 So, let's wrap up tonight with a talk about selecting vegetable varieties. And my name's Tom Cobb, and I have the honor of giving this presentation. And I'm an extension horticulturist for North Dakota State University, and I was raised on a family farm in Minnesota where we grew and sold lots of vegetables and apples. And as part of my work with NDSU, I started and I coordinate the North Dakota Home Garden variety trials. And we have formed a team of over 1,000 gardeners in North Dakota and nearby states to identify the best varieties for vegetable gardeners in our state. Okay. Why do we talk about this topic? Because I think the first step to having a great crop is to have great seeds. Seeds are powerful. I've worked all over the world with farmers from America, Latin America, Asia, Africa, and I've seen the power of a great variety. I can select varieties that will give you much higher yields. I can get you varieties that will get to the crops of the market faster. I can get you much better food quality. I can get you varieties that can resist diseases naturally so you don't have to be spraying pesticides. And I can get you varieties that can taste better, varieties that resist the heat and drought so seeds are so powerful. And that's one reason why we started the North Dakota Home Garden variety trials. How do you find the best variety for a gardener in North Dakota? And I think the best way to do that is to test the varieties in the gardens of North Dakota and we've been so successful in working with hundreds of gardeners across our state. Well, you can just look at this map and see the scope. The amazing scope. Last year we had 437 gardeners contribute data to our program all throughout the state. And you know what? You're welcome to join too. Everybody's welcome to join in our trials. And from that, from all that data, we come up, this is one of the handouts you have and this we've tested over a thousand varieties. And these are the top performers in our state. So where do you get to see that? Muffin has on the back page, we have a list of seed sources. And you can see we test varieties that are widely available. Okay. And you can find these varieties by going to Google and you'll find seed companies that sell them. And if you want to, there's nothing better than getting seed catalogs in the mail in the wintertime. I love seed catalogs. When I was a kid, I did not read comic books. I read seed catalogs and I when I went to bed and I would just dream of having a great garden in the summertime. So you can after this presentation or maybe tomorrow you can go online and you can get all these free seed catalogs and get the joy of finding them in your mailbox. Okay, let me show you briefly how the program works. So we have a catalog that we have online and our online catalogs coming out within a week. We will have over 40 different types of vegetables and cut flowers that you can grow. So like, you know, I don't make you grow spinach if you don't like spinach. You get to choose what you want to grow. So here is a trial from last year. We had a red chrisped lettuce trial. And we give you two packets, two varieties to grow side by side in your garden. Usually one of them is a variety that we're confident about. And in this case, we know magenta is a great variety. It's done very well for years. But there was a new variety that came out called love lock. And so we wanted, is love lock any good? So we grew them side by side and we had 35 families do this particular trial. And they actually, they both did very well. They both had over 80% recommendation rate gardeners really like the color and the heaviness of those magenta heads. And they like the earlyness of love lock. So magenta is going to stay on our recommendation list. And love lock, we're going to test it again this year against another variety. And if it does well again this year, we'll add it to the list. When you get your seeds, you get a very simple form to fill out. It's just, it's just so simple. You don't have to take complicated data. And actually we have a lot of children work on the project as a nice science project for the summertime. So as a close up, we want you to, I'll get my laser pointer here going. So which variety germinated better? All you have to do is check off which one, which one was healthier, which produced the first yield, which resisted bolting or going to seed better, which was higher yielding, which lettuce looked more attractive and which one tasted better. And then we ask you, give them a rating from one to 10. How do you rate it? And then the preference, which one do you prefer? And then finally, which one do you recommend to fellow gardeners in North Dakota? Maybe it's just one of them. Maybe it's both. Maybe they're both losers. But that's the information we need so simple and so powerful. So what makes a great variety? I think great varieties have to mature early in North Dakota, about 100 days or less. Great varieties have to taste great. They should resist diseases naturally. They should be productive and they should grow well in North Dakota. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to quickly go over some of the best varieties for tomato, the most popular crop, and then also some of the major vegetables. So tomatoes, there's all kinds of tomatoes out there. There's green ones, red ones, yellow ones, purple ones. There's cherry tomatoes. There's fresh market tomatoes. There's canning tomatoes. There's lots of tomatoes out there. These are the most popular varieties in our state. Early girl because it's especially early. Celebrity is a very reliable performer. Big beef is a popular beef steak. And among our commercial growers across the Midwest, the Mountain Fresh Plus is a really nice to me. It's a nice eight ounce fruit that doesn't have any cracks in it. So that's a really outstanding variety too. Let me share with you some general trends that we're seeing in the industry now. The breeders are doing a tremendous job now incorporating genes of resistance into the variety. So like there was big beef, now there's big beef plus. And through natural genetics, there's no, we don't work on any GMOs. I'm not against GMOs, but we don't do any GMO testing. But we have varieties that now have more resistance to diseases and also better fruit quality. So there's big beef plus. There was celebrity. Now you can look for celebrity plus. So look for that plus. Another thing that I really look for in tomatoes are the mountain varieties. The mountain varieties. This is from a breeding program in North Carolina where they have cool summers just like we have. And this variety, mountain merit came out just a year or two ago and it did, it's very well in our trials. And you notice in the top right corner, you see that AAS symbol. That means it's an All America Selections winner. Okay. So what happens is before a new variety gets released, the year before it's tested by the All America Selections team. And if they find something especially noteworthy about a variety, it can win the AAS symbol. So this is a good thing. And so for mountain merit, it's a great slicer, but it got the word because of its extra disease resistance that it holds. The top rated tomatoes, I don't know if you've ever tried a golden cherry tomato, but they are absolutely delicious. They're just so fruity, so intense and sweet. I remember one of our growers, the parents, she said she caught her kids sneaking into the garden to eat the tomatoes. That's how delicious. These kids are sneaking into the vegetable patch to eat. So that's pretty remarkable. As far as paced tomatoes, there's a new variety that came out last year called Granadero. That's super high ratings. It's a Roma type. It's a Roma type. And it's a little bit bigger, but it's very productive. And another great thing about Granadero is it resisted blossom and rot. It doesn't get that rot on the bottom of the fruit that the Roma tomatoes get. So look for Granadero or grow your own seeds at Granadero. And many of you have received seeds of Granadero from me. And also let me just say, if any of these varieties really appeals to you, you've got my email and I likely have some seeds that I'd be happy to share with you, or then also check out our seed catalog that's coming out this week and please join our trials. What about heirloom tomatoes? In general, I'm not a big fan of heirloom tomatoes because they're less productive. I mean, there's a reason why heirlooms become heirlooms, right? We've made progress. So they're less productive. They're more susceptible to diseases. They have thin skin. They crack easily. So why would anybody ever grow one? Well, a lot of heirlooms have some special taste experiences. So they may be harder to grow and not as productive, but they can still give you a good taste experience. But I would say be cautious when growing heirlooms. OK, this is not a cherry tomato. Actually, if you look at the leaves, this is asparagus. OK, asparagus. The thing about asparagus is I know this is a female asparagus. There's females and their male plants. OK, this is a female. Now, this may be the only situation in nature where this is true, but men are superior when it comes to asparagus. OK, men are superior because who grows asparagus for berries? Nobody. We grow asparagus for the spears. And so the women, they waste their energy on the berries and then the berries drop down into the bed and then we get new plants come up and it gets all congested. We want as many men asparagus plants as possible. And for years, we like the Jersey boys, Jersey Giant, Jersey Supreme, Jersey Knight. These are all male varieties or almost all male varieties and are very productive, but they're becoming a little bit harder to find. And we found us the best one now is Millennium. Millennium is great for us in the north. It's very hardy throughout North Dakota and it's a longer lasting bed. It's very productive. You can have a solid bed of asparagus for 15 years. And another nice thing about Millennium is it pops out of the ground a little bit later in the spring. So you're less likely to get frost damage when you grow Millennium. So look for Millennium to start your asparagus patch. And it's also it's got a few more boys than the Jersey boys to that's a good point. We do all kinds of beans and the number one bean in North Dakota and in throughout America are the Blue Lake beans. And in particular, Blue Lake 274. And this does this does very well in our trials and it's at every garden center. OK, but the highest rated beans that we have are the Jade types. These are a little bit longer. They're more slender and they're crisper and darker green. So it's a little bit better, crisper quality to them and home run and red tail are very comparable to Jade. So you might want to give them a try. How about sweet corn? Wow, what I just amazing in my life how sweet corn is changed. When I was a teenager in Minnesota, I remember every night and summer I'd go out to the field and I'd pick. A hundred dozen of sweet corn and then I'd drive them down to the Minneapolis farmers market the next day. And I knew when I went down to the Minneapolis farmers market, I knew I had to sell out because that corn be started to the next day. But I just love picking sweet corn. It was so easy and back then it was like a dollar a dozen. So I was like picking dimes in the field. Man, I was I was just making a killing, I thought. But the thing that's changed with sweet corn nowadays is it's much sweeter. It's three times sweeter now and it holds its sweetness longer. But the problem with the super sweet is it's so sweet and it has no starch in it, not much. And so the seed kernels don't have much starch in it, not much food, not much energy. So when you plant a super sweet corn, it can struggle to germinate. And it was amazing when we started our trials about 15 years ago, how many failed trials we had of super sweet varieties. So so we started recommending using seed treatments and we still do that for corn. But in the last 10 years, they've made remarkable progress in finding super sweets and other types of sweet corns that can germinate well in cool soil. And here's three good types. American Dream, the Extra Tender Lines and Troubadour. And for early corn, it can't beat sweetness. It's easy to grow and very sweet. When we started our trials, Straight 8 was popular, but we found varieties that are much earlier, much more productive and resist diseases much better. And that includes General Lee, Raider and Bristol. But our most popular cucumber trials are the burpless varieties. Once people try burpless, they don't go back to the standard types. Burpless types have no bitterness. They're very smooth. They're very early for a productive, small seed. And some of them don't even need bees for pollination. These are tremendous productive varieties. And these three in particular, Summer Dance, Nokia and Sashimi. And many of you out in the county offices will have a chance to try Summer Dance. And we're testing it again this year. Our highest rated cucumbers are the snack cucumbers, Green Light. These grow about four inches and you harvest them young. They're so flavorful, so crisp. They're just great for snacking. And my goodness, they're so early. You're getting a bumper crop after 60 days. So I really recommend giving Green Light snack cucumbers a try. Green Light and burpless types do not pickle well. So get a pickling cucumber. And the best one in our trials is homemade pickles. It's super productive, beautiful, crisp cucumbers. Homemade pickles is a winner. OK, let's shift gears to lettuce. When you buy lettuce, look for lettuce that can take the summer heat of North Dakota, OK? Butter crunch has been around forever. And it's at every garden center and it does well in our state. But the highest rated ones are the Batavia or the Summer Crisp or called Crisped types. These can produce lettuce all summer long. Crisp lettuce all summer long. And Muir Nevada are two examples. Fusion, a lot of you are receiving seeds of fusion. Fusion is a crisp type that's a leaf lettuce crossed to a romaine. So it's especially crisp and delicious. And if you like a colorful lettuce, we talked about the beauty of magenta crisp lettuce. So try those. How about melons? Man, melons are hard to grow in North Dakota because our growing season is so short, we have a lot of failures in our trials. So I recommend you start the seeds indoors and then try to use plastic mulching, like clear or black plastic mulching. Athena is the standard in the Midwest and it does well in our state. Aphrodite is earlier and has a bigger melon. And especially for those of you up North, I highly recommend goddess. It is an amazing quality, the best quality for an early ripening cantaloupe. And if you like something from North Dakota, there's a seed company, a really noteworthy, remarkable seed company called Prairie Road Organic. And they develop varieties from North Dakota. Their variety called Dakota Sisters does very well in our state. As does their watermelon variety, Sweet Dakota Rose. This is the best watermelon to grow in North Dakota. It was bred in North Dakota. You have a nice big 12, 15 pound melon that is very flavorful. So now it does have seeds, but seedless melons are a trick to grow. And they're a little bit difficult, but I'll tell you, no seedless melon tastes as good as Sweet Dakota Rose. Our gardeners love it. How about peas, shelling peas? I remember I gave a talk once and I said, this is the best pea variety. And they said, Tom, have you ever tried Lincoln? And I said, no. But we included it in our trials that year, the next year. And every year we have Lincoln in the trials, it wins the trial. It is easy to grow. It doesn't get too tall. You don't have to trellis it. It's early. It's very productive. It freezes well and it shells easily. It's a real winner and shelling is important. And this reminds you of, again, I might show that I hated peas as a kid because peas always ripen on the 4th of July, always. And so I spent every 4th of July morning picking bushels of peas and then I spent every afternoon shelling peas. Shelling makes no sense. You buy a big, I'm sorry, you pick a big bushel of peas and then by the time you shelled them, you just got a little cup of peas left and all those shells that go to the cows. So the cows were happy, but I missed the 4th of July fireworks half the time. I hated peas as a kid. Thank goodness I was the only one who hated shelling peas. They invented snap peas. Snap peas and the best variety by far is sugar and it is early, easy to grow, so juicy and crunchy, so delicious and sweet. And the nice thing about them is although they will ripen on the 4th of July, but you don't have to shell them and the cows aren't happy about this, but I'm happy and I can go see the fireworks every year. Sugar and is a winner. The highest rated potato in our trial is purple Viking. Look at how beautiful this potato is and it has this rose purple marbled skin and pure white flesh. Purple Viking resists drought and resists scab disease. So this really does well in North Dakota. It's kind of, you won't see it at the garden center. You've got to order it online, but the word's getting out about purple Viking. I see every year how it gets sold out early online. So you might want to give this one a try. Pumpkins. Okay, the easiest to grow pumpkin in North Dakota is this one called neon, especially up in the North. And so these are actually, these are two of my children and I wanted them to have a positive garden experience. So I gave them the easiest to grow pumpkin there is and that's neon because it doesn't turn orange in the fall like a normal pumpkin. It turns orange in the summer. So we have these big orange balloons in the summer that just keep getting bigger. So it's a foolproof crop and so early, it's weeks earlier than any other pumpkin and it's beautiful. Now, okay, this one is not my kid, but I, kids also like big pumpkins, but forget about those ginormous ones. So it's 500 pound ugly lopsided beige ones. That's too much work. That's like a pet, you know, you got to feed it every day, water it every day. It takes up the whole garden. Forget about it. I just want to get a big pumpkin that I plant the seeds and I come back and fall and I have a beautiful orange fruit and that's big mousse and a nice 40 pound pumpkin, easy to grow. And same with early, giant and large march. You can't go wrong with these ones. The only spinach to grow in the springtime is space. Because space takes the heat better than every other spinach. So, and also it's got smooth leaves so they're easy to clean. This is the only one that grow in springtime. Okay, let's wrap it up with a talk about squash. I like reading about the history of North Dakota and about, you know, 100 years ago, we were one of the poorest states in the nation. You know, the commodity prices were low. The drought was going on. People were leaving the state. And so the North Dakota Ag College, you know, there was hunger in North Dakota. They were trying to find something that would grow well in North Dakota. And what they discovered is, my goodness, this summer squash grows great in North Dakota. So they were promoting patty pan squash. But I don't know if you guys have ever eaten this white heirloom patty pan, but it tastes terrible. And that reminds you, we did a test on this one year. And I remember there was a minister in Logan County who liked to grow vegetables for the poor. But I remember he told me that this fruit tasted so bad that he thought it would be a sin to give it to the poor and make them eat it. So he just drove it down to the garbage dump every year. But we've got better varieties now. This is sunburst. It's much more flavorful, picket young, and it's beautiful. And of course, for summer squash, you got zucchini, right? And, you know, people, zucchini is so productive, we should admire it. But we just ridicule it, you know, try to give it away, you know, no respect for zucchini. But let me tell you, if you're a grower or if you like zucchini, you need to find varieties that can resist the mildew disease. So we keep producing all the way til frost. And these varieties, Green Machine and Dunja, are amazing producers. They're the best. Last one is winter squash. And I highlight this one just because it's buttercup squash. This is a squash that North Dakota introduced to the world in 1930. This is our squash that the whole world enjoys today. It's admired for its outstanding quality. And some of the best varieties, Burgess, or if we need a short vine, Bon Bon, or again, a North Dakota variety called Uncle David's Dakota Dessert. It makes, it tastes delicious and makes a great pumpkin pie. Actually, you know, most pumpkin, like Libby's pumpkin pie filling, has no pumpkin in it. It's butternut squash. So if you want a good pumpkin pie, you might want to consider a butternut or a buttercup squash. So with that, I want to thank the credit to photographers and also welcome you to, if you want to participate in our trials, everybody's welcome. Just go to our website and request to get the catalog and you'll get it soon. So I am going to, I am going to stop sharing there and take some questions. And I'm going to ask them myself. The question is, are the varieties I suggest in organic seed format? You know what? I'm surprised, but most of our growers are organic growers. Most of the gardeners in our trials, and we work with hundreds of them, they're organic. And some, we do offer some trials that have organic seed. I don't personally, I don't see any advantage to using organic seed, but we do offer some organic trials. The next question is, can you use old seeds one to five years if they've been stored in a cool, dark closet? Okay, the answer to that is most vegetable seeds will store well for at least three years, like lettuce and sweet corn and parsnips. You should get new seed every year if you can, but most varieties will start for three to five years and they be stored under cool, dry conditions. That's best. Does the University of Minnesota have a trials guard program? I do not believe that they don't have a program for gardeners, but that's because North Dakota is better than Minnesota. So what do you expect? Just kidding, can gardeners in Minnesota participate in the trial program? Yes, we do allow Minnesotans, nobody's perfect. So we do allow Minnesotans and people from Montana and Canada and but we do get requests from like California and New York and Florida and we say, sorry, buddy, because I don't care the way, let's say summer dance, cucumber grows in New York. That has nothing to do with North Dakota, but we do allow people in the neighboring states to participate with us. It's all the bigger the better, let's get a big team. Work, next question, where can we get the recommended tomatoes for greenhouse, oh, in greenhouses, you don't like starting your own from seed? Well, again, most of the varieties that we test are widely available, but I would say a lot of the varieties that we test for tomatoes are not available in local greenhouses. So, you know, there's, I'm just sorry about that. Nothing we can do about that. You got it growing, you can grow your own tomatoes. It's not that hard. I've got tomato seed, if you're interested. That's great, but like a lot of those varieties you can find. Like I mentioned that sun gold or sun sugar, I can find that in about one third of the greenhouses. And we talked about celebrity, that's everybody's got celebrity and early girl and mountain merit. I found that at local greenhouses in Bismarck too. You just gotta know what you're looking for. Okay, please recommend a determinate cherry tomato, a determinate, that's divine. It's a short, compact vine. That's easy to grow. Oh my goodness, what's a cherry? There aren't any, they're, I can't, offhand, I cannot tell you a determinate cherry tomato. Let me look at my list here. I cannot, I cannot, they're almost all of them are indeterminate. We've been, there's lots of good determinate tomatoes, tomatoes, but not cherry tomatoes. Gardener's delight is one I've grown in the past, but that was years ago. Just, yeah, I'm sorry about that, that we're still looking for that. Do I have any tips on how to get a better harvest with sweet corn in a smaller garden? How do you get a better harvest with sweet corn in a smaller garden? Sorry, man, I got no, sweet corn doesn't work. I mean, sweet corn and small gardens are not a good combination. And like, I can't say plant them closer together, sweet corn's gotta be about nine inches apart. So, and that's just it. So my recommendation there is get a rental garden. There you go. How did trials and previous year go for the Armenian, Armenian cucumbers? Yes, you don't see it on the list of recommended cucumbers this year. You know, I run out of space on my sheets, so sometimes I just gotta pick the best ones. Armenian cucumbers are interesting to grow. There's light green and dark green striped types. Most people had better luck growing the light green Armenian cucumber, which is actually a type of melon. So it's a fun one to grow. And it's just like the dark green ones look like snakes in the garden. That's kind of fun to see them crawling around. And most lettuces be grown in water. Yes, that's it. But I don't believe in growing crops in water. I think that's kind of, it's kind of crazy because we have soil in North Dakota. We have lots of soil. We have lots of land. I think hydroponics is fun, but I'm not into that. Cause I have soil. That's the way it's intended to grow. Where can we find seeds of the varieties of the trials? It's the next question. Look at that handout under the seed sources. Sorry, I'm a little blurry. But look under the seed sources. You can find these varieties there. Again, if one of these varieties just really turns young please just send me an email and I may have some seed I can share with you. How do you get a good sweet melon is the next question. Get a good quality variety like goddess or that Cleopatra. Or if we're extra sweet maybe try a Galea with green flesh. That's kind of fun. Sweetness needs sunlight and heat. So again, use mulching and then wait to harvest it until the melon is fully ripe. And for cantaloupe it's so easy. A cantaloupe melon will slip off the vine naturally which is a slight tug. So if you tug it and it does wanna come off leave it there if it's a normal cantaloupe. Wait till it fully ripens and you just tug it off. Why is seedless watermelon difficult to grow as the next thing? Why is seedless? First of all, it's costly. My gosh, the seeds are very expensive. One seed's over 50 cents. So that's amazing. Then the other thing that really thing hard about it is you can't just plant the seeds in the garden. It won't germinate in the garden. A seedless watermelon seed has to have at least 80 degrees in the soil to germinate. So you gotta start them indoors under very warm conditions. And then with a seedless watermelon you have to plant a pollenizer, another variety that produces pollen to make it grow. So it's not impossible to grow but especially with seed starting it's difficult to grow and costly. Okay, is purple viking the same as viking? Yes. Can purple viking potato be grown in a pot? Yes. As long as the pot's big enough, okay? And that's the key for vegetables is the bigger the pot the better because pots limit the root system. So we wanna have as big of a root system as possible. I would have to question, is purple viking the best thing to grow in a pot? Because my gosh, it's just a potato and potatoes are not that expensive but if you wanna challenge you can grow it in a pot. The question, have I grown shallots? I have not grown shallots and I have not done trials. Do we do potato trials? We have, is the next question. I have done a limited number of potato trials. I'm trying to get funding to do potato trials next year and I hope to make that happen and I hope you join those trials. Ken, okay, next one. Again, the local greenhouses may not may not grow the varieties that we recommend. They have, and there's lots of reasons for that. You know, they're limited in what they can grow and some of the seeds that we, the best seeds cost a little bit more money and maybe the average customer doesn't appreciate the best quality variety like you do, you know? You're the best, the best, that's why you're here tonight. So here's a question about black seeded Simpson lettuce. How does that compare to the new varieties you're testing? Black seeded Simpson is an old leaf lettuce type and it's okay but it's not as heat tolerant as those summer crisp or Batavia types but black seeded Simpson is not a bad heirloom. It's not as heat tolerant though, that's the problem. It's very delicious but it doesn't tolerate the heat. It goes to seed too quickly. There's a question about broccolini. I've never tested broccolini. Do I, next question, do I ever take recommendations for varieties to try? Yes, you know, I'm here to learn just like you are and that's how I told you that Lincoln P. I never would have tried Lincoln P because it was an heirloom but someone told me and so I tried it and right now we're doing trials this year because gardeners tell me. So we're all a team together. So if anybody has a variety that you think is the absolute cat's meow, please let me know. Okay, we're gonna talk about varieties here. Okay, when I harvest a buttercup squash, I'll get into it a little bit. Buttercup and butternut squash should be stored under cool conditions and they should get off the ground on pallets, that would help. And you gotta let them store for about two months. Buttercup and butternut squashes should store for at least a couple months before you eat them. Okay, what do you do with the female asparagus plant? Well, you just accept it for what they are. They're not perfect, they're not the best but they still produce spears so they're okay. Next question, are heirloom tomatoes more prone to cat-facing or that's a distortion of the fruit? Yes, heirloom tomatoes have a very thin skin and they get deformed very easily the fruits do for tomatoes. Okay, the question about like, let's saving seed and how far apart should different squashes go? Okay, this is the problem with seed saving because a commercial planting of a variety, let's say that Burgess squash, which is open pollinated. Some squashes will pollinate with other squashes, will pollinate with pumpkins. Okay, now you can grow them next to each other but if they pollinate one another, the seed will have like a father who's a pumpkin but the mother's a squash and the seed when you plant it will be weird, okay? So you can grow a pumpkin next to a squash and there'll be no effect but the seed inside the pumpkin squash is affected and they're generally spaced about 300 feet apart in the seed industry. So that's why I am not keen about home gardeners seed saving unless they really know what they're doing. Next question for starting tomatoes, our tomato seeds and our varieties, when's the best date to start them? Tomorrow is the best day to start them, about six weeks before our last spring frost. Thoughts about growing cauliflower and broccoli varieties. Cauliflower varieties are very tricky, they're very sensitive to extreme weather conditions. I think amazing historically is one of the easiest to grow cauliflower's. Snow crown isn't as a solid choice, that's an oldie but goodie. For broccoli, we recommend green magic and gypsy, we tried them both last year and they did well. Okay, I know we got a lot of smart gardeners here and they gave me a recommendation. Tiny Tim is a good determinant cherry tomato. Okay, next question, can you grow okra in North Dakota? Yes, you can definitely grow okra but okra demands heat. So put it in the sunniest place in your garden and this will really benefit from some plastic molds. And as far as what variety, the best variety is Clemson spineless 80. That's the best one. And there's other varieties to jambalaya, it's a dwarf type that's a little bit earlier. And if you like red ones, candle fire. Candle, it looks like the okra pods look like candle flames. So you can definitely look at it. But to eat, I think Clemson spineless 80 has done remarkably well in our trials. Okay, a question about, okay, we got lots of questions that have nothing to do with the varieties here. Okay, I'll get a few of them. How do you prevent tomatoes that you start in dories from getting leggy? When a seedling is getting leggy, that means it's searching for light. So it needs more light, the more the better. So here's my seedling. I'm gonna drop the lights as low as possible all the way until my hand, it's uncomfortable, or I put my hand over the seedling. And I drop the lights, and when my hand gets uncomfortably warm from the light, then that's when I know I gotta raise the light a little bit. But I want as much light as possible. And LED lights and fluorescent lights will do well. This person gets corn smut. That's just like bad luck. Some varieties, especially some of those older varieties, are more sensitive to corn smut. The question about, they grew sweet Dakota rose, but there was an early frost. And they weren't quite ready to eat. How cold can a watermelon take? 32 degrees, it's very sensitive to frost. What else? How do you get rid of scab potatoes? The way you get rid of scab potatoes is you choose varieties that resist scab. That's the most important thing. And the varieties that we recommend resist scab disease for the most part. Like, don't grow those red Detroit Pontiacs. They get scab. Instead, grow dark red Norlans. That's very important. And also for scab, as far as the conditions, avoid fresh manure in your patch. And also, once you see the flowers of a potato plant, you gotta keep moisture in the soil for the next two months to reduce scab. Yeah, Minnesota has a garden variety program conducted by master gardeners, it says. So, and they have a small program for some farmers too, but I don't, I appreciate master gardeners, but our team of gardeners don't have to go through a class to learn how to tell me what's a great variety. So we let everybody participate. And also the difference in the master gardener class the thing in program in Minnesota is they want you to test like six varieties of something. So like, if you do a wax bean trial, you gotta grow like five or six varieties of wax beans in your garden. So who wants six rows of wax beans? Not for us, that's why you do two varieties. Can pollination be an issue with sweet corn and small gardens? Yes. And so that's why when you plant corn, you should plant it in blocks, not just in a narrow row. We want that pollen swirling around. You can hand pollinate sweet corn, but you better go online for that. It's a little bit complicated, but the key is plant your corn in blocks. Should you plant earlier in the ground this year because of our early spring? Okay, that you should know about the soil temperature. And if it's an oil spring, if you plant early in early spring, you may, I can't tell you when we're gonna get a frost and the frost sensitivity can be an issue. So make sure the soil temperature is warm enough. And let's say for potatoes, people think, okay, I should plant potatoes. It's a good Friday. No, you gotta wait till the soil temperature is about 55 to 60 degrees and that's like May 1st. So does the honeydew melons grow in North Dakota? Yes, you gotta find the earliest variety you can. Early dew is an early variety and start the seed indoors. Can you grow peanuts in North Dakota? Yes, you can, but it's difficult. And usually the peanuts at the end, they get these little tiny peanuts. It's just like the Spanish peanuts and there's Virginia peanuts in grow, but you're not gonna be happy with the results. Yeah, so again, as far as to find out which companies offer a particular variety, there's a good point there. Just go to Google and do a search. Lots of seed companies will pop up, including purple viking potato. What's the favorite and tastiest winter squash to grow? That's very subjective. I would say buttercup and kabocha, kabocha squash, K-A-B-O-C-H-A, K-A-B-O-C-H-A, kabocha squash is famous for its flavor, same with the buttercup and butternut. How do you, okay, they ask about celery. I haven't done trials of celery, but there's a variety from Utah that supposedly does well. Another question, what's my favorite peppers? The easiest to grow bell peppers are the ace types, new ace and ace. My favorite peppers are the bullhorn peppers like Carmen or Escamillo. There's a bullhorn, it's in the shape of a bullhorn, so productive. In fact, it's so productive you have to stake each plant, otherwise the plant's gonna collapse from the weight of the fruit, like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree that has an ornament on it. So the Italian bullhorn like Carmen is great. And there's another question about smut. Can smut stay in the soil and transfer? Yes, and so that's why it helps to rotate crops in a garden if you can. And how do you keep potato beetles out of your garden? That's, or how do you keep a potato beetle out of your garden? Well, that's good monitoring for that. And there are, you can exclude them by putting floating row covers over your crop or just monitor, look for those orange eggs on the underside of the leaves. And then you can detect them and then order them at the first sign of the cucumber or the potato beetle. There are organic sprays like Spino sad that Kathy mentioned. That's really good against Colorado potato beetle. Okay, any other questions about varieties? I've never, there's a question about rosemary. What's the best rosemary variety? I would just pick the heartiest one you can find. What's the best bunching onion? We have not tested bunching onions. I don't, we just haven't tested them. But we have tested onions. And the favorite onion last year was that Rosa di Milano, a very beautiful and delicious red onion. And for storage, I think you can't beat Patterson. Okay, I think that's it for tonight, guys. Thank you. And of course, you guys can send me an email if you have any other questions. Well, we had a great discussion here. And first of all, I want to thank everybody for their contribution and their participation tonight. I love the questions. You add so much to our program and thank you for that. And we want to thank Scott. Thank you, Scott. We cannot do this without your technical expertise. I have to thank Sonia from ad communication too. She is the one that updates our website just like this. And Scott records these presentations and Sonia gets them on the internet that on our website the next day. So if you ever miss a presentation or you miss a handout, Sonia has them for us. We really appreciate it. And also I got to give special thanks to the county agents who are hosting this program. These people work so hard and they're making such a difference by opening their doors to allow these guards to participate. And I hope everybody out in the county is having a good time with the seeds they're getting and enjoying the programs. So that's it for tonight. Next week, we're gonna have some special topics. We're gonna be talking about bees. We're gonna talk about crabgrass and we're gonna talk about some Mike Coriza soil health. So we got a lot of good interesting topics next week. We hope to see you next week, same time, same place. And everybody have a good night and drive safely.