite romaine is always the romaine. That's one that generates the most interest. And a lot of gardeners say they've never grown romaine before. But once they try it, they never stop growing them because of the outstanding quality. And there's varieties today that are very easy to grow, very crisp, and they tolerate the heat. Green forest is the standard variety. And actually we tried one that's a romaine cross to a leaf lettuce called fusion, which got over a 95% rating for being recommended. It was one of the highest rated ever of our lettuces. That's fusion lettuce. And we'll be testing that again this year. But again, I encourage you to try romaine. When we set out our trials law for romaine and leaf and butterheads, and romaine will be clearly the preferred choice of our gardeners. And again, our team can choose whatever varieties they want to test. And they want to test romaine. Melons are always a joy to grow in North Dakota because you just don't know if it's going to work. You just don't know if it's going to ripen in time. And so for cantaloupe, you just got to pick the earliest variety you can get. And still, I would say 25% of our trials are failures. People just report they got no right melons before the frost came, especially up in the north. So look for an early, the earliest quality variety is called goddess, goddess. And the top melon for North Dakota overall is Athena. It ripens a few days later than goddess, but it's a firm flesh. It's very reliable. It's a top cantaloupe for the Midwest, Athena. And now it wins our trials every year. So I recommend that one. As far as green flesh melons, that's really risky. If you want to do melons, we pretty much stop testing those because there are too many failures. If you want a green flesh melon, I highly recommend you try Agalia melon. And the best varieties will be Passport and Aravah. They're early, they're very flavorful, they're very aromatic, but again, they're early. They're very reliable. And most people who try them really like them. So that's the best green flesh melon for North Dakota. Not a true honeydew. They say it has more of a tropical flavor. If you just can't take failure and you want to have success for sure in growing a melon, I highly recommend you grow a Korean melon. Sun Jewel is the best Korean melon. It's from Johnny Selected Seeds, which is a northern seed source. And that's a good idea to get your varieties from a northern seed company. Sun Jewel is super early. It will definitely ripen in time. If you can't grow a Sun Jewel melon, you belong in remedial garden training. You just can't do anything right. And these melons are very prolific, very early and delicious. You cut them open and you're not really used to seeing a melon that's white inside, but it reminds you of the flavor of a pear. Gotta try it. Nine out of ten gardeners in order to go to who tried this are glad they did. Korean melon. Super early. If you like watermelon, really fortunate that we have an outstanding team of plant breeders in North Dakota, the Prairie Road Organic Seed Company and the Poto family. They developed sweet Dakota Rose. It's from North Dakota. It ripens in North Dakota. I think our gardeners would say it's the best tasting watermelon they ever grew in their garden. So it's reliable. It will ripen in time and you'll enjoy the flavor. Sweet Dakota Rose. If you want something different, I encourage you to try a yellow flesh watermelon. This early moonbeam, the best choice for North Dakota in our trials, but all the yellow flesh water melons are early. And again, one thing about gardening that I'd like to do is I like to try different varieties because these are the types of things I can't buy at the grocery store, but I can go out of the box a little bit and explore and have a unique taste experience. And you'll really enjoy this yellow watermelon. It's fun to grow and it's early. You're going to be successful with it. Okay, moving on to peas. We're always looking for the best shell pea. This is one of our most popular trials every year, peas. And after a couple years, I had a gardener just tell me, he said, Tom, how come you never tried Lincoln pea? You've got to try Lincoln. It's the best one. And I said, okay, we'll try it. And that was like five, six years ago. And since then, we test it every year because it wins every year. Lincoln pea is an outstanding pea for North Dakota. It's reliable. It tolerates disease. It can tolerate heat. It's great for freezing, strong yields. Lincoln pea is a winner. And we're going to test it again this year. And I know it's going to win this year. It's just, it's really outstanding. Now, if you don't like shelling peas, and personally it's not my favorite, I like to have shell peas in the garden. I can have a few fresh out of the garden. But I just remember so many fourth of Julys as a kid spending my holiday shelling peas, shucking peas, kind of wondering like, what is this all about? What a way to waste a holiday. You do all, you pick a bushel of peas and three fourths of it are hulls that you feed to the cows. So that's why I was really excited when they came up with snap peas. You don't have to shell them. And so you can go to the Fourth of July fireworks every year. And as far as the snap peas, Sugar Ann is always, is a strong performer in North Dakota. You don't, it's a short vine. You don't have to trellis it like the sugar snap. You have to trellis. Sugar Ann is easy to grow. It's early and highly productive. So Sugar Ann is outstanding for North Dakota. And I encourage you to try snow peas and the finest quality snow peas is Sweet Horizon. The pods are thin and straight as can be. Outstanding in Asian dishes. Peppers, again, explore. There's so many different colors and shapes and flavors and seeds of peppers out there. Orange blaze is very reliable, very early, very colorful. Something you're not likely to get in a store unless you pay a super premium price. Orange blaze is a winner. The easiest to grow pepper in North Dakota is Carmen. Carmen is, you see this, All America Selections winner symbol. That means it has proven itself to be an outstanding performer in trials conducted across the United States. So that's always a good thing to look for when you look for variety is something that wins the All America Selections trials. That doesn't mean it's the best for North Dakota. We are a strange state, so to speak, in agriculture. We're not normal. We have special limitations. So just because it's good for North Dakota or just because it's good for the nation doesn't mean it's the best for North Dakota. We have our local trials, but Carmen is great for North Dakota. It does very well in all our trials. It's an Italian bullhorn type, because it's good for frying or for use in the cell. It's sweet and early. Carmen. People ask me about potatoes, and I think red Norlin is the standard for red potatoes in North Dakota, and that's outstanding. As far as the yellow ones, the Yukon Gold is very popular, but actually Yukon GEM, which North Dakota State University helped to develop, is higher yielding, but it's just harder to find than seed catalogs. Yukon GEM has greater scab resistance, which is a problem, and higher yielding than Yukon Gold. We like to write satina also in our trials. That's also a scab resistant white flesh, gold skin, potato, satina. I encourage you to give that a try. Next, pumpkins. Here's my research team here. Checking out neon pumpkin. This was an amazing pumpkin when it came out a few years ago, in that it's precocious. That means it has a precocious orange gene. Pumpkins don't turn orange. Instead, they start orange. This neon pumpkin was orange all summer long, and then it's just like an orange balloon that keeps expanding and expanding in the garden. That's good, so even if you have a very early frost or something up north that's a threat, you can harvest your Halloween jack-o'-lantern and it's ready to rock and roll. Neon is ready 10 to 14 days before any other pumpkin making it outstanding from North Dakota. It has a semi-bush condition that's something to be considered about because pumpkin vines can take over the whole garden. This is a semi-bush type, so it doesn't take over the garden super early and super reliable. Make a nice jack-o'-lantern. Howden. This is the standard for Halloween pumpkins. The classic 20-pound pumpkin can't go wrong with the Howden. It has a few drawbacks. One, especially, is resistance to powdery mildew disease. Excuse me. Powdery mildew can be a problem, especially in the eastern part of the state where it's a little bit more humid. There's a lot of interest in developing powdery mildew-resistant varieties. Ones that don't get this disease so the fruit has a chance to mature all the way until a frost. I think the Harris seed company is the leader in that. There's a lot of great varieties for them. Even their Howden biggie has done well and show us some resistance to powdery mildew. But look for powdery mildew-resistant varieties. If you want a big pumpkin that's orange, big moose, it does very well in our state. Big moose. They have a nice 50 to 100-pound pumpkin there with big moose and orange ones. The giant ones, the gigantic ones, are Atlantic giant. But they look more like ugly squash, ugly beige squash. But maybe if you just want size, that's go with the Atlantic giant. As far as winter squash goes, most garden aficionados will tell you the buttercup squash is superior. And Burgess is an early ripening buttercup squash. Buttercup squash came from North Dakota. Again, a lot of people in the world will say this is the finest textured, finest flavored of all winter squashes. Burgess is a great winter squash. Let's just wrap it up here with tomatoes. Got to have tomatoes in the garden. How about heirlooms? heirloom tomatoes get a lot of press out of garden catalogs right about them. But the thing about heirlooms is they're tomatoes from the past, okay? And heirlooms, there's a reason why they're heirlooms, because we've moved on. We've found better stuff. We've developed superior stuff. Heirlooms are not reliable. They're not productive. They require high maintenance, okay? They don't have disease resistance, many of them. So you have to keep the leaves dry. You have to give the plants especially a lot of room between each other so you get good air movement to minimize diseases and humidity. You have to trellis most of them and prune most of them. So they're high maintenance. You know, that being said, though, they really do have special flavors. And so, you know, you may only get a couple of them, but they're very special flavored. As far as in North Dakota, our most popular tomatoes would be ones that have some disease resistance to them in our early... I think celebrity and Mountain Fresh Plus are among the most popular tomatoes for North Dakota. Very reliable. We just go over some of the most popular cultures for our state. Early Girl is... that's an old stand-by. It's very good. Celebrity has a great disease package. We call it, and it's very reliable. Big Beef is a good quality beef steak type. Again, Mountain Fresh Plus is an outstanding fresh market, one with good disease resistance. If you like cherry tomatoes, our most popular one is Super Sweet 100. It shows more resistance to cracking compared to Sweet 100. And for canning, Roma is the dominant selection in North Dakota. Again, here's a picture of Roma that's so easy to grow. It's a short vine, determined type. You don't have to trellis it. You don't have to steak it if you don't want to, and you'll get an abundance of tomatoes that are very fleshy and meaty. Good for canning or just even for fresh eating. Not quite as sweet as some others, but nevertheless still very meaty and easy to grow. Lastly, when you look for tomatoes, there'll be two vine types. One is determinate and one is indeterminate. I like determinate types for our state. Determinate means the vines terminate when the flowers begin, so the plant stays compact. And trellising is optional. You don't have to trellis them, but they do very well in a cage. You don't prune them so they're easy to take care of, and most determinate types are early, and that's great for us in North Dakota. If I was in a more southern state, I would consider more indeterminate types. And these are ones that with the vines do not terminate in growth when the flowers come. The vines keep growing all the way till frost, so these vines get four or five feet tall. You've got to prune them, you've got to trellis them. But since they always put on new growth, you always have nice green leaves on them so the green leaves can produce lots of sugars for the tomatoes, and so the fruits are often more flavorful. The other thing is that they have an extended harvest because they're always putting on new growth. They'll have a long harvest season. So if I was in a place with a long harvest season, an indeterminate type would be valuable, but in North Dakota we don't have a long harvest season. We're just lucky to get any tomatoes, and so we want something that's early, and so the determinate types are easy to grow, and you'll get a concentrated harvest before the frost. So I think those are some guiding principles. I just want to thank the people who provided the photos for this talk. But those are some general principles about selecting cultivars of the major vegetable crops. Again, I encourage you to look at our trial reports, and I encourage you to participate in our trials. Everybody's walking to participate in our trials, and we'll be coming out with that announcement next week. We've got the trials selected, the seeds are being packed, and we'll be ready to rock and roll in a couple weeks shipping out the seeds. So everybody's invited to participate in our trials and just join our team and do some public service to all the gardeners in our region. Does anybody have any questions or maybe there's a specific crop I didn't get to that you're interested in, a particular superior cultivar? Just open it up to any questions you might have now. You can just type them in the chat box if you have any. Okay, here we go. Okay, good, here we go, thank you. What's the best zucchini? Wow, that's a good question. Because no matter which one you get, you're probably going to get too many of them. Okay, if I had to grow one zucchini, especially if I'm a commercial producer, I think Raven is the best one. Raven, R-A-V-E-N. Because it's super early, it has a super concentrated harvest, very reliable, it's done the best in our trials. If I want, and it's a dark green one, it's very smooth and dark. A traditional one would be, spineless beauty has always done well in our trials. A traditional green type. So there's yellow zucchini. If you want straight neck squash, there's that too, you know, multi-pick. If you just want to, like, amaze everybody with, you know, like a hundred pounds of squash per plant, multi-pick, some are the yellow, straight necks are the most productive. I'll just throw it out here also. Some gardeners will say that the old Italian ribbed types, like, are the finest flavor. They're not as high yielding, but they have the finest flavor. So Portofino is one Italian ribbed type. Let me just look at my notes here, see if I'm missing anything. That would be our best as far as strictly for quality. Okay, let me just look at the questions here. Okay, best egg, okay, I have no idea about artichokes. I haven't done that research here in North Dakota, but we did do research on egg plants for one year. And I think the best egg plants are the Asian long egg plants. So, I mean, just millionaire and Orient Express, millionaire and Orient Express, that's the kind I would grow. And they both did very well in our trials. They ripe in early in time. If you want a super early type, a fairy tale might be a good one for you. It's a shorter egg plant. What else we got here for questions? Bloomsdale spinach is good for fall planting. What is a good time to plant for a fall harvest? You're going to plant in August. Okay, actually, again, we did trials last year in our trial. You can look at our variety trial for our results. Last year we had over 50 gardeners test. Bloomsdale is a Savoy leaf, a crinkly leaf type, and Bloomsdale long standing is the name of the cultivar, and that did well in our trials. Let me just real quick see here. And we do recommend it in our list of recommended cultivars. For fall planting, not for spring planting, Bloomsdale cannot take heat. It will bolt or go to seed. And what we also found out was it would be helpful to start our experience a little bit earlier. So people who started in early to mid-September, they didn't have enough time. So mid-August would be our recommendation from last year. What about growing sweet potatoes? This is a question from Kathy. Okay, Kathy, that's a great question. My first recommendation is a bunch of move south. That's the best thing to do. But if you don't want to do that, the most reliable early cultivar, and that's what we're talking about, is Beauregard. Beauregard. Most people grow sweet potatoes get disappointing results. They get puny little roots. They're not tubers, they're actually roots. But I think if I wanted to plant sweet potatoes, then what I would do is the focus is grow your own slips, grow your own plants. And so I know a grower here in the Bismarck area, and he just gets his sweet potatoes from the grocery store, finds a fine quality one. And he starts it indoors. You get the seeds to germinate. You cut the bottom of the orange root, you put it in the water, and it will sprout into little slips, little plants. And then you cut, you just pick off the little plants. I think they're only about an inch when you pick them. And then you set them in soil and you start them indoors, so that when you're ready to go outside and sweet potatoes demand a warm soil, you're going to be planting them like in late May or first week of June, and you'll have a well-established slip, a well-established plant with some roots. So start your sweet potatoes, slips yourself, and you'll have better success. I think that's the only way to do it reliable. You can buy the slips from a garden center or from a grocery store, but those slips are mixed results because the bare root slips, and so there's going to be some shock from them. If you grow your own slips, and you can start them on your own sweet potatoes, you buy it at the grocery store. And I guess ideally if there was an organic store, I'd feel much better about that because I know that sweet potatoes wouldn't have been treated with any sprout inhibitors. But this guy has good success. As I went out to his garden in shock and saw the yield, it was impressive. What other kind of questions we got going on here? Any beet varieties with the best leaves? Yes. Okay. Early wonder tall top. Has super glossy green leaves. That's the one you want to grow if you're growing leaves. If you want some really cool that has reddish purple leaves, Bull's Blood is selected because of the color of the leaves, Bull's Blood. Bush type watermelon. You know, if a sugar baby is the standard, but it's just not that great. So if it was me, if I had a bush watermelon, I would grow early moonbeam, or if I can't find a yellow doll or yellow baby. Because it's fun. Now, you might want to try our trials this year whoever asked that bush watermelon question. Because, let me see what that was. Vanessa. Because we're testing sugar baby against an improved type called Jade Star this year. So you might want to try Jade Star. I see you're in Morton County. You just got by. I'll give you a pack of the seeds. For watermelon, you just hope anything ripens. How do you start sweeping this? You can go online to find out to see YouTubes about how to start your own sweet potato slips. They're called. So, do you remember as a, maybe you didn't do this as a kid, but some of us did. When you would cut a sweet potato and you stick toothpicks in it, and you stick the bottom of the sweet potato and just, so it's in water, a glass of water a little bit. And then the plant would sprout. That's what you do. You have to start sweet potato slips. So you just cut the sweet potato, expose the inner flesh, have the bottom of that inner flesh touching water. So, some people would, you could put it in like a shallow bowl, with just a little bit of water. We just want the plant to be exposed to water so it will sprout. You'll let the sprouts grow an inch or two, and then you just nip off the sprout. Sometimes I'll even have some root attached, and you plant it in potting soil, or a soilless mix is best. And you start your own transplants. Just like you do for tomato transplants and pepper transplants, you can do the same with sweet potato transplants. So then by the time you get to late May, you'll have a well-formed transplant that you can set right into the garden. And you'll have less transplanting shock than the slips you buy from a seed can of water. Excuse me. Okay, what else? I hope that was okay. I hope that's clear for you, Clara. Any other questions we got here? If you're looking to do can a lot of tomatoes, would indeterminate be the way to go, or do determine or indeterminate tomatoes, very in price? Indeterminate and determinate tomatoes are just different varieties. They'll usually be the same price, so it's just what you want. If I was going to can a lot of tomatoes, I'm kind of a lazy gardener, so I would plant romas, and I'm not going to trellis them. I'm going to let them just sprawl on the ground or let them sprawl on some black plastic. If you use an indeterminate type, then that's going to be a vineier type, and you're going to have to trellis them and prune them. And I would say that the most popular indeterminate variety is San Marzano. San Marzano. Sorry, I did it. San Marzano. That's the most popular indeterminate type, and some gardeners swear by that variety. Roma is the most common one. It's at every garden center. But San Marzano, some garden centers will offer that, and you just might want to explore and see which one works better. And it also works better for your cultural practices. See if you want to trellis them and prune them. Do you want to know, can you suggest a peanut to grow here? No, I can't recommend a peanut. I think what I want to say is it's sweet Spanish. Let's see the way we can make a recommendation. I think, no. Listen, if I want to grow peanuts here, I want the earliest variety I can find. That's the whole key. And peanuts are fun to grow. They'll bloom and they'll set their little tendrils on the ground. And you're yielded to be very poor. You're yielded, you'll probably, most of the pods will have one peanut inside. It's a fun thing to do. But just get the earliest variety you can find. That's going to be the key. You're just a bunch of nuts. That's true. I remember when I grew peanuts with my brother, and then I had a trick him. He went, somebody took him to soccer practice and I got some regular peanuts. And I just put them right there at the base of the plant to trick them. Because we harvested and there was almost nothing there. They want to see any soil. Peanuts want to see any soil. They demand warmth. You've never pruned your indeterminate vines. Why or how? Okay, my goodness. Okay, that's another lesson maybe. But I'll give you the basics. That's how you prune an indeterminate vine. You'll see how this is drawn on this board here. Here's our vine. And here's a leaf, a tomato leaf with leaflets. A tomato vine will send out a little sprout. We call it a sucker. So you should always prune out your suckers. And so this is a continuous process. For the most indeterminate vines, you need to choose how many or most indeterminate plants you need to determine how many vines per plant you will allow. And most people allow two vines per plant. So here comes our plant. It's coming out of the ground. And it sends up all these other vines. We call them vines. The mother vine and the side vines. So the side vine that we keep, the strongest side vine, would be the one that's right below the first flower cluster. So you see these yellow tomato flowers. The vine right below the first flower cluster is typically a very strong, sturdy vine. And so that sprout will be the sprout that we want to be our second vine. And then all these other sprouts, all these other suckers, we're going to take them out. We're going to erase them. So we're going to keep the mother vine. Keep the mother vine. And we're going to keep the vine below the first flower cluster. All the other suckers are being trimmed out. So now we've got two vines. And we're going to have to keep trellising them. And I invite you to learn about the Florida string weave system. I think string weaving tomatoes is the easiest way to do it. So go online and find out about string weaving tomatoes. That's a short version of how you prune an indeterminate vine. Look for that flower cluster. That's the key for the second vine. I'm going to draw us to a close. Great questions. Great participation. Thank you again for attending this webinar and certainly check out our websites. We have a lot of additional information that you can take a look at. One last thing. Thank you, Tom. First of all, and then please fill out the survey. And join us again next week, same time, same place.