 Okay, one thing we're going to talk about now we're going to finish this up with vegetable varieties. My name is Tom Cald. I'm Extension Horticulturist. I focus my attention more in the western half for the state. We're talking about vegetable varieties. Why that? Because one of the keys of success of vegetable gardening is to start with a good variety. If you've got a good variety, you can find something that will yield abundantly, will help fight diseases naturally without fungicides, and give you amazing flavors to your dinner table. Another hand, if you pick a lousy variety, it doesn't matter how much work you put in improving the soil or weeding, watering, you can still have frustration and poor results. So choose a good variety. Now, how do you pick a good variety? That's a good question. I tell you, for me, why would I start with seed catalogs? And when I was a kid, I was still having quite the nerd. I love seed catalogs. Other kids read comic books. Man, not me. I like seed catalogs. They were so cool. I just loved to get them in the mail in the springtime, filled with colorful pictures. But the problem with seed catalogs is everything's good in a seed channel. How do you make a choice? They say everything's great. So then a bunch of horticultures come together and develop this All America Selections program. So they look at the new varieties and they give awards to ones that are innovative and widely adapted. But the problem is I don't care about what's good in Georgia, North Carolina, Missouri, or California. I care about North Dakota. North Dakota, hey, man, it's snowing right now in April here in Fargo. This is the harshest place in the United States to live, I think. We can't embed people to come up here. We promise some jobs. It's so it's hard for people. It's hard for plants. I want to know what goes good in North Dakota, not necessarily the rest of America. The ADS program is okay, but I want more specific information. Okay, so that's what the university is here for. And yes, we can have research information that's based in our state, but still that. I want to know what's the best varieties for gardens in our state. Not the best varieties in the state, but for our research stations. So then we've got to bring it home more towards personal experience. And this is a this is a valuable tool. You'll find out what works best in your garden. And for me, I've got a research team in my home garden. This is Tom, Junior, and Maria. They're doing a very sophisticated test. We call the tongue test. And to identify a good variety, the variety has to ripen before the kids can catch snowflakes on their tongues. Okay, so that's mid-September in Bismarck. But now what if we had not just one garden team, but if we had a hundred gardeners across the state testing vessels? Or what if we had like 200 or even more families testing in their own backyards? Well, that's what we've got with the North Dakota home garden variety trials. We've got a team and we've reached out to 500 more than 500 households in North Dakota testing varieties in their own backyard. And now you have this publication about recommended vegetable varieties for North Dakota gardens. This is the output of researchers here in our state backyard researchers here in North Dakota. These are the varieties that have performed well in our state under real garden conditions. And you are and you see the website at the bottom there. You know, we've got a web page. You see that potato thing there? That's our seed catalog for this year. We're offering 55 different types of vegetables, herbs, and cut flowers that you can test in your own backyard. And a lot of you have that you should have this handout. This is our brochure. You can order from the brochure or you can go to our catalog and we even have online ordering. You can order that. The way it works is we have side by side testing. And I'll just give an example. For example, this year there's a new tail that came out. A dinosaur tail, not a tail. Maybe not the favorite vegetable of North Dakota or anywhere for that matter. But the finest tail, it comes from the Italian Tuscany region. And lacinado is the most popular tail. But there's a new variety out there called black magic. So which one's better? Black magic or lacinado? Well, that's one of the trials we're going to be doing this year to test which of those two is better. And there's a new catalog about this year called Duchess. It's supposed to be super sweet and early. Perfect for us, is it? I don't know. Let's test it for real and see how it performs in North Dakota. So we'll test that against a standard catalog variety. Here's an example of an evaluation form. And you have this as a handout as well. You can see it's quite straightforward. Actually, we've got over 200 kids every year work with us on this project. So it's a good kids project, too. And so in this trial, it's a mock trial here, we have Apollo against Zeus. And if you look at the left hand column, we have simple questions. Which one, and I know you probably can't see this on the slide, but if you get a handout, which one germinated best, which one was healthier, which produced the first right melon, which was higher yielding, which was more attractive, and which tasted better. So you just got to check off that. And then the bottom line is, which ones do you recommend? Which ones do you recommend? And you prefer. So we'll have 20 or more families doing this test. Let's send all of these sheets to me in the fall after the frost. And that will lead to our publication of the North Dakota home garden variety. That's our results. You see there on the left, we put the gardener comments in there. We got 127 page publication there that you can download. Or if that's just too much good stuff, you can't deal with it. We have a summary there. And actually, if you're a participant, we do give you a copy of the summary so you can see how your trial compared with other trials across the state. And then of course, this is a great public good that these families are doing for the entire state so they get a certificate of recognition as well. So you've got the brochure in front of you and this and you can go to our website and check out the catalog. I strongly encourage you to think about it. So it's fun. It's easy and fun. And most people continue, I've had many people who've been on the project for over six years and running. And 98% of the gardeners are introduced to new varieties. And the other 2% are lying about it because they are introduced. I'm sure they're introduced to new varieties. And about 85% or more report higher yields because they're in the project and also have improved diets because they're involved in the project. They just want to spend more time on the garden because they know it's a research thing going on. So it's a fun project. Now let's talk about some of the winners tonight. That's what I want to focus on the winners. A lot of times I show this slide and gardeners. So look at this. I asked them what it is and you can just guess for yourself what it might be. It's kind of hard to hear across the state what you're all saying. But there's a lot of cherry tomatoes out there or tried tomatoes. But that is wrong. This is asparagus. This is asparagus. And you may not know it but there are male and female asparagus plants. This is the female because it produces berries. And the female plants, they live a very balanced life. They produce spears but they also give a lot of their energy to producing seed, these berries. Now most of us don't grow asparagus for berry production. We want spears, right? And so that's why in this case you want the men asparagus plants. You want the all male boys from New Jersey. The Jersey boys, the Jersey boys is what you want. Jersey giant, Jersey night, these little ones are going to be a significantly higher yield because they don't waste their energy on producing berries. Okay so go with the Jersey boys for asparagus. We do a lot of trials on beans and pretty much what happens is people say they like the beans but not many people go crazy about the beans. And we're looking for people to go crazy and love the stuff. Bush Blue Lake 274 is the standard in home gardening. And provider is probably the most reliable variety. But if you want something special and that's what I want, I encourage you to try filet beans. So this is Maxi Bell. This is the type of bean that gets gardeners excited. Straight, slender pods, deep green, seven inches long, very flavorful. Maxi Bell, that is a great bean. I encourage you to give it a shot this year. Yardong bean. I got to show it on my slide here. Okay good. You guys are seeing it. That's all that matters. Yardong bean, we can grow yardong beans in North Dakota. Yes, we can grow them in minor everywhere. The beans really do grow 24, 36 inches. It's amazing. They grow them on a trellis. And then what I do is I just tell my kid little Tommy and say, hey, Tommy, you only have to have one bean for dinner tonight. They taste a little bit like asparagus. So some people like that, some people don't. But it's fun and it's a beautiful plant. Cherries. Do a lot of trials for cherries in our North Dakota soil. The Nantes types generally are best for us. And the best Nantes, the Scarlet Nantes is the standard but for the highest uniformity and quality, Laguna or Nelson are the best. They're the sweetest and the highest quality. As far as, there's also Chantané types on the far right there. These aren't those big clubs that you can grow and then bop the rabbits over the head or try to get your garden, you know, Chantané carrots. Actually, they're used a lot for people who store their carrots over winter and also if you're growing carrots for bulk, like for juicing. Hercules came out a couple years ago. It is an amazing variety. It just dominates all the others. Now you're starting to learn, gosh, Tommy, I never heard about most of these things. Where the heck am I going to get them? So on the back page of that recommended vegetable variety guide you've got there, you have a list of seed companies. And they all offer free seed catalogs. Beautiful. So tonight, you know, you're going to be so inspired by this presentation tonight or maybe this weekend, you can go online, go to the website and request their free catalogs. And one week later when the snow starts falling, you can order your seed. So there's a lot of outstanding seed companies that give you all kinds of quality choices out there beyond where you get in your local hardware store. And these are all free. Remember, 30 minutes on the internet, you're going to have 30 catalogs. Even more. Let's talk about sweet corn. We do trials on sweet corn. There's four major types. The first one is the normal sugary type. This is a type that we were brought up as kids. And I remember we had 10 or 15 acres of this one in Minnesota where I was raised. And when we picked corn, we knew that the instant we pulled it off the stock, the sugar content would start dropping. So I had to sell all that corn at the Minneapolis Farmers Market by the next day or then it goes to the cows. So that's a thing about normal sugary corn. Then what happened several years ago is the industry got involved and they, you know, they like to ship our vegetables from Florida and Texas and stuff. So they developed super sweet types, also called the shrunken kernel types. These are the classic super sweets. And they are three times sweeter, three times sweeter, and they hold their sweetness for much longer, at least a week before they have an appreciable loss. Okay. Now the drawback with the super sweets is that they're kind of, they were kind of crunchy in the beginning. You know, kind of just too crisp, almost like break a couple teeth off those things. And then also got hard to grow. And especially for us in North Dakota, the shrunken kernel, they're so sweet that kernels themselves and seeds are shrunken. They don't have any vigor to them. And so you got to plant them under perfect soil conditions. It's got to be warm soil and it's got to be a moist soil. So you've got to wait until the end of May. You've got to wait until your Memorial Day planting along with your tomatoes. That's when you can plant your corn. Okay. And you've got to isolate it from other sweet corns too. So there's a lot of issues with this. However, that being said, if I could just recommend you to try one sweet corn this year, our team would say try Extra Tender 277A. That's a more modern party. It's not as crisp instead. It's tender, super sweet. This is one that you're just going to rave about. And your whole family's going to love it. Extra Tender 277A. Okay, getting back to the four types of sweet corn, the normal, the shrunken. As of then what happened, people wanted a sweet corn that was easier to grow. So they did the sugary enhanced types. The SEs, these are very common. And for example, Trinity is a common variety you'll see at every hardware store. And it's a good one. It's good and early. And it's got a big seed. So it'll germinate cold soil. So the SE types, they're twice as sweet as the normal. Not super sweet. Just very sweet. But they're easy to grow. And lastly, the last stage now is people are going to what we call synergistic types, or augmented super sweets, too. And these are SE types that just have a little bit of extra super sweet or shrunken kernels. So they're still fairly easy to grow and they're a little bit sweeter. And if I could just give you a heads up, all more has done very well in our trials. So those are some of our corn varieties. Cucumbers. One thing I learned when I came to North Dakota is we love our straight Aids. Wow, we love them. They're frugal people and the seeds are cheap. You can spend $5 and plant cucumbers in the whole county just about. And also, it can tolerate cool summer conditions. And that's what we have here. So it's done well. But if you want a quality cucumber, I would encourage you to try some of these new burpless types. This is tasty green. It's been around here for quite a while. But it's much higher yielding and a much higher quality. And it's burpless compared to a straight Aid. Very productive. Our gardener team, hundreds of gardeners, they love this variety. Another trend now for cucumbers is snacking cucumbers. The ones that you put in your lunchbox, you pick them when they're young, about six inches long. And then this this variety diva, it is almost seedless. It's burpless, smooth skin, almost no skin on it. A nice munching type of cucumber. You might want to give this one a try. Lettuce. In our lettuce trials, we've identified several superior types. We really like what we call summer crisp types. They have a nice crisp texture and they can take the heat. They won't bolt in the summertime. Nevada gets very high readings. And if you like red leaves, it's cousin called Sierra is another winner for North Dakota. This is a butterhead type. And the most prominent butterhead is called butter crunch. A lot of us have heard about butter crunch lettuce. That's been around a long time. And it always does well in our trials. That's every garden center has butter crunch lettuce. You can't go wrong with butter crunch lettuce. In most of our gardens, I try new things. So, romaine lettuce is very popular among our team. And green forest has a very attractive dark green leaf and very crisp texture, heat tolerant too. Okay, let's keep moving here. Malans. And this is, you know, I talked about duchess in the beginning about a new melon. Here's the best one for North Dakota today, Athena. And the key is we got to find a melon that ripens early. Okay, because that snow starts coming soon. Athena's early and reliable. But may I invite you to try a different type of melon. You cannot grow honey new melons on a regular basis. Even if it's global warming is occurring over North Dakota slowly but surely. You still cannot really reliably grow honey dudes. Just forget about it. And try something that you can grow. This is a Galea type. It has like a tropical flavor. Our gardener team really likes this. And Aravah is early, reliable, and a nice melon to enjoy. Yeah, here's another one. If you can't, if you're like, what's the, what's the hard thing to say if you can't grow acetone, we really got problems. If you, I know meldicote, but if everybody can grow a Korean melon, a Sun Jewel Korean melon. This is the earliest melon, super productive, so easy to grow. And it just slips off the vine when it's ripe. And one thing that's neat about it when you cut it open, it's not orange. Instead, it has a white flesh. And if you close your eyes when you eat it, you swear you're eating a sweet pear. Nine out of ten of our gardeners who try, we've tried this for about three years, we got about nine out of ten gardeners who would recommend it to other gardeners in North Dakota. So this is really a fun one to try that you can be guaranteed success with. Peas. Okay, I'd say I personally, I hate peas. I just have bad scars and memories of peas I come from a big family. I had ten brothers and sisters and we used to freeze a lot of vegetables, a lot of peas. You know what? I have to say, I spent every fourth of July shelling peas. You go pick about 10, 15 bushels of peas and then you spent the whole day shelling peas in the kitchen. And it just didn't make sense to me. You pick all those peas and at the end of the day, you get like one bowl of peas and then you get like 10 bushels of shells there that the cows get to eat. And then in the meantime, I never saw fireworks. It was just, I just didn't, just didn't make sense to me as a kid. So I highly, I highly recommend sugar snap peas. And this is the most popular variety in our trial, sugar an. Nice thing about sugar an is you can pick them, they'll be ready on the 4th of July. You can pick them, freeze them and then go watch the fireworks. It's a beautiful thing. Okay. You know, we don't do a lot of research on peppers and tomatoes because we focus more on direct sown crops in our trials. But last year we did do some pepper research. I just want to give you a head up about one variety that really jazzed up our gardening team. Now it's orange blaze, sweet bell pepper, orange blaze. It is a brilliant orange color and it was very productive. Our gardeners, you know, they're just, when you start seeing all the exclamation points of enthusiasm on the reports, then it really opens up your eyes. So orange blaze, it's an All America selections winter too. It really, really is an eye catching pepper. This is my research team looking at a variety of pumpkin that is called neon. Okay, neon. What is really cool about this is that, well, first of all, I just think it's great for kids to grow their own jack-o-lanterns, right? And anybody can grow neon. You know how pumpkins take over the whole garden? Neon won't. It stays in place, a semi-bush type. And the other thing about neon is it does not turn orange. It starts orange and just gets bigger. So you'll see these orange pumpkins glowing all summer long. And so even like here, even like when it's, when it up, we do the snowflake test in mid-September. We still got our Halloween pumpkin because it's ready weeks before the other varieties. It's because it's always orange. And our gardeners, especially up there in the North Country, they really were jazzed up about neon because it's early and so reliable. Give it a bright orange pumpkin. Beautiful. And that too, that too small is a perfect jack-o-lantern size. Spinach, you got to find spinach that can take the heat. And our garden team generally prefers smooth-leaved types. Olympia is outstanding. Olympia is the best one for North Dakota. Okay, zucchini. Here we go with zucchini. And trying to recommend a variety of zucchini. A lot of people roll their eyes at me. I can see it across the street right now. And they're all saying, who cares what variety you plant? Because no matter what, we're going to get too many zucchini. But to them, I have to say, you're not giving zucchini the respect it deserves. Okay, well, why do we scoff at a vegetable that's productive? We should be celebrating it. The problem is not the zucchini, the problem is us. We just don't know what to do with them. So let me give you a couple ideas that I've developed over the years. First of all, and the best variety is spineless beauty. That's the best one. That always wins our trials. Because it's dark green, and the vines are spineless. Easy to pick. It has an open habit. Easy to find the zucchini. Now what do we do with it? Let's say you missed that zucchini when you're supposed to pick it, and you come by a few days later, and you see it's like really big. Okay, I got a great idea. What we did as kids is you can make it into a boat. Say like a canoe. You just carve it out and put a mask on it, and you can float it down the river. Like a Viking ship. There's things. I think there's great possibilities here about having races of zucchini down the Missouri River or here in Fargo down the Red River. It's a wonderful thing for kids. If you don't want to let you just play with it in the bathtub, you know, little Viking ship zucchini. It works. Here's another one. Do you know about the legend of Montana Maggie? That's a true story. Montana Maggie, she was a she was a zucchini garter, and one day there was a bear in her backyard taking out cleaning out her bird feeder. Okay, so Maggie's in there in the kitchen just kind of doing her thing. And also she hears her dog barking away. Dogs barking away at the bear. Get out of here. All this noise. So then Maggie, so what's that noise? So she gets out of the kitchen, boasts her deck, and she goes, oh my gosh, there's a bear there. You shoe bear, shoe, shoe. And the bear did not appreciate that. So the bear started coming right toward Maggie. And so there's Maggie running from the deck into her kitchen. And there's that bear right there. Oops. There's that bear right there coming at her. And Maggie's got the door closed with him on hand. And the bear's face right in front of her. And she's reaching on that kitchen counter. Where's 94 seconds? Oh, she found her zucchini. Bang! There's the founder of the bear. Bear ran away. So how about that for zucchini? You can not only eat it, but you can it can be good used for recreation and self-defense. What else are you looking for in your vegetable? Give that spineless beauty a try. True story. As far as winter squash dolls, I'm going to encourage you to try Burgess. Buttercup squash, most squash lovers will tell you that the buttercup squash is a very high quality winter squash. And it's actually a raking in North Dakota, the Burgess, or the Buttercup Squashes. Burgess is very early and delicious and reliable. Okay, again with tomatoes, I've just got a couple of things to say about tomatoes. One is, again, we don't do a lot of research on tomatoes, but gold standby is like early girl, celebrity, big beef, and now we see a lot of mountain varieties out of North Carolina. Mountain fresh is a dominant variety. Mountain fresh plus for the Midwest, that's a good quality tomato. In general, when I look for tomatoes, I look for determinate vine types. There's indeterminate and determinate. Determinate have a more compact habit that you don't have to prune them. A determinate type has generally an earlier food set and a more concentrated food set. Now, the indeterminate types just keep growing. So you've got a pruning indeterminate type. Also, who cares about a long harvest window with tomatoes in North Dakota? It's impossible. Okay, to get thrust so soon. Like, if I live in Florida, I think about an indeterminate type. That's just not going to happen here. We need somebody to write that early and get as many tomatoes as possible early. And that's why a determinate vine type is usually the way to go. And also, a determinate don't have to trellis if you don't want to. This is Roma. Roma is the easiest to grow tomatoes, the easiest to grow. You don't have to trellis it. You just let it sprout and grow and get a bumper crop. One thing about earring in tomatoes, a lot of people, you hear a lot about heirloom tomatoes, especially like in feed cows and stuff. Generally, I'm not a fan of heirlooms because there's a reason why heirlooms are heirlooms. It's like, today I came to Fargo. I'm going to take a horse and bug you. I took a car. We moved on. We've made progress. Okay? Just briefly, to me growing an heirloom reminds me of when I was a nerdy kid reading my comic books all the time and trying to date a really attractive woman. No matter how hard I tried, I still was going to get my heart broken in any band. And same with earring tomatoes. You spend so much time on the perfect spacing. You trellis them, your program. You make sure you never get their leaves wet because they'll get diseased. You get a few crap tomatoes. I just don't get it. They're heart broken. Now, that being said, those few tomatoes can have a wonderful impact. It just tastes so delicious. You know, like that kiss on the cheek. I will never forget that kiss on the cheek before. I got dumped. It was just so wonderful. And seeing the earring tomato, like the first time I ate a stupus tomato from Czechoslovakia, I'll never forget that moment in my life when I ate that stupus tomato. It's so delicious. And it was big in our trials last year, by the way. But I have low expectations with heirlooms. You know, it's okay to grow them. You know, what to say? It's good to, it's better to have love and loss than never to have love at all. So, give it a try. Okay. One thing that won't break your heart is sweet Dakota Rose. This is the best watermelon for North Dakota right here. Sweet Dakota Rose. It is reliable. It's made in North Dakota. A lot of our gardeners will say this is the best watermelon they've ever eaten. Sweet Dakota Rose. Give it a try. You won't be disappointed. Last thing, I always got to put in some herbs in the garden. This is love herbs. This is lemon basil. They're like, when I'm working in the garden, I just like to have a place in the garden where I can walk over and just kind of just get refreshed. And with lemon basil, if you've never tried it, you've got to try it. It is so intense. You want to just take the leaves, stick it in your nose, and it's such a rush. And it is totally legal. It's wonderful. Give basil a try, especially lemon basil. So how about with that, Todd, are there any questions? Yes. Okay, let's go with it. Which cucumber variety? Okay, that's an easy one. Okay, the question is, what's a good mildew-resistant cucumber that can grow on a trellis? You know, like a tasty grain, sweeter yet, almost all the modern varieties resist mildew. It's just when you get to those heirlooms, we got issues. So stay away from the heirloom cubes. And again, I rep tasty grains a total winner, sweeter yet. You know, sweeter yet, there's yet cucumbers in 48 days. It is so early and productive. Just go with the modern variety. And on a trellis, everything on growing a trellis. That trellis doesn't make a difference. That's great. The nice thing about trellis is your cucumbers will develop perfectly straight. That's the nice thing about a trellis. Yes. In this case, I never ate them. Next question. Is unjewel more of a musk melon versus a watermelon? Unjewel is a Korean melon. It's more like, if I, if I had to make it a cantaloupe or a watermelon, it's more like a cantaloupe. And the reason why I would say that is because a cantaloupe, you always know when it's ripe. You just give it a gentle tug and it'll come off. A watermelon is pretty much a guessing game. You got to look at the tendril. It's more like a gas. So it's not a watermelon. It's more like a, it's more like a cantaloupe. Where do you get these sweet corn varieties from? I get sweet corn varieties from. I get them from the seeds handle as you see right here. Yeah. And then I'll tell you one thing that we always pride ourselves on using untreated seed. But that is an issue with corn. You know, corn, there's a reason why farmers all use treated corn seed because you get a much better stand in this year in their trials. We're often both treated and untreated corn seed. But yeah, as you can get this, almost every seed company will offer sweet corn seed. Are the melons you suggest to the bush type or more like a vine? Every, every melon I talk to, let's say they're a vine type. The question is, are these melons we talked about tonight? Are they bush types or vine types? Okay. I'll tell you something about my checkered past. I was in charge of the nation's biggest bush cantaloupe project when I was a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. And that's because we were pretty much the only one. And there's a reason for that. It just doesn't work. So forget bush type melons. Forget about it. They're all vine types. Are gourds edible? Gourds are edible, but they're just not delicious. And also especially like I lived in Asia for many years and didn't eat gourds. But you got to pick them when they're very young and mature. Are any of the vegetables from NDSU GMO modified? Okay. It's almost impossible. The question is about GMOs. For garden vegetables, it's almost impossible to find a GMO. Just because you know how much millions of dollars it takes to produce. It's easy to produce a GMO. You can do that just like that. The problem is how do you get it on the market? It's got to go through a year and a year of testing. A millions of dollars of testing. And no variety was worth it. So to me, it was made out of pepper. It's a common crop, not GMOs. You wouldn't get any normal peanut butter. It will be 100% GMO free. Let's get away from soybeans and you know, you know what that's like. Heirloom, today I don't have the super taste. I remember and desire other varieties. I should try high acid varieties. Should I apply chicken manure to the soil to make it more acid, to get a more acid flavor? Will the soil type influence flavor? I think that's highly questionable as far as a scientific basis for that. So you use chicken manure? Yeah, it's fine. Make sure it's rotted manure. I just think, you know, you just have to just try a whole scope of different varieties of tomatoes and find what works out for you. What plants are not safe for dogs and cats? Okay, I would say anything that's a chocolate. How would you know if it's a determinant versus an indeterminate? You read it on the label. Okay, but the real, okay, if it's really binding, it's indeterminate. It's on the label, though, and indeterminate keeps growing. Like a B-terminate provides terminate near a flower cluster. It's always on the label, say indeterminate, determinant or semi-determinate. Which of the cherry tomatoes do you recommend? Which of the cherry tomatoes most popular one is super sweet 100? It cracks a lot. That's right, sweet million was developed because it's the less likely to crack. But I can't really speak. I can only have a good professional research-based comment on that. I like there's other ones that altered, too, but sweet super sweet 100 is the most popular sweet million, less likely to crack. Thank you. What does you take on GMO seeds and is the corn in your seed in your trials non-GMO? Everything's non-GMO. I think it's, I don't, and I've got time to tell you about my professional opinion about GMOs. Are Neiman Pumpkin, Pumpkin's hybrids or can I save and plant the seeds? Neiman Pumpkins are hybrids. I don't recommend you saving the seeds. Are there questions here in Fargo? Would you come up and ask it? This court only reaches about three feet. You're Master Bell, you're talking about the man on delivery. How about Jade? Are they from here? Jade is another high-quality bean. We've tested that, actually we tested the Nuit in so-called improved strands. Jade last year against Bush Blue Lake 274 and it was kind of a draw. Jade has a higher quality bean, but it's slightly less vigorous of a plant. So for me, I would go Jade. It's a more typical bean, but the higher quality, more tender bean than Bush Blue Lake 274. And it's not as skinny as what they Max Bell would be. That's why she tried both of them. And how about moisture? If you don't have the moisture to Max Bell, that's worse than it. But about moisture, Jade, Jade mentioned before is not especially vigorous. It's kind of a wimpy plant, so my guess is the less drought tolerant. And if you're looking for a heat or drought tolerant bean, contender is well-respected for that. And again, also provider is almost foolproof. Southern beans, green beans, bush beans. Any other questions out there? Steve wants to know if you mentioned Garden and Saturday. Steve wants to mention Garden and Saturday. Steve, he's out there. No, we're not going to mention it. Steve, why don't you type in what you want us to tell about Garden and Saturday, and then we've got about 10 more minutes here, and we'll see exactly what you want to say about it. It's a great event up in Grand Forest. It's one of the mega events in the state. As far as he has a lot of seminars, there are lots of vendors there. And it's actually an alarm center, and I'll be moving to the alerts of the night's facility. And I think Steve's got extremely high quality presentations from horticulture experts across the region. It's a really great presentation. I planted grape seeds and they are growing. Will they produce grapes? Okay, now we're shifting gears here to fruits, right? Okay, grapes. Will grape seeds produce grapes? Yeah, sure, but they'll probably die. I don't think they're for other grapes. Well, they're not going to bring true to the variety. And so we've got issues as far as the hardiness and the quality of the variety itself. So I would recommend, at this person, I would recommend this guy, unless you're breeding grapes for fun and profit, in order like you want to be the next Elmer Swenson, came brought into your works, there's a 99% chance it won't work. But if you want to grow grapes, I would go pick a cutting of valiant and make it happen that way. Can you name a tomato variety that is high in acidity? No, I cannot name a variety high in acidity. I don't think I'm going to make the whole lot of deer fence, actually. Can you get on with somebody else here? I got a comment on that. Great. What kind of animals will eat in a vegetable garden? There's a lot of them and our favorite here in North Dakota are bunny rabbits, which sometimes are mistaken for baby kangaroos. Our jack rabbits are one of the biggest enemies of gardeners. You think you're a kid? You think jack rabbits are two and stuffy, but actually bunny rabbits are evil. We want to destroy them. It's a battle for the harvest. While you use the permanent solution, it's a lead-based product. Or, otherwise, you can put up a friend, at least 30 inches tall and a couple of inches in the ground, go after that way. What are your thoughts about wild grapes? Wild grapes. Well, what do you want? Well, okay, what do you mean? What is this? Blaster table or something? They thought about wild grapes. Okay, they can be great. They're very vigorous. If they're wild or hardy, they can be very useful and jelly to the hands. They posted Steve's website, the information that was during Saturday on there. So, can you read the URL to the, well, like, what is there? Everybody's got it. Everyone should have it. Okay, you can get Google's fees regarding their day. And then if you see everyone going to his mark, ours regarding X, both in April 11th and 12th. So, that's another huge idea. We have over 25 speeches. Also, I'll give you a heads up. If you kind of like this stuff, we appreciate a lot of our presentations on our website. There's a code of the media access called freetv.org. And there's about 20 presentations on garden there. What else can I tell you? I'll tell you one other thing I can tell you about the media sneak preview of the state across the state. I've carried out a new program called potato pirates program. And what we're doing is we're trying to encourage kids to roll potatoes. I think it's really fun to roll potatoes with kids because they're very treasured, right? And so there's so many surprises that come out of the ground. And so, you know, there's purple potatoes now, pink, red, gold. There's all kinds of different colors, all kinds of jewels out there. And so, on this program, and we'll do just like a variety trial program. There's two varieties of purple potatoes. And you'll get the two birds, the seeds for three, you plant them, and then in here, you tell us which one's best. And then you can have some of the move for purple french fries. Super cool. Yes, sir. I'll tell you, you're talking about the scab disease. Scab disease. That's what you got in there. That depends on the variety. The best way to control a scab disease, it has to do with watering. From the time that you start seeing the flowers until the next month, at least a month or six weeks, from flowering to the later development, you've got to keep the soil moisture a little bit, and make sure the soil stays moist. That's what your best way to control scab disease is. If there's a way that you've got to change soil, pH, and maybe more acid, or something that's way too hard for us in North Dakota, just make sure your potato vines don't get drought-stricken. Now that you've started seeing them from flowers, that's the best way to protect them. It's just superficial. You can just peel off the scabs and still eat them all. If you want to, right? There you go. Any other learning questions? How about can you grow vegetables in a tire? I saw that earlier. Yeah, go ahead. Whatever. Doesn't make that toxic. Stack up the tire, put the soil in. Go for it. Go for it. There was another one about what vegetables do well in a really low spot. I would say it's something so low that it would kill like this person's raspberries. It's really hard to find a vegetable that would really like every vegetable. Every vegetable has to have good drainage. That's critical, right? Otherwise, you don't like grow rice or something. Or some paddy rice. Any other questions? Any other questions off their last chance? Yes. Okay, the question has to do with when you're growing vegetables in a container, how do you, what's some tips to success with that to make it work? First of all, the more soil in the container, the better. It gets the biggest container you can deal with. And then putting up quality soil, like a potting soil mix, or then if you have top soil, add a little organic matter to it. This kind of gets to Todd's presentation container garden we had earlier. And then certain vegetables do better in containers than others and usually more plants do better. Like for tomatoes, we did our trials of bush tomatoes. That's your bush early girl. That's it especially well. There's dwarf eggplant, you know, they're handsome, growled and have been developed. And just gotta think about what's worth your time too. Like you really want to plant like cherries or peas or corn. It's just being worth it. You know, I would say, focus yourself on community garden. That's for me with containers, what I would do is I would focus a lot. Okay, you can put a couple tomato plants in that's cool. How about some herbs? I think that's nice to grow on containers like on a balcony. That's a nice way to go. You can like get some great, great taste experiences out of herbs. My potato seed has 12 inch sprouts already. Will they grow if I plant them? Should I trim them off? Should I trim off the sprouts? Yeah, that's a good question. I'm just trying to delay my response here. That's kind of a hard one because they're already started. They're already drawing energy out of their source of food, the tuber itself. So if you just pick them off, I don't think there's any eyes here that haven't developed yet. The best thing would do is I would transplant my, I put a particular ladies container that I planted right now and just have it sprouted, just poking up just slightly here in the soil surface. But you know what, it's not the wrong just tossing out those potatoes and starting all over. If you've got a kid joining a potato pirates project or you can join a variety trials, we're doing five different types of potatoes. It's kind of daisy. Usually you're really pushed. I just let it go. I get some new spots. Yes, sir. Okay, the question was if I'm going to plant potatoes and I got my seed potatoes, what idea do we have? Should I cut it? And the answer is it depends how big that spot is. It's a small spot and sometimes you can buy seed potatoes that are purposely small spots so you don't have to cut it. That is the best way because you're not making any wounds. Okay? But if you've got a larger, if you've got a larger tuber, then you should slice them up. You want to buy, I'll say about an inch and a half per slice. And of course you've got to look at the eyes to make sure you have a viable eye on each of them, each of the pieces. A lot of times you'll take a bigger, bigger quarter right. Then I would wait overnight and let the callus over before you stick it in the ground. Yes. Okay, the question is how about kale, broccoli, sprouts, hybrids? You know, a lot of these plants become the brassica family. They're actually the same species like cabbage is the exact same thing as brussel sprouts, which is exactly the same thing as broccoli, which is exactly the same species as cauliflower. And kale might be, I'm not sure what kale is, but they're just different. They select, they were made in selections, human selections for certain aspects of the crop. And so what kale, obviously what kale and brussels are hybrids work. If there is such a thing, kale will work and brussel sprouts will work. So a kale, brussel sprouts, hybrids should work. And you know, if it can work, I'm going to tell you about how many days. Kale is usually about 50 to 60 days. Brussel sprouts are 90 to 100 days. So both will work. But if you indicate that I wake up after the first hard frost before I start taking kale, because kale and brussel sprouts both have kind of sharp edges. So wake from the frost before you harvest. And kale, you can pick kale all the way near Christmas. You know, you can't kill kale pretty much, even if you want it. Yeah. That's right. That's right. He talks about, for leaves, these vegetables, you harvest them on a regular base. That's right. You keep taking the outer leaves, and it keeps generating new leaves at the crown of the plant. That's right. You can keep it going. That's the best way to do it, if you're out of, that's the best way to extend your harvest. Yeah, you're right on. Cabbage bloopers love kale. Cabbage bloopers love kale. Cabbage bloopers, like all members of the cabbage family. So, be vigilant. Be vigilant. So when you start seeing the white moss fly in, you've got to see, no, they're just not hanging out there for no reason. They're laying their eggs, and you should be ready to go after them. Whatever strategy you've got. Two strategies, I can think of. One is the sink in person strategy, like use BT products that fill us during genesis, like dipel or thoracide. They are perfectly safe, so you can spray them and even harvest the next day, but they will only kill the young bloopers in our case, or caterpillars. Okay, but they're perfectly safe. On the other hand, some people, especially when they start seeing holes in their leaves, they just, they look really, they're so mad about it. They just don't want to, you know what, if that BT takes a couple of days to work, then that doesn't work for some people. I call them the dirty, hairy, Clint Eastwood gardeners, who say, make my day and I want revenge. And so, what we do is we get a product like Carbryl or 7, and you can spray him, and if he makes it just right, you can watch those bloopers go through convulsion and die right before your eyes. It's a beautiful sight and a different range. But you've got to use that weapon with caution. That's very deadly, right? Right? More than one way to handle it. It's organic. They're safe. And some organic, some organic options are not especially safe too, just because it's organic doesn't mean it's safe. Read the label carefully, whatever product you use. Any other questions before we call a forum? Okay, another question here. Okay, what's the best way to deal with Colorado potato beetles? Okay, okay. First of all, the key is you've got to find them early on, right? And so what you do is you're going to be scouting for them, and you'll see red, orange eggs on the leaf underside. When you see those orange eggs, and you just can rub them, and you've got it under control. Like if you had two little kids, you can pave them by the side, and you can just, the first, the Carbryl will be a soft, jagged, nymph is a word. It's an immature stage, and then it becomes a hard shell beetle that's striped beetle later. You can pick them up, otherwise there are some chemical insecticides that can affect them, especially to get them when they're early. Carbryl has some mixed results with that. There's strains of BP that are effective against Colorado potato beetle, so look for that. There's strains of bacillosterone gems that can be used, but you've got to get them early, and they're still a soft body. Yeah, that's a hard one.