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The Garden Plot for December 26, 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, carrots, 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 others that were tested in our 2008 trials:
Purple plum and French Golden radishes add a nice color addition (purple and yellow-white), to the regular red radish. Purple Plum was large with a pleasant, mild flavor.
We were very impressed with the yield, size and taste of Alaska melons this year. This cantaloupe type outperformed our favorite Minnesota Midget melon.
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. We tested purple cauliflower this year and liked the taste, size and color of Graffiti.
Carrots: Scarlet Nantes, Sugarsnax, Bolero, Rainbow and Sweet Baby Jane were our best in 2008. We tried two colored varieties, Red Samuri and Purple Haze. Both yielded poorly and tended towards smaller size and crooked roots.
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 Arthur, Vidi, and Elisa.
Tomatoes: We tried several heirloom varieties this year, including Brandywine, Conestoga, and Rose. Brandywine got the best taste ratings; they were very sweet and juicy and large. Conestoga was large and the most dependable producer. All the heirloom tomatoes produced later and lighter crops in outdoor situations, such as gardens and patio containers. All three varieties performed much better when grown in green houses or unheated plastic hoop houses. The yields were much lower in the field and under plastic than our best performing regular, slicing tomato varieties.
We also tested Striped Roman; it is a red and lightly striped, richly flavored plum/paste tomato. It was later than, but more productive 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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