 Hello, everyone. My name is Julie Garden Robinson and I'm your host for today's second field to fork webinar for the season on a stormy day, I guess. It is brought to you by North Dakota State University Extension. And if you missed the last one it is now archived on the field to fork website with Google that title and NDSU extension. This is the eighth year we've done the series and we're really glad you joined us today. And again, we've archived all the webinars from previous years so there are dozens of them. The next slide shows the upcoming webinars, and we hope you enjoy these as well. Coming up next we have our webinar controls. Because we have a large number of participants, we invite you to post your questions and comments in the chat. So not the Q&A. I'd really like you to ignore the Q&A box. I will be gathering those questions in the chat box and posing them to Tom later after his talk. So please open the chat and in practice, please type in your city and state where you are right now. Right. We're from all over the place. This is great. Like where? Oh, there's New York and South Dakota and Michigan. So lots of places. The next slide provides an acknowledgement. As you finish entering your city and state I have a special request. This program is sponsored in part with grant funding from USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service. And I will ask all of you to complete the short online survey that will be emailed right after today's webinar. I think we have the bugs worked out and you should be able to open the survey now. We had a lot of people take the survey and I appreciate that from last week. And as a thank you, I will do some prize drawings and we'll start sending out prizes next week. So be sure to include your complete mailing address, including your city, state and zip code because you're from all over. We can't really guess. Welcome to today's webinar and I'm pleased to introduce today's speaker on this slide. Tom Cald is an extension horticulturist for North Dakota State University. Tom conducts gardening workshops, writes articles and answers a lot of gardening questions. He coordinates the spring fever garden forums, the North Dakota home garden variety trials, and the North Dakota junior master gardener program. And thank you for joining us again this year, Tom. It's my pleasure, Julie. And here we are. We're going to talk about some new and promising vegetable varieties. So this is a key topic because picking a good variety is the first step to success and having a great garden. On the other hand, if you pick a bad variety, it doesn't matter how good a gardener you are. It doesn't matter how well you water or fertilize. If you pick a lousy variety, your yields and the quality of your food will be diminished. So let's get off to a good start and pick a great variety. So here we are right now. And I'm in Bismarck, North Dakota, and I'm going to get suffer a blizzard in two hours, it looks like. And I can say about the only good thing I can think about winter is going out to the mailbox and getting a seed catalog. I've always loved seed catalog since I was a kid. I was a weird kid. You know, most of my friends read comic books, but I didn't read comic books. Before I went to bed, I would read seed catalogs and I would just dream as I went through these pages. Oh, what can my garden be this year? Oh, can I grow a yellow pepper or something else? Very exciting. I've loved seed catalog since I was a little kid. And over the years, I matured a little bit at least. And I'm not sure to endorse any seed company today or I'm not trying to discriminate against any seed company today. I just want to share some feelings about all my years of experience and working for seed companies and working with seed companies. And if I could tell you just get one seed catalog, I would tell you get the one from Johnny's selected seats out in Maine. Johnny's has a lot going for it. It has aggressive and successful breeding program for the North, good customer service, good varieties. But what I really like and I think you should get their seed catalog is because of the information in it. I think you just look here on the side about how they talk about peppers and he was for every crop. Now this isn't as pretty as that burpee seed catalog. That's for sure. But there's lots of good information here and if I just close up a little bit, you can see like Johnny's wants you to succeed as a gardener. I think that's their strategy. If you succeed, you'll keep coming back to them for more seeds. I'll tell you about, okay, here's how you grow the seedlings. Here's how you space the plants. Here's the bugs to look out for. Here's the diseases to look out for. Here's how you harvest. So I'll just be honest. I always keep this catalog nearby. I've got one right here. I always keep it nearby because it's full of great quality information. But you can look at this handout that we have here and this is one of the handouts that you have about the vegetable cultivars for North Dakota 2023. And on the second page here under seed sources. So maybe if you're going to get a buzzer to pretty soon, and you got nothing else to do. You can just after this talk and after you do the evaluation that Julie wants you to do, then you can just go down and type in these seed companies and computer and request their catalogs. And before I know it, your mailbox will be full of seed catalogs and full of amazement and wonder too. Okay, I like I like seed catalog and here's an oldie, but goodie from 1912. And this is if you look at the bottom, this is from Bismarck, North Dakota. This is where I'm from here. And so 100 years ago Bismarck, North Dakota had one of the biggest seed companies in the United States called the Oscar wheel and company. And the reason why I show this, this picture is at the bottom you see it says wheels early June sweet corn the earliest on earth. So here's a close up on that. So that you know that's just imagine you can harvest your sweet corn in North Dakota in early June. You know what, I don't know if that's really true. I just don't hack a lot of us don't even plant until early June. So I don't know if we're going to harvest in early June. And so that the reason why I emphasize that is that seed companies for all their goodness. They're trying to sell you something. And it's in their interest to, they're not going to lie, but they may not give you the whole story. And so when you select a variety we need to have science based information. And that's how we started the North Dakota home garden variety trials, because we believe that the best way to identify the best varieties for gardeners. We should test them in gardens under the management of gardeners. And so every year I work with over 200 families across North Dakota, and we identify the best performing varieties. And here's from 2022. We had 287 families that successfully submitted results to our trials. And here's for North Dakota. We had 43 out of 53 counties provided data. And so even those yellow ones we had at least one of three gardeners there. And we even, if you can see, we even let some, we don't advertise our program outside of North Dakota. But we do let other people play with us like Minnesota and South Dakota and Manitoba. Hey, we're an international program. And that's the sketch you want. So, so at the end we'll have our website and I invite you to join our team. And it's fun. It's very simple tasks. It's not hardcore science. It's just pretty much, I'll just briefly describe it. Let's say we have lots of different trials. We'll have like over about 50 trials a year that you can choose from. And let's say you want to do the trial on green bush beans. Okay, I'll give you two varieties to compare side by side. One's going to be very promising new one and probably wants an old standby to compare with. Then you grow them both in your garden and you compare them side by side like which one germinated better, which one, which one was healthier, which one yielded first, which had higher yields, which one tastes it better. And then which one would you recommend to other gardeners. And I put all that information we do well over 1000 of these tests every year and come up with our results. And that, and that leads to this listing of varieties or cultivars. This is not my listing of recommendations. This is the listing of over 1000 families that have worked with us over the years. So what is a good variety? I think a good variety, especially up here in the north, it's got to mature early. And anytime it gets more than 100 days to mature, I get worried. A good variety is going to taste great. It's going to resist diseases naturally. So I don't have to be spraying fungicides on it. It's going to be productive. And it's going to be adapted to our conditions locally here like in North Dakota. So I'm going to go over A to Z on vegetables and give you a few of the most new and promising varieties. But everybody cares most about tomatoes. So let's just start with tomatoes and there's like a some rich red tomatoes right there. This is so nice. And when you choose a tomato variety, there's lots of different types off there. There's red ones and orange ones and yellow ones and purple and green and there's round and plum shaped, all kinds of them. And there's different ways why we select them. Do you want it for fresh eating like for a snack? Or maybe you like to have your tomato sliced. Maybe you like to can your tomatoes. Or maybe you like to play with your tomatoes. And so I don't have you ever got into a tomato fight. I came from a farm in Minnesota. I had 10 brothers and sisters and we had a big tomato patch and we had lots of tomato fights. When we saw a mushy tomato, it was going to throw it at my brother. You could just bet on it. And so like we all walked in with a white t-shirt and came out with pink t-shirts by the end of it. So it was lots of fun on the farm. Those are simple days back then. But when I choose a tomato, a key point is the type of vine it has. There's two major categories. One are determinate and the other is indeterminate. Determinate vines, I like them a lot. They're compact. They stop growing once the fruit are set and the vines stop growing. I don't have to prune them. I will trellis them. I'll probably put them in a string weave pattern. But trellis seems optional. And then the yields generally will come early and concentrated. And for North Dakota, that's usually all we get for the frost comes. So the indeterminate vines on the other hand, those are tall. They never stop growing until the frost comes. So they can get taller than me. They get over six feet tall. They have to be pruned. They have to be trellis. And their big benefit is they'll give you a long time harvest. And so someday when I retire and live in Florida, I'll choose some indeterminate varieties and enjoy the long growing season. Okay, but you can grow both no matter where you live. These are the most popular tomato varieties here in North Dakota. Early girl and there's eye after that. That means indeterminate. It's not an aggressive one though, not an aggressive indeterminate. People like it because it's early. Celebrity is very popular because it's reliable. It resists a lot of diseases and it tastes good. Big beef for the beef steak people and Mountain Fresh Plus may be the most popular tomato grown in the Midwest among growers because it has a really beautiful eight ounce just crack free tomato. Super sweet 100 is the most popular chair red cherry because it's so sweet and Romans are a popular tanning type. But let's just focus on some new and promising ones. And again, we do trials on regularly basis on tomatoes last year we did a lot of tomato trials. And we found these two varieties that very well mountain merit and celebrity plus. This is a picture of mountain merit and you see on the top right you see the a a symbol. That's the and I'll be showing that and quite a few slides here today. That's the all America selections winner. Every year when a new variety comes out, it's tested by a group of scientists across the United States and Canada. If it does well in a region across the region, it'll win the all America selections award and also it usually has something a major advancement like mountain merit which is shown here that one all America selection award. And that's because it was a great slicing tomato, but it had late blight resistance to. And I like any tomato that has the word mountain in it that it's from the mountains of North Carolina. These varieties are famous for their resistance to diseases and their ability to grow under cool summer conditions. I include celebrity plus here because I'm seeing this a lot now in the new varieties. The word plus and celebrity plus is an advancement of the old celebrity. It has more disease resistance and also they generally when it says plus it has better fruit qualities to. So look for the plus there's like big beef plus celebrity plus just a lemon boy plus. So that's that look for the plus if it's available. One of the big challenges for growing tomatoes is especially the Roma and the pace types is blossom and rot is very common, especially in the first flush of fruits it's caused by a calcium deficiency. And we could talk a whole hour about it but to say that it's a it's a it's a common it's most common disease or disorder on tomatoes, especially in the early season and we're always looking for varieties that can resist them. And one variety that that shows great promise is a granadero among the pace tomatoes it has much lower susceptibility to blossom and rot and a very prolific bearer. So we're really excited about including this one in our tests across gardens this year, granadero. I just had to say all this have our favorites when it comes to the tomatoes because there's hundreds of them out there. There's whole sea catalogs of just on tomatoes. And my favorite are the orange cherry tomatoes and I'll never forget when I was in a community garden a while ago and a gardener team up to me and says, you got to try this tomato Tom. And he showed me this this tomato and it's orange and I go, mm, doesn't look right. You know, and he said it is and just try it. And so I tried it and wow, it is amazing flavor it's a fruity flavor and sweet. And I grow orange cherry tomatoes in my garden every year and sun gold is very prolific and sun sugar are the best tasting tomatoes I've ever tasted. And I have to say that even in our trials we tried this both these varieties last year and the gardeners were raving over just they were so excited about and they even described stories about how their kids would sneak out into the garden to eat the tomatoes you know I didn't I must be true and is amazing stories about how delicious those tomatoes are. So how about I just throw it out here just for a minute maybe control in the chat box. Do you have a favorite tomato that that do you like to share with the group here today. Anything that's special that that you would recommend to the group. Do you have anything in the chat box want to say. We've already had a couple of questions so while they're throwing in they've got a lot of favorites. There's pear tomatoes Cheyenne, big beef, artisan blush, Jetstar, Cherokee purple, yellow pear lemon boy, sun gold Wisconsin 55 sweet 100 celebrity. There's a lot. You know you mentioned yellow pear a couple of times I got to share this with you and the yellow pear is a is a fascinating tomato make these little yellow shaped pairs, they're very mild and they're often using making preserves. And last year we did a trial and the thing about yellow pear. Oh my god you plant it's it's had a lot of garden centers it's not that uncommon. And when you grow that plant it's a giant plant it's like a six foot shrub, and it's just loaded with those yellow tomatoes it's all over the place. But last year we compared yellow pear with Fargo yellow pear and a scientist at the ad college 100 years ago made a cross between yellow pear and a variety called bison. And we compared those two varieties Fargo yellow pear and the standard yellow pear and we had eight gardeners provide results and all eight gardeners preferred Fargo yellow pear, because the vines were shorter, easier to manage it right and earlier, and the tomatoes were a little bit bigger. So, you know if anybody's answer I got lots of Fargo yellow pear seed if anybody would like me to send them a sample just you'll see my email at the end I'll be happy to share with you. Some of the best of Fargo. There you go. I have a couple of tomato questions while you're on the topic. Okay, with you. I'll do my best. Someone said, I have noticed that some catalogs are labeling tomatoes as semi determinant. Right. What does that mean. Yeah, that's why I said there's two main categories right semi determinant is like halfway in between. That means it's a, it usually means it's a determinate type. And so it has more. But it's more aggressive than a standard determine. Or sometimes it's more of an indeterminate type that's not that's more compact. So it's kind of in between. So in most cases it's a determinate aggressive type. And so but that's very good it's still that's just fine. That's fine it's and those are, you don't have to prune them if you don't want to. And they're easily trust so semi determines is a good way to go to And one more for you on how do you know when a yellow or orange tomato is right. Right. You know what, you got to try it yourself. That's it's a trial and error. I guess you know, you can always look at the texture when it gets a little mushy. That means you went too long. So it's very it's a very subtle, even among varieties it can be different from variety to variety. That's like you look at this picture right in front of you, like that, that one on that little one it's more yellow. See that's not right at all. But the one on the bottom that has a more red or color that's right for sure. And the one next what is right is I would pick that one too. So it's just trial and error. That's all it is every various a little bit different, but textures a good way to tell. Okay, I'm going to move on here off tomatoes that's enough of tomatoes. This is an asparagus plant. And I can tell this is there you know there's boy and girl asparagus plants. And this is a girl because girls produce the fruits. And I think asparagus is maybe the only creature on earth where the men are superior I have to say that it's maybe the only one that men are superior. Because the females bless their hearts, they produce spears, but they waste a lot of energy producing berries and who cares about asparagus berries I don't. I care about spears. And that's why I like the all male hybrids. And I call them the Jersey boys Jersey giant Jersey night Jersey Supreme. They're almost all men. And so they're much more productive than that old fashioned Mary and Martha Washington types. But the problem with the Jersey boys is there's getting propagation issues going on. And so we got to find an alternative. And we found one millennium. Millennium is from the north. It's very hardy. It one nice thing about millennium it pops up a little bit late. So you get less likely to get frost damage on this on the young spears millennium is very productive and the productivity continues for many years. And it's an all male type. And so this is the king now of asparagus is millennium. Look for that one at your garden center. All kinds of beans out there. And I read once that Bush Blue Lake 274 is grown in one third of all the beans grown in gardens and it's a good one in North Dakota. But there's better ones out there once the gardeners get more excited about and that would include the Jade types and these and red tails and other just like it. These are long green dark green and slender and very delicious. The nice thing about Jade is it keeps producing all summer. It's not like just a one harvest type of deal and then you'll wait three weeks for another harvest. And they'll just keep pumping out the beans all summer. So Jade is our highest rated one and red tail is a new is a relatively new variety just came out a couple years ago, and it's for organic growers. And most of the gardeners in our trials are organic growers. So try them. I want to talk about corn for a second. And I've got a long history with corn. I remember when I was a kid, a long time ago. I would go sweet corn about 15 acres. And every night in the summer I'd go out and pick about 100 dozen of sweet corn. And then I would drive it down to the Minneapolis farmers market. And I'd sell it that morning. I knew I had to sell everything that morning because after one day of picking that corn was terrible. It's all starch. And so but there's came out with super sweet corn. Super sweet corn is three times sweeter and it holds on to its sweetness. Now the problem with the super sweet corn is it's so sweet that the kernels have no starch in them. So the kernels are all shrunken up. And so that means the seeds are all shrunken up. And so the biggest issue with super sweet corn was just trying to get the seeds to germinate. We had to wait until late May to sow the seed. But over the last 10 years, there has been amazing progress on the super sweet and the synergistic types. So there are seeds that can germinate under cold soils now. And so here's a recent All-America winner called American Dream that's done well in our trials or Sweetness, a great early corn. So look for sweet corn that's sweet and you'll love the flavor. But also look for something that can germinate in cold soil. They'll say it. Moving on to cucumbers. And this is a great performing cucumber in the Midwest called General Lee. But frankly, I don't think there's any reason to grow a traditional American slicing cucumber when you can grow the burpless types. The burpless types can be earlier. They resist diseases well. They have much better quality. They have no bitterness, very small if any seeds, and very thin skin and crisp. And two varieties that do very well in our trials are Summer Dance and last year a new variety called Nokia. People went nuts over that Nokia. Some people, one gardener even said they went so crazy that they went out every time they went to the cucumber patch, they just couldn't deal with it anymore. So after a while, they had to pull out the plants. They just couldn't keep harvesting. It just wouldn't stop. It's just a torture. They just too many cucumbers. And there can be some very productive burpless varieties. If you haven't grown a burpless type, I really encourage you to do so. And another key point now, a trend is vegetables that you can snack on because people don't eat enough vegetables. In North Dakota, 93% of us of the adults don't eat the recommended levels of vegetables. And so we need to eat more veggies. And so they're making veggies we can snack on. That's a big trend now. Greenlight came out a couple years ago and it's been an amazing performer in our trials. He eat them when they're young, just like about four inches long and they're very crisp and smooth skin. And this Friday is super early and really productive. Greenlight is a real winner. Another trend is vegetables that grow in containers and probably I think one of the best ones would be eggplant. Because eggplant is such an attractive plant with the fruits. There's even different colors of fruits out there. There's white and speckled types in the classic purples, but they have pretty flowers in a pretty plant shape. And patio baby has done well in our trials. I just would say for containers, the key is for a good harvest is the limiting factor of production is usually the container. Because that restricts your root growth and the availability of water. So the bigger the container, the more successful you will be. We've done a lot of lettuce trials and this old timer called butter crunch does well. And that's because it can take the heat and that's the key characteristic for lettuce is that we want to keep that lettuce going well into spring into the summertime as well. But our highest rated varieties are called the Chris pad or something they're called the cavea or sometimes now they're called summer Chris types. And these types are so he tolerant they'll keep producing throughout the summer you can have salads all summer long. And two of our highest performing varieties are Muir and Nevada or if you like a little color on the leaves magenta. So look for these summer Chris types and you can have salads all summer. We have over a 90% recommendation rate for our gardeners who try these varieties really good. I try to find something new and promising about peas and there's just I think there's nothing exciting about them. There's a sometimes maybe it's a new disease it's resistant to but it's kind of boring. So there is a trend now to try peas of different colors. So there's like purple peas and golden peas. And we've had tested we've done some of these tests and the purple peas up because oh my God time I'm so excited you should see these purple flowers and these purple pods are so interesting. But the reason why this is really never taken the market is because they taste terrible. They're just people say oh I felt like I was just eating sawdust or wood. So be a little cautious about some of these unusual colored vegetables a lot of or sometimes they come they're super nutritious but you know if they taste terrible you don't want to eat it so it kind of defeats the purpose of nutrition. And I think the best P for for North Dakota and the Midwest is Lincoln. I give it I give a talk once at a workshop several years ago and I was telling people this is the best P and and she says time have you ever tried Lincoln. I said no because it's I don't I don't believe in heirlooms very much and there's there's a reason why heirlooms become heirlooms it's because like we made progress right. It's like I'm not going to go home in a horse and buggy today I'm going to drive a car it's progress. But she said just try it just try Lincoln and this is like an old variety from 1908 and she was right. It won our P trials and every year we do Lincoln in our P trials Lincoln will be the winner. It's short so you don't have to trellis it's only like 28 inches tall. It's early. It's super productive. It freezes well and it's really just easy to show. And that makes Lincoln a winner for our gardeners. But I have to say there's one thing about showing peas. I really hate it as a kid. And that is like again I had 10 brothers and sisters on our farm. We grew a lot of vegetables for phrasing. And it seemed like the peas always ripen on the 4th of July. It was like no no fail every 4th of July they would write them. I spent every morning of the 4th of July picking peas and I spend the rest of the day shelling peas. And it got to the point I even missed the fireworks sometimes I really hated shelling peas I hate him it made no sense. You pick a whole bushel and then you spend the whole day shelling all these peas and by the end you get like a bowl of peas and then next to a bushel of pods. So the cows got all the pods they were so happy just like eating candy for them. But I just got a bowl of peas it was just like this ridiculous I'm just gonna buy frozen peas you know let the farmers and the machines do the work. But then in the 1980s came a revolution a P revolution because there's a lot of people who hated shelling peas like me. And the snap pea was born. And this is the best snap pea it always wins our trials it's called sugar and it's it's early and it doesn't need to be trialist. And it's sweet and juicy and crunchy. I'm you know we're running out of varieties to test it against because it just it gets it just blows the competition away. Sugar and you got to try it and the good news you don't have to show the peas. You can go to the fireworks every 4th of July I love it. This year we're going to compare it against a new all America award winner called snap hero. And this is a variety of snap pea that's supposed to be delicious like a snap pea, but it's long. Like a bean. And so I won the award. So sometimes they win the American award just because it's kind of quirky and it's a new advancement. And a lot of these advancements never really pan out. But we're going to give it a try this year see how it is you know see how these long bean like snack heroes are and that's why it's called snack for them. There you go. So you might want to try this year or join our trials will be comparing it for peppers. Earlyness is always key for peppers and for the earliest red pepper that does well in our trial is red night. That's a good one very productive. But I think what what's really new and promising is there's a desire for more other types of peppers besides those stuffing peppers. And so like this is Escamillo frying type. These like this is a Carmen type or sometimes called Italian bull's horn. It's like a bull horn type. And these are great for frying and grilling and roasting and very sweet. So you might want to give these long horn types that try a bull horn type. Another type that's new and promising are the snack peppers again for the same reason it's a snack cucumbers. Okay. So the snacking types are small and they're colorful and they have barely any seeds in it and they're they're very mild. Lunge box is a great snacking pepper in our trials. As far as potatoes go. I think the most exciting potato that's emerging in more catalogs now is purple Viking Viking because it's so beautiful of a potato. And see that marbled skin and a pure white flesh that's good for mashed potatoes and purple Viking can take drought. And it was this scab disease. So this is a potato that's in grade in our trials. Every year I see it in more keeping offered by more seed companies and it sells out quickly. Purple Viking is worth a try. Pumpkins we do a lot of pumpkin trials and this is the easiest to grow pumpkin especially those up you in the far north. This is neon. This is the easiest to grow pumpkin there is I can tell you because these are my kids. Even they can grow it. That's like 10 years ago or so. Okay. But even if they can grow it my kids can grow it anybody grow it because the nice thing about a neon pumpkin. If it doesn't turn orange in the fall. It's orange in the summer. And so it's just like an orange water balloon that gets bigger and bigger as the season goes on. So it's it's it's available when you are it's available weeks ahead of other other pumpkins and the vines don't take up forever either. So neon pumpkin is a nice foolproof garden type of pumpkin. But some kids like the big pumpkins and I like big pumpkins too. But I don't like to spend my life growing them like those giant Atlantic giant types was brown ugly ones that are all lopsided. Yeah, they can get about 300 pounds or bigger. But you have to like water them every day. You have to have to take over the whole garden. Fertilize them constantly. You got to prune them. It's just way too much work. And so I like these big ones like big moose or early giant. You just plant a seed you give it no special care. And then right before the frost comes you go out to the garden and you get a big 40 pound pumpkin. That's them. These have done really well in our trials. They're summer squash. Here's an old type of summer squash called Patty Pan. And I like reading about the history of North Dakota agriculture. And 100 years ago, North Dakota was in a crisis and there was a lot of hunger in North Dakota. We were one of the poorest states in the United States. And the scientists were looking for solutions. And one thing they discovered was that my gosh, the summer squash grow well in our state. So they were really promoting summer squash big time to help solve hunger. And so this is one of the varieties, Patty Pan, the white Patty Pan. And so we did a test on this white Patty Pan. And it's kind of funny that we had one of our testers was a minister from Logan County. And he told me that he always was so, you know, he always liked to share his harvest with the poor. But he said, after tasting that Patty Pan, he thought it would be a sin to make the poor eat this type of squash. So he would always, he would take the harvest down to the county dump. That's how bad this Patty Pan squash was. But we've made advancements. And there's good type of Patty Pan squash that tastes good. And you harvest them young like a baseball. They're very firm and flavorful. Sunburst is really good. You might want to, and it's very colorful, very attractive. You can let it get big and use it for decoration. And another trend in summer squash now is not necessarily looking for the highest production, but the highest quality. And here's a variety that came out a couple years ago called Tempest, a semi crook neck type that has very firm and flavorful flesh. So we're looking forward to testing that this year, the variety called Tempest with that unique striping. But, you know, we are talking about summer squash, zucchini, and nobody respects zucchini in North Dakota, probably nowhere, I have to say. And why? Just because it's so productive, you know, I think zucchini should be in the hall of fame, but in vegetables. But we ridicule it. We make fun of it. You know, we put it out on a, on the side of the corner there and say, please take it just like an old couch that you're trying to get rid of, trying to get rid of zucchini. And it's reminding me of my wife, I met her when I lived in Asia, and she didn't know about the way Americans feel about zucchini. So our first year in a new neighborhood, we had a great zucchini harvest. And one day, while at work, she went around and she gave all our neighbors and then all throughout the subdivision a bag of zucchini. Oh, my God, what, what do we do that for? We just insulted our neighbors. Oh, no. But she was just trying to be nice. But the zucchini is a situation, but I think we should admire it. And instead of ridicule it, we should find ways to use it. Like here's another abandoned zucchini, that poor kid. You know, kids don't have these kind of feelings. Kids like zucchini. We, we were when I was on my farm. Oh, what happens when you had a big zucchini? We found ways to do something to do with it. So we wouldn't let a zucchini go to waste. We would take a big zucchini like this. And we take like an old mushy tomato and we would play baseball with it. Or with zucchini. Zucchini, you carve it out. Zucchinis float. And so we would take our own zucchini and we would take, go down to the dock on our lake. And we would have an Armada battle, like my zucchini against Joe's zucchini against Bill's zucchini and Barbara's zucchini. And we'd all had battles throwing rocks trying to destroy our siblings zucchini. So, so we found creative ways. And then of course, the most creative way you've probably heard this story before, but words repeating is a true story about the legend of Montana Maggie. And Maggie was a far, was a farmer. She had a big garden. And one day a bear came to her garden. She had a watchdog. And the watchdog started barking to scare the bear where like bark, bark, bark, bark. Bear got mad. And Maggie heard all the commotion. So she goes out to the, out on the deck. And she sees the bear. And she's tough. She's a tough prairie woman. And she, she doesn't shy away. She yells at the bear. Bear, you get out of here. You get out of my garden. Now the bear is really mad. So the bear come charging at Maggie. Maggie scurries off the deck into her kitchen. And she's trying to close the door. But the bear has got its head through the door. So here's Maggie with her head, with her hand on the door, and she can feel the warm breath of that bear just blowing on her. And she's just trying to keep the door closed as much as she's trying to reach for something. What can she reach? What can she reach to say, where's that knife? Where is it? Where is it? And what did she find? She found a zucchini. And she bought that bear's nose and the bear ran away. So I think zucchini is an amazing vegetable. It can provide nutrition, can solve hunger. It can provide recreation. And it can provide protection. What else do you want in a vegetable? And if you've got bears in your area, I recommend you get these two varieties. Green Machine and Dunja. These are these resist powdery mildew. And they're keep pumping out the zucchini weapons for you all the way until you get a hard frost. Last thing to note here is that I see a big trend now in the modern winter squash for smaller types, the baby types. So like the baby butternuts are more popular now than our standard butternuts in our trials. And butterscotch and butter baby are good performers and a nice more personal sized squash. So I want to just thank all, I didn't take all these photos myself, but I want to thank the photographers and also want to let you know about if you want more information on our trials. There's our website and it's in the handout that you can have. And we're sending out our catalog soon. And if you want to just contact me via email that works too. So there you go. I wish you have a pick a good variety and have a great garden this year. So does anybody have any questions I can help them with. Yes, there are several. This one that came in, is there a date set for when the 2023 seed store opens for the garden and try. Yes, I just, you know, you just there's like I got, I got other things to do like so much pressure that purely that program is so popular. I just, I created a Frankenstein monster. That's the problem. And our catalog, all the seeds been ordered, and it's being packaged soon and I will, I promise to get it out. Probably next week our catalog will come out and I will send it to anybody on email and you can just sign up to get the catalog or contact me and I'll send it to you. And we'll be shipping out the seeds in March. What do you know about Spartacus hybrid asparagus. Spartacus. Okay, I never heard of it. So it's probably not very good. That's what I. You, I guess it had to tell me about it. It's not a, I don't know, maybe it's from Michigan State if I just had a guess because it's a Spartan university and but for the for the upper north here millennium is the one to go with and traditionally the one that's dominated the last 20 years are the all male jersey types. So I don't see Spartacus in catalog. So that tells me it's either not widely propagated or it's not that special. Next one. Do you have any tips for container gardening with cucumbers. Yeah, my first tip is find a community garden. That's what I would do and grow your cucumbers in a community garden. That's the way to go. There are special bush varieties that grow in containers. Okay, and, but those bush Fridays. They're generally speaking very susceptible to disease, and it just get a few cucumbers off them, but I would look for the bush varieties and I just look at our list here. Those are two fair salad bush. Those are two bush right and it's called a bush variety. What it is, it's a, it's like a cucumber vine where all the leaves got shrunken together. And actually, truly you may not know this, but I was the world's expert on bush cantaloupe at one time. And it made the cover of the burpee sea catalog, all that stuff. But you know what, it was a flop. It just never took off. So just people just, just let's get a community garden grow a cantaloupe in a garden. So, but look for the bush types. I hope you frame that cover. Oh, no, okay. That was a while ago. It wasn't that much of it. There was only like two breeding programs in the whole US. So I wasn't like that great, trust me. It was a quick dying Friday. Let's go. Another animal question here, an animal issue. You have any recommendations to keep squirrels away from vegetables in pots. Okay, first of all, have a squirrel, an undesirable garden for area for squirrel. So don't have a bird feeder nearby, for example. And then, okay, the best way to control any type of critter is exclusion. That means like netting or a hardware cloth. So you got to protect it. You have to exclude the squirrel from it. Some people would say if you can't get rid of the squirrels, put a squirrel feeder on the far area or give a squirrel feeder to your neighbor for Christmas. So all the squirrels go to his yard. But exclusion is the best way. You don't want to be spraying blood meal on your vegetables. You don't want to do that. That's sorry. The next question, how does purple viking variety compare with traditional, superior and Kennebec potatoes? Kennebec is an old variety and it's a problem where we are because it's susceptible to a lot of diseases. So superior is a good quality potato variety. I think purple viking is more popular for mashing. That's the key for it, more so than frying. And I would suspect superior, which has a golden red flesh. That's superior. It's a good variety, but I think that's better for frying. So you've got to find out what you're going to use it for. Now we have a disease question for you. How do we deal with powdery mildew? Yeah, powdery mildew, the best way to do it is you find varieties that are genetically resistant to it. That is the key. So like with pumpkins, look for pumpkins that resist powdery mildew because then you don't have to be spraying for it. Otherwise, you've got to have good air movement. Powdery mildew likes humidity. So space out your plants, give them lots of air movement. So when you water, you should never water the leaves. I thought they like that. You know, I used to water plants and go like, oh, look, you must love this shower, my favorite pumpkin vine. But that pumpkin vine was cursing at me because it was going to get powdery mildew that night because I got its leaves all wet. So target the water at the base of the plant. Right. Lori has a tip for all of us. Zucchini mushrooms and spinach are great in veggie lasagna. There you go. Sounds good. I'm hungry. Sharon asked, do you have anything on beets? Yeah, sure. With beets, we've looked at red and golden beets. Our top variety right now is red cloud. That has really done well. Red ace is a great disease resistant standard for good quality and wide adaptability. Can't go wrong with red ace. Red cloud has a little bit better flavor. The variety Merlin is, if you like a sweet beet, that's the sweetest one, Merlin. And the old fashioned Detroit dark reds, fine. That's common. It's more susceptible to diseases though, but that will work. Now we're going to switch to cucumbers. Can you trellis cucumbers? Of course, yes, you can. And for like a burpless type or a slicing type, that's how you get those straight cucumbers. They won't curve if you trellis them. Yeah, so just put them on, like people put them on kettle panels or anything that's sturdy. And that's how you have the best quality. And then it gets the kukes off the ground too. So that's good. Definitely. Oh, Jeannie is wondering, can you use expired seeds successfully? And I will add to that, where should you store your leftover seeds? Okay, every vegetable is a little bit different. Okay, so when you say expired, usually when you buy a seed, it doesn't come with an expiration date. So what happens is, in general, most seeds will last for about three years. Some, like corn or parsnips, you really should use fresh seed every year, but most seeds last at least three years and you'll get good germination. So how to store them to maximize their viability is you got to keep it cool and like put in a sealed jar in a refrigerator is the best. So cool temperatures out of direct sunlight and in a sealed container, that's the way to go. So not a freezer or refrigerator? You know, if you always, you know, a refrigerator is perfect. Like I think, like in the short term, the best way is a refrigerator. If you wanted to store the seed for your great, great, great grandchildren to sell the seed, then I would put them in a cryogenic freezer. There you go. That'd be the best for long term. But for most seed companies will store their seeds at about 35, 40 degrees. That's perfect. All right. Any comments on onion and carrot varieties? Oh, yeah. You know, I only have so much time to talk about everything. We're actually, we're going to be, do we have done onion trials for, I've never done onion trials. But I think on Friday, we're going to launch our first onion trial. So if we go to our website, and if you sign up to get our catalog, you can, I just have a limited amount of seed because onion seeds have to be started indoors. I'm too busy with my other programs in early spring to really get going on this stuff. But we just got to test some onions. So as far as the rice, it depends where you live, but from the north generally look for a long day onion. That's the best performers. They'll say long day or intermediate day. That's, that's okay. But the long days are the best. I think got to figure out what you want them for long term storage or like Patterson's a good one. We're going to be testing a Dakota tears from North Dakota, we're testing that against Talon, which is an organic one. If you like red ones, a red carpet is a good selection. You mentioned carrots, we do a lot of carrot trials. I look for the non tight N a n t s the non type. That's the best for gardeners because it has good quality and it doesn't require a real deep soil. And I think some of the best it's on their hand about navel is as far as a new and promising variety. That's really done well in our trial navel. Gold finger has always done well in the past for us. And we're doing lots of carrot trials this year tools. Our friend from Northern Minnesota asked if you have a suggestion for a good spinach variety. Sure. Okay, in the spring time, there's only one spinach. And that's space space, because the prominent spinach, it goes, it goes to seed when there's any indication of heat. So if you're sewing in spring, the variety is space in the fall. We got a lot of options in the fall because at that time, it's getting cooler as the temperature as the season progresses. So you got, you got all kinds of options. You can do space or Bloomsdale if you like it a little bit curly. And we have all kinds of rice. I'm not a problem in the fall. Emperor's good gazelle Olympia, I like Olympia as a fall spinach. That's really good. So, but space is the one to get. So we have a guest from Northern California who's wondering if the varieties of seeds you've been talking about would grow there. But that means that doesn't mean they're the best for you. And, you know, if you're in Northern California, you have a much longer growing season. And so you have so many more options than we do in North Dakota. You know, like when I open up a seed catalog, I can only open up seed catalogs from the north for a North Dakota trial. And I have to look at that. I always take, I just focus on the earliest ones. And so our, our, our varieties will grow well in California, likely, but man, like, I mean, here we are, here we are in North Dakota. And I'm talking right before a blizzard comes, right? And so where are you, what's happening now in California? You're just like sitting there on the beach with your, you know, with your swimsuit enjoying the good life, you know, sipping a cocktail and enjoying the good times, you know, you got no worries. So you got so many possibilities out in California. So that's why contact your local extension office and they'll have a list of recommended varieties for you. Okay. I'm not sure I understand the next question, but I'll try here. Okay. What's your favorite book? It says stink bug squash bug cucumber beetle, etc. What's my favorite bug? Yeah, I think so. Okay, my favorite one, the one, well, my favorite bug for vegetables is a tomato horn worm. Because a tomato horn worm, I admire its appetite. It's called the garden glotton. That's a scientific name, man, Luca garden, glotton. It eats like four times its weight every day. Just imagine that's like, that's like my teenager boy going to McDonald's and saying, I want 60 Big Macs right now. You know, that's a Big Mac attack. And it's like the garden glutton insect is like a cat that turns into an elephant size in one month. So it's an amazing appetite. And so when do you see it in your garden? When one day you go out to your tomato patch and half the vine was eaten overnight. And then you look, you say, what happened? Was it a squirrel? You know, something snipped it off? No. It was a big fat green worm. And then it just sits there looking at you in a burps. And then it says, oh, that tasted good last night, Tom. And the nice thing about controlling the garden glotton, it's really easy. You just pick it off, throw it on the garden. And I just put my size 13 foot right on top of it and squish it to death. There you go. So squishes easily. Okay, well, you have some melon questions. Do you have recommendations for melons? Yes, for the North, look for earlyness. It's all about earlyness. That's the key. One third of our trials are failures with melons every year. The earliest quality melon is goddess. Give me a few more days. I'll pick Aphrodite. Aphrodite is a nice size melon, about five to seven pounds. And it will ripen in the North. Athena is the standard for the North. Athena, that's a little bit later. So goddess Aphrodite, Athena. As far as water melons, you got to try sweet Dakota rose. Sweet Dakota rose was developed in North Dakota. It gets to be about a 15 pound watermelon of the highest quality. It will ripen in the North Dakota. So sweet Dakota rose, it's a great organic variety. How can I amend my soil to minimize blossom and rot? Oh, that's really a hard one, because the problem is, okay, it depends where you live, but it's a calcium deficiency, but chances are you already have enough calcium in your soil. So you can grind up fine dust of eggshells or some people put tums, tablets in the planting hole, but the plant already has calcium. So I just think in general, I always think it's a good idea to add a little organic matter every year, about an inch of organic matter can help. But the key in most cases is you just have to manage it so that there's always moisture in the soil so the calcium can flow to the roots. You avoid over fertilizing because the leaves fight the fruits for the calcium, they fight each other. So if you have a very leafy vine, because you over fertilize, it's going to rob the calcium from the fruits. So it's really a hard one. And the way I grow tomatoes, especially those romans, I just anticipate I'm going to lose my first flush of fruits. And then after that, the fruits catch up to the leaves. So there's no soil cure for it. There really isn't, in most cases. I'm going to draw us to a close. It's three o'clock in Fargo, North Dakota, and I just want to thank you Tom so much for an entertaining and very useful presentation today. And again, for everyone who came today, you will be getting an email and I hope you choose to take the survey because that helps us continue to get funding so that we can create more materials for you. Thanks to everyone and there's lots of thank yous to you appearing here, Tom. So big thank you. Hopefully we do this again next year. Sounds good. All right. Have a good day everyone. Stay safe in the storm.