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The Garden Plot for January 11, 2008
3:55 PM - 4:00 PM
[Program Website]
Today's Highlight: “Vegetable Varieties”
It’s time to start ordering seeds for spring vegetable gardens. So many vegetables and new varieties, so little time! How to choose? For Montana gardeners, earliness is key. Choose varieties that mature in 90 to 120 days. That is the frost-free growing season most western Montana gardeners can count on. We have done several vegetable variety trials at the Missoula County Extension Service experimental farm, including broccoli, sweet bell peppers, and tomatoes. But, we can’t test everything, so experiment and keep records for yourself. If you find that a new variety does well for several years, let me know! Here are varieties that have done well and were easy to grow in our trials:
Green Bush Beans: Provider, Jade, and Tendercrop. There are other types of beans including flat Italian, green pole, and wax, or yellow, bush beans. There are also the very tender French filet beans. Nickle and Grenoble seem to do well in our climate.
Broccoli: Premium Crop, Major, Belstar, and Arcadia. There are also purple Romanesco types of Broccoli.
Carrots: Scarlet Nantes, Sugarsnax, Mokum, Bolero, and Nevis.
Italian Eggplant: Dusky, Black Bell, and Nadia.
Sweet Bell Peppers: These peppers can be eaten green, or allowed to “ripen” into a sweeter-tasting red color. The best varieties in our trials included Fat’N Sassy, Big Bertha, King Aurther, Vidi, and Elisa.
Hot peppers: Everyone has their favorites in this category. Among jalapenos, the highest and most consistent yielding variety was Early Jalapeno. Super Cayenne II and Cayenne Long Slim also produced well.
Tomatoes: There are two tomato types to choose from. Determinant types grow to a certain height and stop. They put all their energy into producing lots of larger fruit over a 4-6 week period. Indeterminant types grow taller vines and continue to fruit all summer. The early standard in Montana is Early Girl or New Early Girl, which is reportedly more disease resistant. Early Girl requires approximately 60 to 70 days from transplanting to first ripe tomatoes. In Western Montana, we’ve tested tomato varieties against Early Girl and found several that ripen days and even weeks earlier. These include Daybreak, Siberian, Stupice, Oregon Eleven, and Oregon Spring.
Heirloom tomato varieties are the best tasting tomatoes, but they produce fewer fruits and can be disease-prone. Brandywine is the best tasting heirloom variety. Rose is the best heirloom variety for growing in a greenhouse or high plastic tunnel.
There are several other kinds of tomatoes, including: Plum (or paste) varieties, cherry, and grape tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes produce lots of tiny, round 1 inch sized fruits. One plant feeds a neighborhood. Sungold is the earliest and best tasting cherry type. Sweet Million and Sweet One Hundred are the old standbys in Montana, but neither are half as sweet as Sungold. Grape tomatoes are small, like cherry tomatoes, but they are oblong and shaped like tiny pears. Sweet Olive is early and red, Chiquita is later and pink. Belstar is the earliest and a very richly flavored plum/paste tomato. Belstar is much more productive and dependable than Roma.
For more information on garden vegetable varieties for Montana, contact your local extension service agents and ask for Montana State University Montguide Number 199308AG called Can I Grow That Here?
Helen Atthowe's new short program of gardening tips
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