 Welcome everyone. My name is Julie Garden Robinson and I'm a food and nutrition specialist on campus at NDSU and this is the first of 11 Wednesday weekly webinars and we certainly hope that you join us on most or all of those. Each week we'll have a different sign-in so watch for an email every week. You won't use the same link that you received this week and invite your friends as well to join us. Anyone can be part of this anywhere in the world really. So Tom if you'll move on to the next slide. I just wanted to remind you of some upcoming webinars. On February 21st we'll hear about a snapshot of NDSU's high tonal research project with Kyla Splickle and February 28th we'll hear about GMOs separating fact from emotion and that's with Esther McGinnis. Next slide. I think you've discovered a lot of the controls that we have available so you can click around. Tom is going to put us all in mute but you will all have the option to talk if you want and to do that you just unmute yourself by clicking on the microphone button. There's also a chat box and so you know feel free to work around it. This is our first time trying this system Zoom with our Wednesday weekly webinar so we're going to be learning right along with you. Next slide and I have a couple more things to say before I introduce Tom and one is I encourage you please take the little survey that will be emailed to you at the address that you provided. It'll take you just two or three minutes and this whole project that we've been doing is made part by a grant through the North Dakota Department of Agriculture so please take that little survey let us know what topics you want to know about in the future and what you learned today and I really take that information seriously and in the next round that we do this next year or maybe next fall you might see those topics that you suggested and if any of your friends wanted to attend and we're not able to we will archive all of these Zoom webinars. With that I'm going to introduce Tom Kelb our first presenter and I thank him a lot for being our guinea pig because we haven't used Zoom before and he's been a real good sport about learning how to use it right along with me and today Tom is going to talk about great scenes and where to buy them. Thanks Julie and yeah it is thank you for inviting me to speak at this webinar series and you're right it's it's gonna be a learning experience for all of us with this Zoom. I'm gonna mute everybody now but if you if you have something that you'd want to share at any time just unmute yourself and go ahead we like to I like to have informal fun presentations and but I have to mute you because sometimes you know like the kids come in the room or the husband wants another sandwich or something and we don't all need to hear that. So there you go okay gotta tell you today what a great day it is here it is sunny in the 40s in Bismarck so and it's it's warm everywhere in North Dakota today haven't been able to say that for a long time and spring is definitely here so when you think about the first sign of spring what kind of images come to your mind just think about that first I think for a lot of people it's gonna be the sign of the first robin that they see then they know that spring is coming but for me the first sign of spring for me is when I go out to my mailbox and I get seed catalogs I love seed catalogs I've loved them ever since I was a little kid I didn't read comic books when I was a kid I read seed catalogs they were so colorful and bright and I was so excited to find out about all the all the new varieties that are coming out and I could always start start dreaming about what a great garden we're gonna have I love seed catalogs and so let's start talking about how you can get some seed catalogs and enjoy that same experience here's a handout that's gonna be if you don't have it already it's gonna be available to you on the field of for a website it's a two-page handout about recommended vegetable cultivars for North Dakota on the second page I have a list of seed sources and these are some of the most popular seed companies that offer free catalogs and so like you know one of these nights when you got nothing else to do you can just go to that back page of the handout and you can start typing and requesting for free seed catalogs and then your mailbox will be full of seed catalogs even some seed companies you never even heard about you're gonna get some seed catalogs and you can start dreaming along with me about all the great things that's gonna happen this summer it's gonna be a great summer I really optimistic this year now one thing is we let's talk about some seed company and their catalogs and I when I start talking about this I want to be sure that you know that excuse me that I'm not discriminating against any seed company and just because they talk about them doesn't mean I'm endorsing them and just because I don't mention them doesn't mean they're not great I just have a limited amount of time I just want to tell you a few of my favorites and if I could ask you to get one seed catalog if you don't have it already I would recommend that you get the seed catalog from Johnny's selected seeds from Maine and of course I always like getting my seed catalogs from northern seed companies because they're gonna offer varieties that do well in the north the reason why I like the Johnny's catalog the most is because not just because of the seeds and they have good quality seeds and great customer service but I just find it to be an outstanding gardening resource you'll see that for every every type of plan in this case we show carrots they have helpful information you know Johnny's wants you to be successful in your garden this summer so I'll talk about the type of soil that's best for this I'll tell you how to space out the seeds they'll give you some warnings about these are the common diseases that you have to look out for here's a common insect pests you have to look out for so I just I always keep this I always keep this in my car actually or I always keep it on my desk in the office because it's such a great resource full of quality information you know and they have good tools and here's some information about fungicides and insecticides and I value their information that they hit their strong and organic agriculture I'm not I'm not necessarily an organic I'm more of a conventional gardener but I appreciate the information and the recommendations that they have so I just think it's a great seed catalog really encourage and it's free well see one man okay what's another good one I think Jung seeds is a great seed company from the Midwest I value I have valued for decades the seeds and the plants they offer I used to live in Wisconsin and that's where they're headquartered I remember taking a my magical pilgrimage every year up there to Randolph Wisconsin and just be overwhelmed by all the plants and the quality seeds that they offer the varieties they offer have done well in our variety trials in North Dakota have a lot of respect for Jung and the Jung family I know some of you are commercial growers okay and if you're a commercial grower you buy seed in bulk and you may not know about this company but I invite you to get to know about Jordan seeds out of the Twin Cities they have quality seeds amazing selection and amazing prices Jordan seeds for great prices on bulk seeds another company that's targeted what primarily for commercial growers is Harris seed company out of New York they they have a outstanding vegetable and cut flower selection they're unsurpassed for their disease resistant pumpkins amazing selection of sweet corn and a lot of good varieties that do well here in North Dakota that's Harris seeds if you're not a bulk grower but you just you want a great selection of quality cultivars at an affordable price I would encourage you to get the pine tree catalog and I know I'm a bulk grower I had to grow a lot of stuff so I don't I haven't used this myself but a lot of gardeners have told me how much they value this company and most importantly because the prices are so affordable because you can you can get a seed packet for two bucks here at pine tree and they have quality varieties so that be that'd be one that's definitely worth requesting that catalog if you're a gardener more so than a commercial grower a lot of people in North Dakota they don't know about Fedco seeds again that's out east in the North North Eastern United States they have a great selection of untreated seeds especially and they have some organic and heirloom types that again this is a catalog that's worth requesting they also have a lot of potatoes if you're into potatoes their moose tubers are outstanding their moose tuber company okay with regards to heirlooms it's really hard to beat seed savers exchange I'm not a big fan about heirlooms I generally I think there's a reason why heirlooms have become heirlooms and that's because we've moved on and we've advanced nevertheless there are some wonderful stories and wonderful flavors in some heirloom vegetables you can you can sign up in the seed savers exchange and get access to literally thousands and thousands of varieties that have been grown for centuries in the United States just an amazing company out of Iowa and an enjoyable seed catalog and another heirloom seed catalog that I really like is Baker Creek heirloom seeds this is like a coffee table book it's got so many beautiful pictures of so many unusual vegetables and flowers things I've never seen before had to be a little bit careful it's not you know necessarily targeted for Northern growers but just a lot of great stories here and a lot of beautiful information some some that you may want to investigate okay so that's those are some of my let me just share an example of why I like heirlooms and one is like the arycra yellow beans again I'm not a big fan of heirlooms they're generally not that productive and they're not as reliable as modern varieties but they do have special flavors and here's an example of one from North Dakota the arycra yellow dried bean that we've tested in our variety trials and it's done quite well the arycra yellow bean has been grown by the the Native Americans in North in the central North Dakota for centuries and the variety was obtained by a famous seeds person in Bismarck about 1915 and made available but this is the same arycra yellow bean that was shared by the Native Americans with Lewis and Clark on their famous trek and then Lewis and Clark subsequently shared this exact same bean with Thomas Jefferson who enjoyed this in Monticello so just imagine you know you can grow the same bean that's been grown by North Dakotans for centuries as well as enjoyed by Lewis and Clark and Thomas Jefferson like often called America's first horticulturist so just an amazing experience that you can have with some heirloom vegetables okay okay those are my ideas just a quick run-through about some some of my favorite seed catwalks how about does anybody out there have any any seed catwalk that they would like that they think is especially great that other people should get to know about in our group here and you can chat you can you can territorial seeds thank you for that comment in the chat box you can you can type in the chat box or you can unmute yourself if you have something to say territorial seeds has many actually many of the same varieties that Johnny selected seeds has but I always order from territorial as well they have both untreated and treated seed anybody else out there have any seed catwalks that these that people should definitely request before the spring really arrives and you have to excuse me I'm fighting a cold here today okay well I'm gonna just move ahead then but thank you for that one suggestion you know the one drawback about seed catalogs is that when you read a seed catalog everything sounds good everything so how do you know what's really best for you and especially for us in North Dakota because you know if you really haven't noticed we have like a special weather here in North Dakota you know like a brutal frigid we got a very short season gent usually a cool summer and semi-air it's dry this one of the harshest places in America if not earth to live on and so how do you know what grows best here and that's why we started the North Dakota home garden variety trials in which I work with a group of over 200 families every year to evaluate promising vegetable herb and flower varieties and you can see our website there and you can Google it if you want to just do North Dakota garden variety trials you can find it or again it'll be on the handouts that will be posted on the field of fork website right now we are we're getting we're making our final preparations for 2018 and we're getting our seed catalog out by the end of this month if you would like to receive our spring 2018 catalog you are more than welcome we have again over 200 families participate every year last year we had 294 families across North Dakota even if we got a few Minnesotans in there and a few South Dakotans that's okay and but we love to get a bit as big a team as we can to get information to share information among ourselves as far as what's the best varieties for North Dakota because I think you know it literally makes sense that what's the best way to identify the best varieties for North Dakota for North Dakota gardeners is to grow test the varieties in North Dakota under the management of North Dakota gardeners and it works just to give you a brief overlook at the program like here's a program of the early nanties carrot carrot trial and every you get a participant we do about 50 different trials you can choose from all kinds of vegetables all kinds of flowers and herbs and if you want this ain't a trial like here's the carrot trial we'll give you two varieties to compare side-by-side and you'll grow 10-foot roll of each and give you an official 10-foot string because it's very high tech research here and we're giving you a label so you don't forget which one was which and then you take data on that and it's very we've over we've made it simpler and simpler every year and we got to the point where I think we got the system done perfectly in which we just asked which of the two variety germinated better which was healthier which was ready to harvest earlier which one was more productive which one tasted better and then we ask you which which of these do you prefer which of these two you prefer and then which of these two do you recommend you recommend both of them for other gardeners in North Dakota or do you recommend maybe they're both terrible so you say forget about it I don't want I don't want either one of them but we take we'll get over 30 gardeners every year we'll do this carrot trial and from that we'll publish results and actually we this year we have 140 page document of results in which this year we had over 1000 side-by-side comparisons of successful research 1000 over 1000 trials were successfully submitted by gardeners and we've put that data in the results we have a like a 10 page summary if 140 pages too much for you and then also from that we develop our list of recommended cultivars and so like the cultivars that we're gonna be talking about this afternoon aren't really necessarily the ones that that I recommend but not but they are the ones that the gardeners in North Dakota as a group has said work very well so and the program itself we didn't evaluation this program a couple of months ago and we had about on the 250 online participants we submitted we can online survey and we had about 67% of people complete the evaluation so we've got a very positive strong team that's a great that's a great response rate and all the gardeners recommended the program every one of them recommended this program for other gardeners it's really a fun and powerful program almost everybody was introduced to new varieties and by being introduced new varieties it led to higher yields and more vegetables in the diet even 91% of people said that in the future they're gonna grow their garden differently and in most cases that means they're gonna be more open to try new varieties so again this program is open to everybody it's open we like even children to get involved it's like a simple scientific project for kids so the more participation the stronger our results will be and we're gonna we're gonna break over 300 farmer growers this year when we talk about what are good varieties these are some of the qualities that I look for we want some that's early maturing because North Dakota has a short growing season if it doesn't make it in a hunt if it doesn't mature in a hundred days it might not make it in North Dakota especially in the northern part of the state when we grow varieties on the farm or in the garden we want them to be especially flavorful we want them to resist diseases so we get though so we don't have to be spraying toxic chemicals in our garden if we can avoid it we want the variety our garden to be productive and the variety has to be widely adapted again we have a very harsh climate here in North Dakota so we have to find the right varieties that can adapt to our situation so what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna just feature a few of the most the strongest performers and also some special new varieties this year to highlight and again this will also be in the handout that will be on the field of fork website if you haven't already had it let's start with beans this is always one of our popular trials and there's all kinds of beans out there green beans yellow beans and purple beans the standard green bean that's done well in our trials is bush blue lake 274 it's bush blue lake 274 it's reliable and dependable our gardeners like it but I have to say in general gardeners are not enthusiastic about their beans compared to other vegetables they trial here's a here's a variety that we're very excited about trying this year a new variety called Greenfield and if you see it with that logo on the top right it's from the Vermont bean seed company and over the years we have learned to respect the judgment of Vermont bean seed company in the beans that they award their variety of the year and we've been you we've been testing their varieties of the year for the last few years and they have excelled here in North Dakota like last year we tried a variety inspiration and and that that strongly I'll perform bush blue lake 274 this year their their variety of the year is Greenfield that's a new variety that they want us to test and it you can see that the long slender high quality beans we're pretty excited about testing Greenfield this year if I could just give you one vegetable that I would encourage you to try if you haven't before is try some fillet beans over the years you only have many gardeners repeat our trials year after year and every year we have more and more people trying fillet beans and few and fewer people trying the standard green beans the varieties Crockett and Serengeti these are amazing beans the beans are super productive they are of the highest quality slender smooth crisp long straight these when you when you read the results of these gardeners who test those beans they say wow I've never grown a bean this great before I'm gonna grow fillet beans in the future from now on I love these beans when you read those kind of comments you know you're on to something so again try the fillet beans and Crockett and Serengeti every year I seen more seed catalogs offer those varieties and we'll be we'll be testing them again this year as far as carrots go there's a look at nice orange carrots and the Nantes carrots that I've circled here that's the most common one for home gardeners we don't have we it's hard to grow the long ones that you see at grocery stores that's that's more for like a very sandy soil or a deep peat soil but most of our soils in North Dakota have a more of a clay content and so the Nantes type do very well and the varieties Goldfinger and Nelson do really good in our in our trials actually Nelson is becoming harder to come out the commercial seed company is stopping production so one of our challenges this year is to find an alternate to Nelson also if you look at that on the right side the Chantanae carrots these are ones that are especially good for processing like if we're gonna make carrot juice or these are especially flavorful and Hercules and New Corota are outstanding in North Dakota here's a look at some Nantes carrots just some standard carrots that we can grow in gardens in North Dakota and they have a question from Kimberly what would we recommend for a sandy soil the thing about a sandy soil you have options there if it's a deep sandy soil and you want a longer carrot you have the option of getting an importer type and maybe that maybe you could delve into maybe something like a candy snacks or a sugar snacks type for that but I really can't go wrong with that Goldfinger I have to say and we're all so excited about the very Napoli a sugar carrot this year that we think might replace Nelson in our recommendations carrots is one of our most popular trials there's all kinds of colors of carrots out there and we've tested purple white and yellow ones and and red ones and generally these more nutritious types they taste kind of bitter and so I really there are you can you can try I like exploring but I just warn you a little bit that just because they say they're more nutritious doesn't mean you're gonna want to eat them so I kind of think like maybe you're better off just getting a vegetable that's delicious and you're more likely to eat more of them so be a little bit worried about those those red carrots and purple carrots can be a little bitter if you buy carrot seed I really want to introduce you to getting pelleted seed and the finer seed companies will offer pelleted carrot seed it's so it's so frustrating with carrots when you so roll carrots and you're just kind of scattering the seed down the roll that it's almost impossible to get a perfectly uniform stand and it makes thinning out the carrot so frustrating so in our trials we always use if available pelleted carrot seed because you just you can just put them in carrot seed by carrot seed in perfect spacing and it makes life so easier so take advantage of pelleted seed if you can find it we do that for carrot and lettuce seeds in our trials I like to talk about corn here a little bit corn wow what a great revolution of corn that's been going on over the last few decades and I remember when I was a kid growing up in Minnesota where we'd have about 10-15 acres of sweet corn every year and I remember kicking that sweet corn at night preferably loading up the truck then driving down the Minneapolis early the next morning and I always remember that when I brought in that truck it's the market I knew that I had to sell every year on that truck that morning because the corn of the past the sweet corn of the past wouldn't be sweet the next day and so that's where the cows so we had some great bargains at towards the end of the hours around noon time I'll tell you that but nowadays there's there's all kinds of more sugary corn there's and there's different types super sweet and the sugary in hands and the synergistic there's super seed where there's all kinds of more sugary types that can be three times sweeter and hold on to the sweetness for several days the big drawback with super sweet corns is that the kernel was is so full of sugar and not starch that the seed itself the kernel itself when it when it dries down if there's almost nothing there it's a shrunken kernel and so that gives us poor germination or at least weak germination so you have to wait later in the year to sow the seed and and that slows down the harvest and we want to have that corn of the market fast there's been some great work done in recent years about finding corn varieties super sweet types that can germinate in cold soil and so when I look for us a sweet corn nowadays I look for something that germinates well in cold soil the other thing about sweet corn seed that we found in our trials is although in we prefer generally to go with untreated seed because we have so many kids and families in our trials but for corn we're more and more just offering treated fungicide treated seeds because it really makes a big difference and getting a good stand of corn so you know consider the use of fungicide treated seed for corn especially this is the variety that's that's generating a lot of excitement this year it's an all-america winner it's on a lot of covers of seed catalogs called American dream and it's supposed to be the the finest taste experience available for sweet corn so we got to test this one it looks especially promising and we just got to see if all that hype is true but this is a super sweet type that supposedly easy to grow and has unbelievable flavor to it American dream you might want to consider growing that this year or joining our trials for cucumbers I think we're at the point now where I really don't understand why anybody would have us a traditional straight-aid or slicing cucumber nowadays because the burbless types are so much better they're earlier they're more productive they're bitter free burbless they're smooth skin thin skin small seeded they're just perfect they got everything going for them and and a more disease resistant I really encourage you if you haven't tried a burbless cucumber that you try it and I did again this I see this with our trials is that we'll get 40 people tried burbless types and maybe 10 will try a traditional slicer because once you try a burbless you won't go back and a variety that I can strongly endorse over the last couple years has been summer dance just amazing quality and very productive about like 10 inch long cucumbers super quality with summer dance lettuce you know here's an old variety like butter crunch lettuce that always does well in our trials and the one thing about lettuce is lettuce likes it cool okay so when we look for good varieties of lettuce one of our priorities is to find varieties that can take the heat okay because that will extend or harvest but our crunch can take the heat and it's very reliable so this is widely available you can find it any garden center it's a solid lettuce lettuce likes it cool but melons like it hot and that doesn't and doesn't always cooperate here in North Dakota and I know like whenever I give out a melon trowel about a third of the times the variety will be a flop that the gardener will apart I didn't get one single right melon so but here's a here's a very reliable water melon for North Dakota called sweet Dakota Rose it was developed in North Dakota it's one of our own and it's thrives in North Dakota does very well and the quality is outstanding last year we compared sweet Dakota Rose with Sangria and Sangria is why we know it's one of the finest quality with a dark red flesh to it it's a little bit later than others so we just you know like our goal and these these programs is to find the finest quality for gardeners so this Sangria let's try it and we tried it and it and most of our gardeners preferred it over sweet Dakota Rose that's the first time we found any watermelon that that was that gardeners like better than sweet Dakota Rose so I just I want to encourage you that I want to give Sangria trying that Sangria is kind of a weird name for a watermelon but then I found out about one of its common uses and that is to make alcoholic drinks out of it and if you know if you haven't had watermelon juice I just think you have to try it it's really amazing it really cools you off some and if you want to have a special experience I guess you can throw some tequila or white wine in it put some fruits in there and enjoy the Sangria experience but you can try these watermelons let me just get the question here about I said a comment about about the burpless cucumbers not for fermenting pickles so if you're interested if we're talking about making pickles that's I there's a lot of people in our state who like to do that and we found a great variety that's called homemade pickles homemade pickles is the name of the variety and it wins the art we do a pickling cucumber trial every year and we test homemade pickles against a popular variety a promising variety and homemade pickles wins the contest every year so it has a high quality blunt shape and a crisp texture that's perfect for pickling so yeah don't use burpless cucumbers for pickling use that variety homemade pickles and you can't go wrong and I welcome any more comments that people have just throw them in the chat box and I'm happy to to chat about it with you okay we're gonna move on to peas now another popular crop and and you know I encourage gardeners it to share with us the their favorite varieties and I remember once when I was giving a talk a lady came up and she says you know have you ever tried Lincoln pea and I I hand I kind of thought it's kind of an old pea probably not that great but she says you're gonna try it yeah and so we did we did the next year and this has been like five years running now and every year Lincoln pea wins their side-by-side trials every year Lincoln is the best pea for gardeners in North Dakota it's just nothing else comes close to being Lincoln pea it's just high yielding extended harvest easy to shell and freeze as well so if you haven't tried Lincoln pea might want to give it a try it's a winner the only drawback about Lincoln pea is you have to shell it and I don't know how you feel about that but I like as a kid I never understood peas because I'd spend every 4th of July shelling peas we'd sit on the kitchen floor my brothers and sisters and I and we'd spend the whole day shelling peas the peas always seem ripen on the 4th of July get all these bushels of peas and by the time you show them you get like a bowl of peas and then all these shells that you feed to the cows just made no sense to me and also I always never couldn't see the fireworks that's why I like snap peas because you don't have to show them and you can enjoy the fireworks sugar and has always done very well in our variety trials in North Dakota and both Lincoln and sugar and do not have to be trellis which is a nice convenience thing to not have to trawl us your peas we tried sugar magnolia last year snap pea and it was the it was the highlight of spring gardeners were raving about it the beautiful pinkish purple flowers and the purple pods just so beautiful but then the problem was people started to eat them and then when they eat them to go out it tastes terrible these are like it's like eating wood so that's a nice thing about our variety trials is that we not only get the yield information but we also get the preferences of the taste preferences of gardeners and so we can't recommend sugar magnolia as a snap pea because it tastes terrible it may look beautiful but if you got to eat them forget it I gotta say Laura I love your comment in chat box about the only reason to grow peas is we can snack them snack on them in the garden and I just think that's right everybody I always I always have at least one roll of peas just so I can eat them with my kids in the garden right there in the garden that is that is a true joy of enjoying the sweetness of the peas in the garden I'm so with you on that one Lauren can't eat okay let's just keep moving I'm just gonna keep moving through a few more vegetables of our featured varieties one is about peppers and peppers can be a little bit hit or miss in North Dakota but this one is always a hit this is Carmen pepper it's a frying pepper an Italian bullhorn type with outstanding taste and very productive I've never seen a variety trial test in North Dakota where Carmen didn't come out on top it's outstanding pepper not the true bell it's not bell pepper though it's not for stuffing it's more for slicing and frying potatoes this is a staple in our gardens and a lot of people grow the red Norland or also the the Yukon gold or Yukon gem type today I just want to highlight of another variety here for you to explore and that's being purple Viking this was a very highly rated potato in our trials first of all because it's so beautiful look at that that marble purple skin just spectacular and they'll look that flesh snow white just perfect white great for baking great for mashed potatoes and I noticed that purple Viking the seeds always it's always one of the first varieties where the seed stores run out of online so if you I encourage you to try purple Viking it's a fun you know I love growing potatoes with kids because I just tell my it's like going out there we're gonna be like potato pirates let's go out and dig some buried treasure and find some jewels so here's some sapphires that we can dig or some amethyst gems that we can dig out of the garden or some rubies or gold and kids just love that and if kids grow stuff in a garden they're more likely to eat it and that's always a challenge try purple Viking you're gonna love it here's two of my kids by the way as far as there with the most reliable pumpkin for North Dakota it's called neon and the reason why it's so reliable is it ripens it doesn't it never turns orange it starts orange and then it just grows like an orange balloon so you see it orange all summer and you just harvest it when you want to you know it's it's it's it's it's ready in about two weeks for normal so it's always ready in September no matter what the frost you can have a Halloween pumpkin and so good Ruth has a question about purple Viking it's it was this scab that's another nice thing about purple Viking potato it has which scab is a number one prom for diseases in North Dakota for potatoes but so thank you for that question as far as the neon pumpkin goes here we go now we're in good shape okay as far as that neon pump goes it's it's it's it's always it's two or three weeks ready for any other pumpkin but it's a little bit small but it's so it's fun for little kids if you want a bigger pumpkin me I encourage you to grow big moose this is a big pumpkin it doesn't get it's not gigantic it's not gonna be like you know 300 pounds that you got to get the tractor to get get them get the pumpkin out but you don't the baby like like those people grow the giant pumpkins you have to like feed it all the time water all the time put a blanket on top of it to keep the skin moist and shaded you know big moose just plant the seeds and you come back and fall and you got 50 pound up to a hunt over a hundred pound pumpkins and reliable fast it's it's really easy easy easy one to grow big moose it's done very well in our trials and Diane okay let's go to the chat box here Diane wants to know about where to get sweet potato starts that's a good question there are some seed companies that offer the starting plants I know a grower in Bismarck who starts his own plants actually you can start your own plants just by if you can start your own sprouts and plant them that way but there are there are there are planting you can buy the slips from you just go online get sweet potato slips and the variety borough guard is generally guarded one of the best one of the earliest ones for North Dakota one of the drawbacks about sweet potatoes though is they really demand a hot growing season and so don't in most yet to really have some low expectations don't expect you know these bunch of gorgeous gorgeous roots but some people can make it can make it work but it can be a little bit difficult okay keep those questions coming I love them let's move on to beyond the pumpkins though spinach in when you saw spinach in spring the biggest drawback is we have to make sure that it doesn't go to seed it has to take the heat and our gardeners last year really like space we tried space last year it's our new it's our new top spinach for spring gardeners in our trials generally like the smooth types easy to grow and space can tolerate space can tolerate the heat so I encourage you to try space in the spring time okay just a few more to go here one is summer squash and my goodness you know think about summer squash people ask for a recommend recommendation of a summer squash a zucchini for example and in most cases almost any zucchini a plant is going to give you more than you want so I would encourage you to focus more on quality and that quantity and actually the yellow straight necks if you really want production yellow straight necks will outproduce zucchinis even but this variety zephyr which has a green ends on it this is a strong performer in our trials because of the quality of the summer squash they get good yields and a unique quality that you can't get at the farmers market or at the grocery store so I encourage you to try zephyr straight neck squash for winter squash you know you make a lot of people who love winter squash they'll tell you that the buttercup is the finest of all winter squashes as far as flavor and we can be proud of North Dakota that the buttercup squash started here in North Dakota in about 1930 we released it the top variety is Burgess it's early and will have amazing taste quality for you and it's from North Dakota it's really a winner just wind up with tomatoes here and then we'll get to some questions a lot of people want to know what's the best tomato this is really subjective again I have to say that I'm not a big fan of heirlooms and that includes heirloom tomatoes heirloom tomatoes are generally unreliable they're they're not as productive they're more difficult to grow they lack disease resistance in most cases so you have to space them all far apart in the garden so they get great air movement and you got to make sure you keep the leaves dry because otherwise they'll get diseased in most heirlooms not all but most you have to trellis them and you have to prune them it's a lot of work and at the end yields are low there are exceptions but also you know there's also great flavors and heirlooms but I would just say with heirlooms you know have some realistic expectations with heirlooms that said probably the two most reliable Fridays in North Dakota would be celebrity and mountain fresh plus fresh market types well about an eight ounce tomatoes here's some of the popular varieties early girl is is popular because it's early and there's bush early girl if you like even a tighter plant that's easier to keep take care of celebrity is very reliable big beef is great quality flavorful large tomato for them for the upper Midwest here's mountain fresh plots very popular as a fresh market type I'm not really crazy about any of the cherries that are popular they see a garden center but super sweet 100 is is pretty popular it does have cracking issues if we get rain though and Roma is is probably the easiest to grow of all tomatoes I have a question here about from Kathy you're in Minnesota zone 4b and and actually almost all of our the bottom two-thirds in North Dakota the southern two-thirds of North Dakota is on four so all these recommended seed varieties will transfer to your zone everything here's a picture of Roma tomato it's a determinate type and so that's one thing I look for it's not necessarily that well you got to pay attention to the fruit like do I want to process it I don't want to eat a fresh don't want to eat as a snack tomato but also look at the vine personally I like determined vines because they're so easy to take care of a determinate vine the vine will terminate when the flowers start appearing so it's a compact plant doesn't get unwieldy you don't have to prune it you don't have to trust it if you don't want to but it fits nicely in a cage or on a single steak and determined types focus their attention on fruit production so they're generally early and that's critical for North Dakota in determined types the vines grow keep growing forever and so they have to be pruned they have to be trust the fruits can be larger and because the vines keep growing there they're always fresh tissue production sugars for the fruit so it has some very flavorful fruit but I personally in determinants are more suited towards the warmer places of the United States and have a longer growing season here I just want to get some tomatoes before the frost comes so I like the determinate types want to thank the the people who took the photos for this presentation and then I want to wish you all happy spring does anybody have any questions and I or comments that they would like to share with the group this afternoon well this is Julie and I'd like to thank you for hosting our very first webinar of the spring and we're gonna call it spring today that's right and just a couple notes for everybody we just posted the the handouts and you also will be able to download as soon as we get it posted a certificate of attendance and I certainly encourage you to join us again next week and we're gonna keep doing these until April 25th is our last one please fill out the survey and have a good rest of your week thank you Julie thank you to everybody we have a few minutes here I see Annie has a question what's the garden trial information that's gonna be available our 2018 information that we expect to be out sometime next week we're getting that arranged but you can go to the website it's on the handout there or again you can Google garden variety trials and sign up to get the catwalk and I'll be happy to email to you or and also if you're at any of these gardening symposia across the state of North Dakota maybe I'll see you and I'll be happy to talk to you about the trials there so everyone's welcome to participate it's a it's a fun experience and you're also you're doing a service to gardeners across the state that's it's very valuable does anybody have any questions or comments have a question from Laura yes we will have some free seats available at the Dakota Garden Expo April 20 and 21 at the Bismarck event center yeah I think I think we're done so you can end the recording Tom