 Welcome to the fifth session of our 2021 Field to Fork webinar series. My name is Julie Garden Robinson. I'm a Food and Nutrition Specialist with NDSU Extension, and I will be your host for today's webinar. Our upcoming webinars are featuring our University of Minnesota colleague Randy Nelson and also Janet Knodl, NDSU Extension entomologist. We hope you are joining us for the entire series of 10 webinars. If you miss one, they are already being archived, so we hope you go and check those out. We are using the Zoom webinar function this year, and you will all be in listening mode today without cameras or microphones. People watching this live will be able to ask questions in the chat box, so you can find that on the screen. Please go ahead and type your questions in the chat, and I will pose those questions to our speaker during and after this presentation today. Next, I have a very special request for all viewers, whether you watch this live or you're watching the archives. To maintain our funding sources and offer these types of programs in the future, I ask that you take a very short survey that will land in your email inbox shortly after today's talk. To sweeten the deal, we will have random prize drawings, so you may receive a prize in the mail if you win. After submitting your survey, you will be redirected to a second survey where you can enter your name and mailing address. I also have two acknowledgments today. First to the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service for our field of work funding, and we also have a contribution from Purdue University through a grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and we thank all these entities for their support. And now, it's time for our featured speaker, and I'm very pleased to introduce Tom Kelb, who has done several field of work presentations in the past. Tom is an extension horticulturalist for North Dakota State University. Tom works with hundreds of gardeners and farmers across North Dakota every summer to evaluate vegetable varieties, and today he will be sharing some of the most reliable and promising varieties for us in North Dakota. So thanks for being with us today, Tom. Thanks, Julie, for the invitation, and it's really great to be here and hi to everybody out there. Let's talk about varieties. Why? Why is this an important topic? And because the first step to growing a great crop is to have great seeds. Seeds are powerful, and I've seen this in extension. I've worked in extension in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and here in the Midwest, and I have seen seeds change lives. You know, when we work together, we can find varieties that will increase, maybe double the yield that can reduce the need for pesticides, and we can find better tasting vegetables. Seeds are truly powerful. Another thing that's really powerful is winter in North Dakota. I'll tell you that, and luckily it's just about over. But I'll tell you the best thing about winter is going to the mailbox and getting seed catalogs. I love, I've loved seed catalogs since I was a kid. Some kids, some kids read comic books. I read seed catalogs. And my favorite one when I was a kid was the one from Burpee Seed Company. I would, before I go to bed, I go through that seed catalog and I just dream, see all these beautiful, colorful pictures and think about, wow, I'm going to have such a great garden this year. I just can't wait to grow these golden peppers, for example. But as I got older, I wanted to appreciate more than just pretty pictures. And my favorite seed catalog today is the one from Johnny's Selected Seeds. You know, let me just say that all the seed catalogs I mentioned today are available for free. You just got to go online and request a free seed catalog. And just because I mentioned these catalogs doesn't mean I'm endorsing them particularly or just because I omit one doesn't mean I'm discriminated against them. I just want to share with you some of my favorites. And Johnny's is my favorite. And that's because Johnny's is a great company. It's from Maine. It's a northern company. It has seeds that grow in the north. They have an aggressive breeding program that develops award-winning varieties. But the best thing about Johnny's, yeah, this isn't such a pretty catalog full of pictures, but it's full of great information. And especially like if you notice here on the left, under the peppers there, they have all kinds of interesting and important information that's helpful for you to be successful as a gardener or a farmer. I think Johnny's wants you to be successful. And when you're successful, you'll keep coming back for their seeds. But like, let's say for this peppers, they'll tell us what type of soil is best. They'll tell you when to sow the seeds. They'll tell you how to sow the seeds. They'll tell you how far to space apart the plants. They'll tell you, this is the diseases to look out for. Here's the insects to work out for. So all this information is so valuable. I always keep this catalog at my desk in the spring and even, you know, by my side when I plant my garden. So even if you don't want to order any seeds from Johnny's, I really recommend that you just get their catalog as a resource. Another one of my favorite catalogs, I love heirloom catalogs and they're because they're so full of interesting historic stories. And someday in my life, if I ever have a coffee table, this is the one I'm going to put on my coffee table. And that's the one from Baker Creek heirloom seeds. And the reason why is it's just so full of beautiful pictures and stories like for look at this page on radishes. They just don't have a normal red radish. They have like these beautiful watermelon radishes from China. The green radishes, they got radishes that look like rat tails. They got radishes as big as a basketball. So many cool things about it. And the one thing about heirlooms, it has to do with their history. And I think the arichora yellow dry bean is a good example of this. And this is a dry bean that Baker Creek offers another seed catalogs offer. It's the same exact bean that has been grown for centuries here in North Dakota by the arichora Native Americans. It's the exact same seed that they shared with Lewis and Clark. It was the exact same seed that Lewis and Clark shared with Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Jefferson enjoyed at Monticello. So I can enjoy the same experiences as people for centuries. It's really wonderful. Another strong trend in gardening right now is organic gardening. And there is a whole new group of organic companies emerging or existing seed companies that are offering organic seeds. And in response to this, our gardeners have asked me if I would offer organic seeds in our trials. And we started offering organic trials last year. Here's another company, High Mowing Seeds. There's a lot of companies that are exclusively for organic. And so that's just another option out there for you. Another one of my favorite catalogs. But actually, I don't ever use it as the one from Pine Tree. And that's because you know the thing about you if you buy seeds from like Burby or Johnny's or a lot of these national seed companies, just trying to get a packet of seeds can cost like five bucks. And then you throw in shipping. Man, it's like $10 for a packet. So people, other gardeners have alerted me to Pine Tree. And the nice thing about this company is they offer, they offer seed packets that are very affordable. They put in fewer seeds, but still enough to grow a row. And you get the seeds packets only about $1.50 or $2.00. So here's a seed catalog to get for a normal gardener. But I'm not normally buying my seeds by the pounds. And so I like to alert you to Jordan seeds in the Twin Cities. Jordan has a great selection of seeds and very affordable. So those are some of my favorite seed catalogs. One drawback about seed catalogs is they only tell you the good things about every variety, right? They never say, well, don't buy this Friday. It has too short of a season for you in North Dakota. No, everything's good in a catalog. So we have to find out for ourselves what works best. And that's one reason why we started the North Dakota Home Garden variety trial program. Because we think, kind of like our overall purpose is that we believe that the best way to identify the best varieties for gardeners in North Dakota is to test the varieties in the gardens of North Dakota under the management of gardeners in North Dakota. And so we set up a huge network of gardeners and growers across the state. I've worked at over 1,000 of them over the years to evaluate promising varieties. And here's our last year numbers. We had 369 growers last year submit results from their trials. And you can see all the way, we had 54 in Burley County, 44 in Cass County. And even the yellow boxes are one to three sites. So we have information from like 45, 46 counties every year. Plus our trials are spreading out to other states and provinces too. Even though we never publicize this program because it's overwhelming the response we have. So the comments I'm gonna give you today are not my comments. They're the comments of, let's say from last year, 369 people who submit a result from their trials. All their comments come together in a publication we call vegetable cultivars for North Dakota where we list the best cultivars or the cultivated varieties for our state. And this is a handout that's posted on the Field of Fork website for you. Also on the handout, I have a list of seed companies that you can request free seed catalogs. One other thing I have to say about this year is the COVID has caused problems this year in the shipment of seeds. Well, first of all, in the production of seeds was a problem last year. Some of the seed production got decreased because of COVID. And now the problem we have here is there's again a huge demand for seeds because people are more likely to stay at home and they want to garden more. But the biggest problem is just getting the seeds shipped because at the warehouses they all have to wear masks and they're all social distancing. Some seed companies are taking weeks to get your orders out. And I just noticed like a few seed companies wouldn't even take orders yet to gardeners. So if you want to order your seeds, don't be a procrastinator, get the ball rolling right after this talk. When I look, and also I can throw in that if you want to join our seed program, our trials program, where everybody's well, we've opened that program up on Monday. And so we're expecting hundreds of more gardeners to participate. When I look for a variety, these are the traits I look for. It's got to mature early because we all know our growing season is too short in North Dakota. We want our varieties to taste great. We want our varieties to resist diseases so we don't have to be spraying fungicides. We want our varieties to be productive. And we want our varieties to be adapted to North Dakota which for compared to the rest nation means it's got to take cool temperatures and dry, dry conditions. Okay, I'm going to go over the best varieties or some of the promising varieties for North Dakota. We're going to start with the favorite vegetable of everybody, or almost everybody, tomatoes. I don't know for some reason, my kid Kevin just doesn't like tomatoes, so it's not his favorite, but I know this is the most popular one. So let's start with tomatoes. There's all kinds of tomato varieties out there with all kinds of fruits, all kinds of colors. But what I want to encourage you today is when you select a variety, also consider about the vine. There's two major types of tomato vines, determinate and indeterminate. A determinate vine is a compact vine. You don't even have to prune it, you don't even have to trellis it if you don't want to. The yields are early, which is so important in North Dakota, and the yields are concentrated, which is usually, we don't have a long tomato harvest season anyway in North Dakota because Jack Frost stops it. I'm a big fan of determinate varieties. There's also indeterminate varieties and indeterminate, they're tall, they never stop growing. Okay, they'll grow till frost. The determinates pretty much stop growing, the vines stop growing when they set their fruits. But an indeterminate type, you have to prune, you have to trellis. The fruits are usually larger and the fruits of indeterminate are usually more flavorful because there's always new leaves and new healthy leaves producing lots of sugars for the plant. So there's pros and cons for both types. Here's one way to trellis an indeterminate variety. And this works for determinate types too, if you want. This is a string weaving, what you pound a stake in between every two plants on the row and you use a trellis of string going across the row to support the plants. If you haven't ever tried string weaving, I invite you to look into it. Here are some of the most popular varieties for us in our state and they've done well in our trials. Early girl is often selected for its earlyness and I means indeterminate, D means determinate. Celebrity is, I think it's the most reliable variety. It resists a lot of diseases and it resists cracking. If you want a large tomato, big beef is a great quality tomato. Mountain fresh plus is becoming more and more known. It's a great quality mid-sized tomato. It's easy to grow. It tolerates cool conditions. The most popular, the most common cherry tomato is super sweet 100. And then for the canning types, the ones that have very meaty and full of flesh inside, it's the Roma and the San Marzano's. Also I can just throw in, like if you have a container tomato or you need a patio size, there's lots of varieties out there and I know that Bush Early Girl has done well in our tests. You know what the thing about tomatoes though, we all have our preferences and it's good to share those preferences with your friends because I've learned to love orange cherry tomatoes. Sun gold and sun sugar are, those types of tomatoes are my favorite. They're super sweet and they don't crack as much as the sweet 100s. Another tomato that I really like is Juliet. Juliet is a cross between a cherry tomato and a paste or Roma tomato. So it's a little bit bigger than a normal cherry but it's so meaty inside, really easy to grow. It doesn't crack, it's really great. Speaking of cracking, these are heirloom tomatoes. And heirloom tomatoes are very pop or trendy, should I say, but I'm not a big fan of heirlooms because I have to say in general, there's a reason why they became an heirloom, right? That's because we moved on, we've advanced. I didn't come to work today on a horse. I took a car, advancements. So heirloom tomatoes are not as productive, they're not as reliable, they're more susceptible to diseases. These are all general, there's always an exception but these are general qualities. They're harder to grow and they're more susceptible to cracking. Nevertheless, they have interesting colors and some have very special, special flavors. And so I see a strong trend now in the industry to develop modern varieties with heirloom fruit qualities. And this leads us to one category. It's the most award-winning category of tomatoes I've seen ever. It's a chef's choice. And the first one was the orange one that came out in 2014. And it seems like every year they release a new one. There's a black one, a green one, a red one. And now also there's a chef's choice by color that's out this year, that's right here. Again, it has that appearance of heirloom and great flavor but it's productive and resists diseases. Here's a new one that's out this year. It looks really promising, buffalo sun. It ripens early. It has the ribbing on the fruits that people like to see. And look at that flesh inside. It's got a marbled pink flesh inside. So look into that. We'll see if you can find that at your garden center or maybe order some seeds and plant that yourself, buffalo sun. These are all not, I haven't tried any of these. These are brand new varieties but they look promising. Red torch, looks like a Juliet but it has really interesting streaking. Flames are on it and very productive. This is a new grape tomato called Salano. And it won awards because the problem with grape tomatoes is the vines really get out of control. But Salano can be grown in a container. It has a tight bush to it form and is very dark red and sweet. So Salano looks promising. And the last one that's new this year that looks really great is early resilience. An absolutely terrible name. Has no catch to it or jazz at all. But this is a Roma tomato and I grow, I love Romans. I probably grow about 20 Roma plants every year in my garden. But the problem with the Romans is they're so susceptible to blossom and rot. Early resilience is more resistant to blossom and rot and has healthier vines. And otherwise it looks just like a Roman and has a compact vine like a Roma. So how about we just take a break and does anybody have any questions they wanna share or does anybody have a special tomato that they would like to share with the group? You have a comment here from Sarah. She says, thank you very much for this information on tomatoes. They aren't my favorite but we still grow them every year. And every year I'm surprised a new disease or bug that eats them and how few fruit I end up with. So any comments? We have a presentation, I have a presentation on how to grow tomatoes in North Dakota, Sarah may be helpful. But otherwise, I had to say one thing is that this is the joy of gardening. Every year there's a new challenge. There's always something that causes trouble and that really rises hope for next year. So just pick a early ripening variety, get the steak, the tomatoes, get them off the ground and send me some photos with the first sign of distress. Call your plant doctor, your local county agent or myself and we'll help you through the problems. So Becky has a question. Do you recommend starting seeds indoors? Oh yeah, yeah, of course, for tomatoes you have to start seeds and you should start to seed six to eight weeks before you set out the plants. So we're right around the time. We're pretty similar, you should be starting the seeds for tomatoes. And also, you have to do that for peppers. You have to do it for tomatoes. Our growing season is too short to direct sew them. They'll never make it. Or you'll get your first green tomato and then the frost will come. So yeah, you gotta, same with melons and watermelons. That's when also I'm learning, you gotta start, we have so many failed trials for that. We're starting to recommend starting them indoors too. Twyla has a question about acidity. Are any of the varieties low acid and can't be used for canning? Oh, you know what? I think, Julie, I think, are you the one to answer this question? I'll go for it. I would caution anyone who's listening and doing anything with tomatoes that you all acidify your tomatoes with citric acid or lemon juice. And we have all of the guidance on our website. It's also linked on the field of fork site. So we did a little trial a few years ago. I was working with another horticulture specialist and we did find differences in acidity of the same variety growing in different locations. So that piece is also on the field of fork website. But pretty much if you follow the acidification guidelines with these tomatoes, you're going to be okay. Yeah. What else we got? Okay. Considering romas are not very disease resistant, what would you recommend for a replacement for canning? Okay. The problem with Roma is blossom and rot. That's the key. And that's a disorder, not so much a disease. So try to manage blossom and rot just by trying to keep the soil moisture uniform and also don't damage the roots of the plant when you hole around the tomatoes because it's a calcium deficiency and we've got to help the plants get the calcium through their roots. So we could talk 10 minutes about blossom and rot. But the other thing, if this is a problem for you too, maybe you've learned this too, is that it's usually just on the first flush of fruits because then after that the plant has a better balance of foliage and fruits and the root system gets more able to get the calcium. So I always go out early in the year and on my green, my first flush of fruits, as soon as I see any brown bottoms they're coming off the vine. But then also if you want to know a variety, how about early resilience? This is what it won the All-America Award for, resisting blossom and rot and having healthier vines. So there you go. You just made my case right here. This is one definitely worth trying. I think this is the one of all those varieties I mentioned. This could be the game changer. Leanne reports that she likes burpees super sauce. So just a comment. And Myla says, my daughter-in-law gave seed from a chef grower company named Ro7. They have limited varieties but are very good. Great. Kathleen and I grow in containers, a heritage variety in Goldman's Italian American with seeds from Baker Creek. Large sauce, tomato, great taste. So we're all growing tomatoes this year. Yeah. And Glenn says, my go-to cherry tomato is yellow pear but I always discover how many fruits I've missed after the frost. Yellow pear started in Fargo. It's Fargo yellow pear and it is so mild. It is what, when I lived in Wisconsin, that's what the Amish families used to make their preserves was yellow pear and what a giant plant. That's like a giant bush just filled with a billion tomatoes on them but so mild flavored really should try it. So I think this comment is for me. It's a question about vinegar used for acidifying. Most of our guidance does call for lemon juice or citric acid because it doesn't flavor the tomatoes but we do have some recipes for salsa that do use vinegar. Vinegar isn't as effective in acidifying as lemon juice and citric acid. So again, we have all this information is on our tomato canning guide. Twyla asks about blossom and rot and I think you covered that. Okay, do bell peppers get blossom rot? Yes, yep, they get it too. Sorry, they're relatives. Peppers and tomatoes are in the same family. They share the same problems. In fact, we have a publication called All in the Family. It's about all of those different. There you go, eggplant too. Yeah, eggplant and tomatoes and so on. We have a question from Grace Ann. What do you have that is the best approach without use of chemicals to combat slugs is what she's asking about? Okay, they're our organic products and you know what I have to, okay, what is that? Sorry man, you know, I haven't thought about slugs for six months. I can't remember what the heck it is. But like Escargo is one of the trade names but there are organic products, something phosphate. Sorry man, you caught me off guard here but there are organic products that are totally safe that you can use in your vegetable garden. You cannot use like Matteldehyde. I remember that one because that, I mean, I would not use it, it's too toxic but there are organic, some types of like iron phosphate and it's an iron product that can be used and you can find that the major snail repellents will do that. And of course, diatomaceous earth will work too if you wanna sprinkle that or near your plants and those are little like crystals of sand and then when this snail crawls on it, it rips up its guts. So maybe you like to see that. And I don't think so. I think it's iron phosphate is that chemical but yeah, Escargo is a common trade name for that. So Glenn is asking about Epsom salt and Blossom and Rod, that helps. No, it's not gonna do the job for ya. And also there's, I talked to a soil scientist about this and they say it can make it worse. So that's a, that is not a scientific. There's no, that's not based on science. It has to do with a copper shortage or no, a calcium shortage getting to the plants. So again, the key Blossom and Rod keep the soil moisture consistent so the calcium can flow to the roots, allow the roots to grow. So don't go nuts with the whole. You know, mulch to keep the soil moisture consistent. There are calcium sprays. If you just can't live with it, you just can't tolerate it. If you can't, if it's driving you insane, there are calcium sprays you can spray when the fruits are the size of a dime that can help or sometimes people say it helps. Helen is asking about anthracnose. Is that how you pronounce it? That's a problem she's having. Are there any varieties that are resistant? Okay, anthracnose is not a common problem. So it could be, but anthracnose typically only affects the red ripening fruits. And it doesn't, it's not a problem on the foliage. If it is anthracnose, the best thing you can do is get the plants off the ground. So make sure you trowel them somehow. And the other thing, it gets better air movement too. And also don't do overhead watering. Keep the leaves and the fruits dry. And if you do get a fruit that's rotten with anthracnose, just don't throw it on the ground because that's a source for more inoculum. Get that rotten fruit, take your rotten tomatoes out of the garden. Okay, is this a tomato? Okay, we'll just take a couple more. Yeah, our ground cherries, tomatoes, they're really good. Oh my goodness, I don't know. Is that a tomatillo? I don't know. I think that's a tomatillo. You eat the fruits? I think it's a tomatillo. And that's in a tomato family, sure. All right, there's a lot of questions. So I'll have our, there's like 27 more. So you have lots of tomato fans. I'm gonna turn it back to you, Tom. And you can put your email in the chat box. That's a good answer. And actually we'll see if we have some time at the end. I'm gonna rock and roll though to get to those questions. There's one in a talk on tomatoes, this is on vegetables. I told you, we started on tomatoes for a reason. Okay, this is not a tomato, this is not a tomato. And does anybody know what it is? This is an asparagus berry, asparagus. And I can tell this is from a female plant because there's male asparagus plants and female plants. Females grow the spears, but they also spend a lot of their energy producing berries. Nobody wants asparagus berries. And the other problem is that the berries fall to the ground, they release their seeds, and all of a sudden our asparagus bed gets full of young plants and everything gets crowded. So we have poor spear production. So what we want, this is when men are superior, men asparagus, okay? We want male plants. And for years, we have been recommending the lines from New Jersey, Jersey Giant, Jersey Supreme, Jersey Knight. These are so-called all male lines, not really all male though, but a lot of males. The problem that we just recently learned is the nursery that makes these Jersey boys, I call them the Jersey boys, they're gonna stop making them. So we've got to find an alternative. And I want to alert you that we do have an alternative, a recommended variety. Here's the spears we're after. Here's the variety that we recommend now. Millennium. Millennium has, there's been testing done in Northern Minnesota for years. And they have found Millennium is even more productive than the Jersey boys. It's hardy for North Dakota. It also has, especially the productivity of these lines are more outstanding as the spears age. And it has more male plants to it. Another nice thing about Millennium is the spears emerge a little bit later in spring. They don't come out prematurely and so they're less subject to early frost injury. So this is the variety to consider planting if you're interested in asparagus. And that's Millennium. Lots of beans out there. I hope you all have tried purple beans, to have fun with your children or grandchildren. When you cook them, they turn green. It's so fun. Bush Blue Lake, the 274, is the dominant variety of green beans and it does good in North Dakota. It'll give you a good crop of quality beans throughout the summer. In our test, we found that Blue Lake, this is a good variety, but it doesn't knock your socks off. And when we test it against other varieties, we found other varieties are preferred. And for example, we tested Blue Lake against Annihilator last year and 69% of our gardeners preferred Annihilator. J2, Lewis, Antigua. These are all good varieties. They have usually darker green pods and a little bit more slender. I threw in Antigua. This is a new variety from last year. It's an organic variety. It does very well. It's a short 18-inch plant that could do well in a raised bed, for example. The bean variety that everybody gets charged up about is Crockett. It's a filet bean. It's skinny, straight and crisp. It's dark green. I give out thousands of packets of seeds every spring. And this is the one, and people plant the seeds and then they throw away the seed packets. And then in summer, they say, my God, this is the best bean I ever grew. And then they call me, see, Tom, what was that? And it's Crockett. Crockett is a bean that will knock your socks off. We do lots of tests on carrots. This is a big fat Chantanae carrot. The varieties of Chantanae that we recommend on the right is Coupar, which is an organic variety that does excellent in North Dakota on farms and in gardens. And Hercules has always been a good performer for us. Most gardeners grow the Nantes type. Goldfinger has always been a great performer in our trials for years. Navel is a new variety we tried last year. It was tremendous. You might want to give that, and it's organic variety. You might want to give that a try. Here's the Nantes, classic Nantes. How about a purple carrot? People look into that and the catwalks and there's, and oh, it's super nutritious, that's great. Full of antioxidants, that's great. The problem is, they're full of antioxidants, but also they're kind of bitter. They don't taste very good. And so that kind of defeats the purpose. Like, if you don't want to eat it, you're not going to get those nutrients. So I'm not a big fan of purple carrots. But this is the best one, purple haze, because it's the mildest one. And also it looks cool when you cut it. It's cool for displays. So even if you don't want to eat it, you can just show off in front of your friends and tell them that's how pretty it is. Lots of sweet corn varieties out there now. And super sweets are dominating the market. 100 years ago when I was a kid, I used to grow sweet corn acres and every night, I'd go to the field and harvest the corn. And then I'd drive it down to the Minneapolis farmers market in the morning. And I knew I had to sell every year that day because it would be too starchy to sell the next day. But over time, their super sweets have arrived. And over the last, I don't know, 30 years, they get better and better every year. The biggest challenge for super sweets is the kernel is so small. There's a seed, it doesn't have good vigor. And so you have to wait a little while for the soil to get a little bit warmer. But actually they've made so many advancements, but look for a variety that can tolerate cool soil. So it germinates well. American Dream came out a few years ago and it's done very well in our trials in North Dakota. It's a good mid-season type. It's sturdy stalks and outstanding quality. I do recommend treated seed for corn. In our trials, we test so many, dozens and dozens of vegetables. Corn is the only one that we provide treated seeds for. I don't like using treated seed, but we've had so many failed corn trials that we recommend using seed treatments to reduce the rotting of the seeds. The best early variety for North Dakota in our trials consistently has been sweetness. Again, sturdy stalks, very reliable. It's super early and super delicious. Sweetness is a winner. Cucumbers, really, I think the days of the straight eight old cucumber, they're just past us. There's so many better burpless types out there. Burpless types are earlier, they resist diseases better, they're more productive and they have no bitterness. They're just perfect. And the top variety is summer dance. It's an amazing producer. You'll really love the quality of it. You can't pickle a burpless cucumber, though. That's its drawback. So homemade pickles is our best pickler. It wins our trials every year. It's so productive and it has crisp, perfectly shaped cucumbers for pickling. Homemade pickles. Here's a new variety out this year because there's a lot of interest in snack cucumbers. Once you just pick off the vine and you eat as a snack. And muncher is a great variety, but there's a new variety out there called green light we're testing in our trials. It's an award winner. It looks really promising. It doesn't need any pollination from bees. And you harvest it when they're just like three inches long, just small and they're seedless. So it's really worth a try. Lots of lettuce Fridays. And like the leaf types here is a leaf type that's really popular in our trials. New red fire, just blazing. So beautiful. It takes the heat. For lettuce, you gotta find a variety that can tolerate heat so we can extend the harvest into summer as long as possible. And new red fire is really good. There's lots of good leaf lettuce Fridays we recommend in that handout that you can download. Butter crunch is one of our all time favorites. It's been around forever. And every seed, seed rack in North Dakota has butter crunch lettuce and it tolerates heat. It's a great butterhead type. It's just an old time classic that does well. I would encourage you to try a crisp head or sometimes called it's a Batavia lettuce. These are the most heat tolerant types and they're very crisp and delicious. Mure is, it's the best one. It'll produce lettuce all summer long for you but there's lots of other good crisp head types out there in reds and spotted ones but look for that in your catalogs. Again, melons, I talked about how we're starting. It may have to start seeds indoors. We have so many field trials with melons are growing season so short. So you gotta find an early ripening one. Athena is the dominant one for the Midwest but Aphrodite is a week earlier and it has bigger, bigger cantaloupes. So that's a really good one. If you're up in the Northern part of the state and you're growing seasons really short, the best quality early one, super early is goddess. That's a great cantaloupe. I'm just gonna keep churning through these for you guys here. Just bear with me here. And as we go A to Z, asparagus to winter squash to W. Okay, if green flesh melons are difficult to grow, especially the honeydews, they're just take too long. Try a Galea melon. They're earlier than cantaloupes and they have a wonderful like tropical essence to them. These are super easy to grow and just these are things you can't buy at a grocery store. And these are the types of things that we can grow in our gardens. Aravah and passports are very early ripening. The best watermelon for North, the most reliable one I think that has some decent size to it is sweet Dakota Rose. We have a lot of our trials gardeners say this is the best watermelon they ever ate. And sweet Dakota Rose, she's from North Dakota, developed right here. And this is one that we hardly recommend. If you wanna try something different, a yellow watermelon, yellow watermelons ripen, they're the first ones to ripen. They're so easy to grow. And they're fun. Again, you can't buy this at a grocery store. I remember growing these when I was a teenager and I sold them the grocery stores all throughout my town. It would help me get through college with yellow watermelons. They're so easy to grow and they're so fun and they're delicious. It's like a red one. The best pea, the best shell pea and I had to think of gardener just like in a forum like this. A gardener says, Tom, have you ever tried Lincoln Peets? I said, no, I never tried it because it's an heirloom and I'm not in the heirlooms. She said, you gotta try it. So we tried it in our trials and it's been our winner every year. Every year we try Lincoln against something else. Lincoln's the winner. It's very productive. It's easy to shell. It's a great freezer. Lincoln is the best shell pea for North Dakota. The best snap pea, sugar and. Again, it wins the trials every year. Super early, super productive, super sweet. Both these peas don't have to be trellised. They only get about 27, 28 inches tall. So you don't have to put the work of fencing to them. These are really winners, consistent. These are in our whole fame. Lots of potatoes out there. And like I see there, the big blue one in the middle. We tested blue ones that have blue insides and they're very nutritious but people just can't eat blue mashed potatoes. It just freaks them out. So just look for a variety that can tolerate scab disease. And I would say for a red one, a lot of people plant these red Pontiacs but as soon as they dig them up in the early fall they call me about scab disease. Red nor one's better. It resists the scab. Our most popular highly rated potato is one you've probably never grown but North Dakota State introduced this in like 1962. Purple Viking. Look how beautiful it is with that purple marbling and snow white inner flesh. That is beautiful and it's delicious. It tolerates drought, productive, great for mashed potatoes. Purple Viking is a winner. You gotta order it right away though. Those supplies go right away. That's no longer becoming a secret how great it is. Okay, here's a secret I can share with you and these are two of my lovely children here and they grew this neon pumpkin. Neon is the easiest to grow pumpkin in North Dakota and that's why my kids grow it because I don't wanna seem to cry and be a failure. So we're gonna grow the easiest one. Neon ripens two weeks before any other pumpkin. The pumpkins are orange in summer. In summer, so they're like orange balls that turn into orange balloons. So you can see the beauty all summer. It's not the biggest one. It's only about eight to 10 pounds but it's so early. It's the one especially for the North. Now our kids like that but I'll tell you what kids really like is a big pumpkin. That's what they really like and big pumpkins, the thing about a big pumpkin, those giant ones, they're ugly. They're like can and they're all lopsided. And you know what, they require too much care. It's like another child you have to take care of. They gotta have water all the time. You gotta feed them all the time. You can't let them get a sunburn because you gotta have the skin soft so it keeps enlarging. Put a blanket on it, forget it. Big moves, you just plant the seeds and then you come back at the end of the year and you got these big 50 pound pumpkins that are bright orange and beautiful. Big moves is a winner. Another winner are these two. This is early giant in the photo. These are like 30 to 40 pound types and these resist diseases. They're easy to grow. Large March we grew last year. She was amazing. This was a very popular pumpkin in our trials. The top spinach, the thing about spinach is it gotta tolerate heat because otherwise it's gonna go to seed as soon as the late spring early summer comes. Space is the best spinach for springtime, for a springtime sowing because it tolerate the heat the best. And our team of gardeners generally like smooth leaf types like this because they're easier to clean. Space is delicious, juicy and it produces the longest. Okay, zucchini. I know people always make jokes about zucchini about how nobody respects it. I just don't understand why nobody respects zucchini. We should be, just because it's too productive, we ridicule it. That is, we should honor this vegetable. And if you wanna have a good production of it, then you need to find a variety that can resist disease and keeps producing late into the summer, into the fall. Cash flow does that and green machine was a new variety last year that we tried, it was outstanding. It is truly a green machine that just pumps out the fruit's non-stop till frost. Very impressive. The prettiest vegetable is bright lights Swiss chard. It is beautiful. It belongs in every flower garden. It is so beautiful, you'll never wanna cut it. And actually, I never wanna cut it because I don't wanna eat it. I don't really like Swiss chard. It's kind of bitter. But if you harvest it young, then it's not so bitter. But just for looks, bright lights is, it is so eye-catching. It's a showstopper. Lastly, we'll talk about a couple of winter squashes. And one is the Buttercup Squash which originated from North Dakota. We introduced the Buttercup Squash to the world in the 1930s. And a lot of people across the world think it's the best tasting squash. Burgess, if you got a big garden and let the vine spread, Burgess is great because it's early and it's high yielding and high quality. If you got a small garden, you can grow Buttercup Squashes but it has to be a bush type like Bon Bon. Man, I wanna give that a try. And lastly, a trend that we found in our trials with our hundreds of gardeners is that we find that people like smaller squash, like they're butternut squash, our baby butternut trial is more popular than our standard butternut trial. And Butterscotch is an award-winning variety that does well here. It's a pumpkin, I'm sorry, it's a winter squash that you just cut in half and share with a friend. So there you go. I wanna thank all the credit to photographers and the seed catalogs for their photos in this presentation. I also want to invite you to join our team. We have hundreds of participants, hundreds and like 369 last year and I had a hundred more families join us in that fall doing observation trials. It's a fun project and you can order your seeds online right now. And actually, I'm still waiting for some seeds for my seed supplier. But you'll get the seeds out in April. Just give it a look if you're interested. It's a fun project for kids to teach you some of the basics of science. So I wish y'all a happy spring. And I don't know, I'm sure there's probably, I hope there are more questions. 27 more tomato questions. I'm gonna grab a couple that aren't about tomatoes right now. Could you comment on pole beans, which I prefer? Yes, yes, pole beans, great. Pole beans, here's what we've found and pole beans are not as popular so I didn't mention this talk. Sage shells came out a few years ago. It's super early. It's a week before the standard Kentucky Warner. Sage shells is a great variety. But for quality, Monte Cristo, it's super quality, super quality. If we compare it, it beats all the Kentucky wonders. Monte Cristo. And if you're like wax beans, yellow beans, Monte Cristo has a sister who's a wax bean, who's famous, Monte Gusto. Monte Gusto is in many seed dogs just because it is so special. There you go. We have a question about safety from deer and rabbits. Are prickly plants like pumpkins and squash safe from deer and rabbits? It depends how hungry the deer and rabbits are. That's a thing. Actually, if the Native Americans here, when you design your garden, the women who did all the gardening, they would plant pumpkin and squash around their other plants, their corn, their beans, their sunflowers, and their other squash. So it was used as a repellent to repel deer and rabbits and men. But it all depends how hungry the critter is. So offense is the way, you gotta have a barrier. Offense is the way to go. And Grace is wondering about organic potato starters. Okay. Well, what I would do is I would go online, look for organic seeds. And I mentioned a couple. There was Harris there in the high mowing seeds and there's a lot of sustainable seeds. There's so many companies out there now. Just look for organic potatoes. Pick a variety or just go to Google organic potatoes. And you can find organic potato seed. That's what you wanna do. I would not use what you get at a grocery store that wasn't produced or that was not likely produced organically. Janine makes a comment. It's kind of for a nutrition person, I guess. Wish we could get all the foodies who write food columns and create recipes to convert to buttercup squash. She sees a lot of butternut, butternut, butternut. So anyway, if you go to our website, Janine and everyone, we certainly have a lot of buttercup recipes. So please check that out. We have over 1500 recipes, not all for squash, but there are some for squash. Don is wondering about recommendations for onions. Okay, you want a long day onion and then you want an Elsa Kreg. Well, you gotta make a decision. What do you want the onions for? Do you wanna win the county fair? Then Elsa Kreg is an exhibition style one. That's great. That's the one I grow. But there are storage onions too, but you have to, you're not gonna find them at a garden center. You gotta order those seeds and you gotta start them like yesterday. Cause really the onions are the first thing we start indoors and the key to a big onion is you gotta get those seedlings going as soon as possible. I think candy is a good variety for onions that has done well for me in the past. Elsa Kreg is my favorite cause it's the biggest one and that's what I want. I like a big onion. So Grace Ann wants to get in the garden. She says with our mild winter, do you think we can get in the garden quicker? I usually don't plant until the end of May. Okay, what do you think I am? I'm not like a pre-niocator, like okay, here we go. Coriander splatter, okay, go ahead. Plant your potatoes on St. Patrick's Day or Good Friday, whatever. You know what? Okay, not to make light of it. Generally speaking, it's dry in North Dakota. Dry soils will warm up faster. So of course this could all change the next week, I don't know. But generally speaking, you're likely be able, the ground will be warmer faster this year if the conditions stay the same. But again, you gotta worry about frost. That's unforgiving. So you got some vets, you can't plant your tomatoes two weeks earlier than normal because they're gonna get frosted. Doesn't matter how warm the soil is. So you can, so probably you can get in there earlier but hey man, the climate in North Dakota is so unpredictable and harsh. Did you give us a temperature of what the ground should be? Is there anything like that? It's different for every crop. It's different for every crop. And you know, if you want to, that's another great thing about Johnny's Cadillac. They have a graph for every crop. They tell you, this is the ideal germination. This is not the ideal. So okay, just throwing out some vegetables like spinach, you plant earlier. Spinach, beets, lettuce, you can plant early. Potatoes, you can get on the ground earlier. Onions, but stuff like, you know, there's anything like a melon or tomato or pepper. They're very frost sensitive. Beans are intermediate. If you have a specific question, I'll be happy to help you. Here's another question. Should you seeds versus seedlings? Which works better? One or the other? Well, you know, there's, it depends how about that for an answer. It depends on the crop. It depends on the crop. For example, like, and also how much time and money you want to devote to it. And like seedlings are generally better, but you got to pay for them. They're more expensive. So that's why, let's say for bean seeds. I wouldn't start my bean seeds indoors. You know, we want our seedlings. We go with seedlings because for those crops, it take a long time to mature and that demand the warmth. And so like melons, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, those are the ones that we, it makes sense to use seedlings for. Otherwise, I think it just doesn't, like it doesn't make sense to plant corn indoors ahead of time. And I think we're almost ready to let you go here, but I'm going to ask you one more question. Sure. Maybe you covered it already. When is the best time to plant tomato and cucumber seeds inside your house? Okay. They're two completely different answers. Okay. Tomatoes and peppers, we usually want to go about six to eight weeks before we anticipate planting them outdoors. So for a lot of us in, let's just say central North Dakota, we're going to be planting them outdoors about let's say May 15th to May 20th. So go six to eight weeks behind. Okay. So now we're talking about like, you know, March, March 20th about somewhere around there is an ideal time, but you know, it doesn't have to be perfect. Just sometime in late March is a good time for tomatoes and peppers and eggplant. Now for melons, they, you cannot grow them six to eight weeks indoors. They will get too leggy. So for those you go with a three week window, three weeks only. So if I'm going to plant that at the end of May, I'm going to start my cucumbers and melons at the beginning of May. Very good. Well, I'm going to thank you Tom for joining us and to our very energetic audience. I thank you for all your questions and your interest in this topic. And certainly check out, there's about 75 of these webinars archived over the last several years. And Tom has been our speaker before and we've had speakers about starting your seeds inside. And there's just a whole bunch of topics, including food preservation. So please check those out and join us again next week. We have five more sessions left and a big round of applause for Tom for sharing all this great information with us. We're all excited about that. I enjoyed it a lot. And also if anybody has a question, I'll be happy to help you. Just send me an email and I'll reply ASAP. My email is tom.callb, which is K-A-L-B, like boy, at n-d-s-u.edu. Okay, just send me an email and I'll be happy to work with you. Thank you everybody.