371 America's Top 10 Vegetables to Grow (and Enjoy!)

In today’s episode, we explore America’s top 10 homegrown vegetables. We are guided by Master Gardener and vegetable expert Gail Pothour. From tomatoes—America’s favorite, with 86% of gardeners growing them—to cucumbers, sweet peppers, hot peppers, squash, beans, lettuce, peas and more, we cover essential tips for garden success in your backyard.

In Part 1: Tomatoes,  cucumbers, sweet peppers, beans, and carrots.
In Part 2 (after the commercial break): summer squash, onions, hot peppers, lettuce, and peas.

Previous episodes, show notes, links, product information, and transcripts at the home site for Garden Basics with Farmer Fred, GardenBasics.net. Transcripts and episode chapters also available at Buzzsprout

Pictured: Cucumbers on a Trellis

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Rapid City (SD) Journal Newspaper: 10 most popular vegetables grown in American gardens

National Gardening Association: Top 5 Homegrown Vegetables

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Chapters

• 1:42 America's Top 10 Vegetables to Grow (and Enjoy) Pt. 1
• 34:42 Smart Pots!
• 35:51 Dave Wilson Nursery
• 37:13 America's Top 10 Vegs to Grow & Enjoy Pt 2

Transcript

371 Top 10 Homegrown Vegetables Transcript

Farmer Fred

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by SmartPots, the original, lightweight, long-lasting fabric plant container. It's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount. That's SmartPots.com slash Fred.

Farmer Fred

Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, well, you've come to the right spot. 

Farmer Fred

There was a survey that asked gardeners coast to coast, what are your favorite homegrown vegetables? So we have a podcast about America's top 10 homegrown vegetables to grow and enjoy. Master gardener and vegetable expert Gail Pothour and I talk about each of these 10, along with growing advice for each one, our favorite varieties, and tips for having more backyard success with those vegetables. So today, we revisit our chat from 2023 about tomatoes. There's no surprise there that that's America's favorite vegetable to grow, as well as cucumbers, sweet peppers, beans, and carrots. Gail and I also talk about summer squash, onions, hot peppers, lettuce, and peas. Plus, we talk about our honorable mentions, backyard garden vegetables that should be in that top 10 list. It's all in today's episode, number 371, America's Top 10 Vegetables to Grow and Enjoy. We're podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon jungle in suburban purgatory. It's the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, and we're brought to you today by SmartPots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let's go.

AMERICA’S FAVORITE VEGETABLES TO GROW AND ENJOY, Pt. 1

Exploring Tomatoes: America's Top Choice

Farmer Fred

Have you ever wondered what are the top 10 garden vegetables that people grow in their backyard? Well, the National Gardening Association took a survey, and so did the Rapid City, South Dakota, Journal-Newspaper, and together they came up with this list of the 10 most popular homegrown garden vegetables. So we're going to spend a few minutes on each talking about them and maybe give you some tips on growing the most popular ones. And if you want to be a popular gardener, these are 10 good ones to start with. Gail Pothour is with us. Gail is a Sacramento County Master Gardener, vegetable expert extraordinaire. And Gail, it's no one's surprise that on the National Garden Association's list of the most popular garden vegetables, Tomatoes is number one with something like 86 percent of gardeners saying that, yeah, we plant tomatoes.

Gail Pothour

It's number one on every list I've ever seen, any book on tomatoes I've ever read. So, yes, that's probably the reason why a lot of people got into vegetable gardening was to start growing tomatoes. So, yeah, I agree. Number one.

Farmer Fred

And especially with salsa overtaking ketchup as America's favorite condiment, I'm not surprised either that tomatoes are right up there at number one, because, frankly, salsa is a lot easier to make than ketchup.

Gail Pothour

However, you can't grow your cilantro in the summer when we have tomatoes.

Farmer Fred

So, yeah, I will tell you a way on how to do it.

Gail Pothour

Oh, yeah, I would like to know. All right. Boy, mine suffers.

Farmer Fred

Remind me to tell you. OK. Don't let me forget. All right. OK. With tomatoes, let's start with the beginning gardener. If you're growing your first garden and you want tomatoes, America's most popular homegrown vegetable, well, start with something with training wheels, something that might be easy. And usually the most seasoned gardeners will say, well, start with a hybrid variety. Don't start with an heirloom. Start with something easy to grow. Start with something that is going to produce a lot of fruit, like a cherry tomato, and go with the tried and true varieties for your area.

Gail Pothour

Right. Especially a cherry tomato. I think they pretty much can be grown by anyone, anywhere, as long as they have some sun. They can take a little bit of shade, unlike full-size tomatoes or indeterminate tomatoes that need to have full sun, at least six to eight hours. Cherries can handle a little bit of shade, and I find they don't stop producing in the middle of summer like a lot of tomatoes will. Well, if you get temperatures over 90 degrees, the cherries will continue to produce. They're easy. They're small. They'd be great for kids to grow.

Farmer Fred

I think the biggest mistake that beginning gardeners make when planting tomatoes is they plant too many plants and they put them too close together.

Gail Pothour

Mm-hmm. You need some air circulation to kind of avoid some of the fungal diseases. Tomatoes are a vine, and there's different classifications of tomatoes and the types of fruit and the vines. There's the indeterminate, determinate, and dwarf, typically. Indeterminates are long vines, and if you don't provide some kind of support, they're going to trail all over the ground. And that's when you can run into a lot of trouble with the fruit and the foliage on the ground. You can get diseases and insects and that sort of thing. So indeterminates need to be caged or staked some way.

Farmer Fred

Exactly. Very good idea to train those tomato plants and using a stake or a cage. And you can make the cages. You can buy cages. But I got to tell you, if you're going to buy tomato cages, make sure they're a good size. They should be at least four feet, five feet tall with a diameter at the top of probably two and a half, three feet. That would be ideal. And that goes back to how far apart you should plant your tomatoes as well, which would be I would plant them at least three feet apart, if not four feet apart.

Gail Pothour

Right. I have 12-foot beds, and I will get four in there at maximum, three or four. So my cages are at least three feet apart, or at least the plants are three feet apart. And when you do it in a cage, you're able to keep all that foliage inside so it doesn't sprawl all over everywhere. So I get good air circulation. I have found that the four or five-foot tall tomato cage is They generally aren't tall enough for some of the indeterminates, so I have to put in that extra piece to make it about six feet tall, because they can get six, seven feet tall.

Farmer Fred

What are some of your favorite tomato varieties to grow?

Gail Pothour

It's like with your favorite child, you know? Well, I'm kind of of the heirloom camp, so I do a lot of open-pollinated or heirloom varieties, mostly for the flavor. I may not get real high yields, but some of my favorite ones that I'm growing this year, one is Brad's Atomic Grape. It's an open pollinated one that Brad Gates has developed for his wild boar farms. And it's kind of a grape tomato, which is a cherry, but it's elongated, kind of egg-shaped sort of. And it's multicolored. I think it's kind of psychedelic looking. It's got purples and greens and red stripes and streaks all through it. It's very tasty. It's got a good hang time. I mean, you don't have to pick it right now. It'll hang on the plant a while. I've been growing that the last several years, and it's become one of my favorites.

Farmer Fred

I, too, have so many favorites. I really am hesitant to mention one or two. But I don’t want to leave something out.  I'm going to defer to the vegetable experts at UC Davis at their Vegetable Research and Information Center, who, when recommending cherry tomatoes, they mentioned the Cherry Grande, the Sweet Cherry, Sweet 100, and the Red Cherry. And for container varieties, as far as cherry tomatoes go, they have Patio, Toy Boy, Better Bush, and Small Fry.

Gail Pothour

Yeah, I find if you're going to grow tomatoes in a container, you don't want to do an indeterminate one because you'd have to have a huge container. And it would fall over and be top heavy. So look for varieties that have patio in their name, like Patio Boy or something, or a dwarf. It's a dwarf variety. That way you don't have to grow it in such a large container. And they'll do just fine. Some of those will need to still have some kind of cage. And I find on those really short container type tomatoes, you can use the tomato cages that you find at the garden center that are cone-shaped. I use those for really small tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant as well.

Farmer Fred

Yes, indeed. I call them pepper cages as a matter of fact.

Gail Pothour

Yeah, that's mostly what I use them for. But when you asked about my favorite, one that I grew last year, I've been growing it a number of years and actually saving seed is an heirloom. I'm an heirloom lover. It's called Thorburn's Terracotta and it's this most amazing plant. A terracotta color. I mean, kind of orangey, olive-like, honey brown, and it's amazing. The flavor is great. Had pretty good yields on it. I like Green Doctors. That's actually my favorite cherry tomato. It's a green cherry that's prolific indeterminate, so it's a big plant, and it produces all season. I haven't had any cracking on it, and when it's ripe, and some green tomatoes are hard to tell when they're ready to pick. It kind of turns yellowy, so it has a yellow cast to it. One of the hybrids that I've been growing in the last several years is Purple Boy Hybrid, and I've had really good luck with that. It's kind of a medium-sized black, they call it black variety, which in the tomato world is kind of a dusky rose with purpley overtones, green shoulders. It's really good and a good producer. And then my favorite one to cook with is Goldman's Italian American. It's an heirloom from Italy and it is large, a kind of pear-shaped red fruit and has kind of pleats in it, accordion-looking pleats. It's really interesting looking. The flesh is blood red when it's ripe and really meaty, not very many seeds, so it's great for cooking.

Farmer Fred

I take it these aren't tomatoes you found down at Lowe's or Home Depot.

Gail Pothour

No. And that's one of the reasons I start all my tomatoes ahead of time, usually early February or so, for transplanting out On your birthday, Fred, April 28th. and I buy seeds (in winter). So you have a whole world of varieties to grow if you have seeds as compared to what's available as plants at Garden Center.

Farmer Fred

If you're going to be heading out to the nursery to buy tomato plants to be planting during the month of May or even into June, there's a lot of good hybrids that are tried and true across the country that work really well,  that are commonly available too, like Ace, Better Boy, Early Girl, Champion. Those are just a few of the ones that are, shall we say, normal-sized tomatoes. And if you want a good-sized beefsteak tomato, Whopper is a popular one that you're going to find that gets to a good size. One of my favorite big ones too is Big Beef. I'm just hesitant to talk about heirlooms because all gardening is local. And if I mention my favorite beefsteak heirloom tomato as Dr. Wyche’s Yellow, I know that somebody's going to try it and not have good luck with it. But that’s the way it is.

Gail Pothour

Right. And I've tried Brandywine. That's probably the gold standard for heirloom tomatoes. And I can't get Brandywine to grow. I've grown a couple of other heirlooms. The names are escaping me right now. Paul Robeson, I think, is one or Black Krim that are supposed to be fabulous. And I got one fruit on them. So, yeah, I stick with the heirlooms that I have success with.

Cucumbers: A Refreshing Addition

Farmer Fred

Well, at this rate, we'll be done with this program in three hours. So let's move on on our 10 most popular homegrown garden vegetables. Number two, and I will tell you right off, I don't eat it, so I don't grow it. I hope you have. And you can tell us all about cucumbers.

Gail Pothour

Well, my husband won't eat them, so I grow them rarely at home. I am actually going to grow two of my favorites this year. One is called Green Fingers and the other is Silver Slicer. And Silver Slicer is a white, kind of off-white cucumber that is very crisp and juicy it's great green fingers is a hybrid persian it's a small like a baby cucumber so you pick them when they're little and it's never bitter so it's really good and then if i'm going to make pickles i like to grow alibi that's a hybrid pickling cucumber cucumbers we were not going to plant them in our area probably for several more weeks they like to have really warm soil, you know, probably in about, you know, a couple, three weeks, we should hit 70 degrees, 65 or 70 degrees for the soil. And that's when we'll plant.

Farmer Fred

Yeah. And remember, we're talking soil temperature here. And right now, even in here in sunny California, even though we had one of the coldest, wettest winters ever, our soil temperatures are, just starting to get into the upper 50s to low 60s. And it'll be a while before it gets into the 70s, which is prime growing conditions for those roots to really shift into high gear and start production. It could easily be June and July.

Gail Pothour

Yeah. And cucumber is something that you can plant all through the summer. They grow fairly quickly, produce quickly. So you don't have to start right early in May, late April, early May. Even if the soil temperature has warmed up and the nighttime temperatures are not so cold, you can start them in May, June, July and still get a good crop. You can either direct sow cucumbers or you could do transplants. They don't like to have their roots disturbed. So what I do, because I do transplants primarily because I have critters around my yard that like to eat the seedlings when they come up. So I will start them about three weeks before I want to transplant them out. They grow quickly. I do seeds in a four-inch pot. And transplant them directly from that pot. Make sure they're not root bound. So if you buy a transplant at the nursery or garden center, be sure it's not root bound.

Farmer Fred

And the easiest way to do that is flip the pot over. If you see roots coming out, the drain holes on that little container, put it back and go look for another one.

Gail Pothour

Yep. And cucumbers can be trained up a trellis. So you don't need to use up a lot of real estate in your garden. and grow them up a trellis and it makes for straighter fruits and you get better air circulation that way as well.

Farmer Fred

According to the Vegetable Research Information Center at UC Davis, some of the varieties they recommend for containers, which would indicate they have a respectful growth habit: Pickle Bush, Potluck, Bush Champion, Parks Bush Whopper, Salad Bush, and Space Master. They're all are rated as suitable for containers. But you're right. Most cucumbers need some training if you're going to be planting them.

Gail Pothour

And to say you can plant more in a smaller space because they're not sprawling all over the ground. They still need to be spaced well enough so that you can get good air circulation because a lot of the crops in that cucurbit family can get powdery mildew. So you want to have good air circulation.

Farmer Fred

All right. If you like cucumbers, you can plant them. They're easy to grow. And the good news, like you mentioned, is that they grow easily from seed directly sown in the garden. How far apart would you space the seeds?

Gail Pothour

Well, if I was going to train them up a trellis, I would probably grow them a couple feet apart. If you're not going to do them in a trellis, people typically do them in a hill. I have not grown them in hills, but you would plant several in a hill and then thin them to two. I would probably do them three or four feet apart. I want to get plenty of air circulation if they're sprawling, if they're not grown up.

Farmer Fred

Probably one of the biggest complaints you might hear about cucumbers is bitterness. And they experience bitterness, especially those that they've grown for fresh use or for pickling. And that's due to the formation of some compounds that impart a bitter flavor to seedlings, roots, stems, leaves, and fruit. And one of the easiest ways, according to the University of California, Davis, the easiest way to control the bitterness is basically to cut off the end and skin it, really. And that can help control the bitterness.

Gail Pothour

Yeah. And those compounds you're talking about, and I've been wanting to say this all day, are cucurbitisins. And that's the compound that does make the fruit bitter. Also it’s the compound that attracts cucumber beetles. So I know that they're trying to breed cucumbers that don't have compounds in them so the cucumber beetles won't be attracted to them. But there are some varieties you can grow that are reliably not bitter. So an Armenian cucumber is one, which by the way, is actually a melon. Lemon cucumbers and any of them that are Persian, those tend to not be bitter.

Farmer Fred

Also avoid growing cucumbers in cool or shaded locations and they need regular moisture too, as well as regular fertilization. And usually if you choose the new hybrid varieties, bitterness is much less of a problem. And again, if you do taste a bitter cucumber, try peeling away the skin and the outer flesh and removing the stem end.

Gail Pothour

Yeah, because I think that's where the bitterness tends to accumulate or at least start is at that stem end. So yeah, but since I don't grow cucumbers all that often, I haven't experienced bitter cucumbers very often.

Farmer Fred

Some of the varieties that are also recommended for burpless cucumbers, if there is such a thing. Sweet Slice is recommended by UC Davis for being burpless.

Gail Pothour

My husband would appreciate that. That's why he doesn't eat them.

Farmer Fred

Interesting that they note that burpless cucumbers tend to be long and slender with a tender skin, and the bitterness associated with the burp has been removed. Other causes of bitterness in cucumbers include temperature variation of more than 20 degrees, moisture stress and storage of cucumbers near other ripening vegetables. So it sounds like ethylene gas is an issue here.

Gail Pothour

It certainly does.

Sweet Peppers: Color and Flavor

Farmer Fred

Number three on the National Garden Association of the 10 Most Popular Garden Vegetables, sweet peppers. And they actually broke it out from hot peppers. I find that interesting. But hot peppers is on the list, too. So we will get to them a little bit later. I probably now grow more. I do grow more sweet peppers than I do tomato plants. Who would have thunk? It's just that there are so many different colors and tastes and aromas. And just the beauty of the sweet pepper in a salad is just so enticing. You want to try as many different varieties as possible, and they're going to change color as they grow for the most part.

Gail Pothour

Yeah, I find that I do have my favorites, but every year I try new ones. I'm looking for that perfect, big, blocky bell that has thick flesh, like the ones you buy at the grocery store, big, blocky, and I'm still searching for that. So the ones I'm doing this year, most of them are new to me, still a couple of tried and true favorites. But yeah, I have a long list of my favorite sweet peppers.

Farmer Fred

Well, I tell you what, if I have a Big Red or Early Sunsation left over from planting, you can have them. They are big, blocky, tasty peppers, sweet peppers. The Early Sunsation ripens to a really nice golden yellow and big red, just like the name implies, is big and red and blocky.

Gail Pothour

Hmm. Okay. I would love to try that. Yes.

Farmer Fred

Okay, good. I'm moving plants today, too. Good.

Gail Pothour

Oh, are you? Okay. One of my favorites that had become a favorite, I grew it for the first time last year, it had an astonishing yield. It was called Sweet Roaster. It's a hybrid. It's a tall plant. It got about three feet tall. And it has elongated like six to seven inch long peppers that are a couple of inches wide. They mature from green to red. And I had to double check my notes to be sure that this was right, but I harvested 22 peppers on it.

Farmer Fred

How many?

Gail Pothour

72. I had to go back and look at my calculation. I said, that can't be right. I do a tick mark for everyone at 72. It was amazing. Wow.

Farmer Fred

Among the hybrid sweet peppers that are recommended by University of California Davis include Gypsy, which is one of my favorites.

Gail Pothour

My favorite too.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, I think I've planted Gypsy for the last 40 years and it hasn't let me down yet. They also recommend, I don't know why, the Yolo Wonder and the California Wonder, which are two big blocky peppers, they are sweet peppers that you'd find in a grocery store. That sort of big green, you know, a dollar each look to it. But to me, they're just kind of bland.

Gail Pothour

Yeah, I agree. I tried them once and that's it. They were just kind of ordinary, nothing special about them. So they didn't make my list of favorites.

Farmer Fred

One of my favorite blocky bell-shaped peppers to grow is Tequila. It is just a beautiful, deep purple color with an aroma that is, I have yet to find another pepper with the aroma of tequila.

Gail Pothour

Can you still find seeds for those? I've had difficulty finding that.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, I didn't have any problems finding them. Let's see. I've been checking catalogs around and I saw the Tequila pepper in  the Totally Tomatoes catalog. Go figure.

Gail Pothour

Oh, okay. That's one that I used to grow and I really liked it. And somehow it's dropped off my radar when I tried finding that I couldn't. So I didn't do an extensive search apparently.

Farmer Fred

All right. I'm adding Tequila to the Big Red and Early Sunsation list for you. Okay. Yeah, we're going to move out more plants. All right. This is good. You know, here's a planting tip that I didn't realize until this year how effective it is. And this has to do with planting tomatoes or peppers. And Don Shor of Redwood Barn Nursery shared this with us a few weeks ago. And he was saying, if you just transplant those, either the nursery-bought tomatoes or peppers, but especially tomatoes, transplant them into one-gallon containers three weeks or so before you plant them outdoors. They take on a vigor that will surprise you and will probably end up producing tomatoes especially quicker than if you planted it from a four-inch pot. Because there's less stress. If you leave that four-inch pot or, heaven forbid, a six-pack of vegetables in those teeny tiny little containers for any length of time, they get root-bound. They get stressed. As soon as you can, even if you're not thinking of planting it for a month or so, go ahead and transfer them into one-gallon containers with some good quality potting soil. I am amazed at the size difference in the tomatoes that have been transplanted in just the last two weeks.

Gail Pothour

I can attest to that as well. I started some tomatoes for my niece who lives in Fresno, and they're about a month ahead of us. So I start her tomatoes in early February. I start mine the end of February. So about a month difference. Hers ended up going from four-inch pot to one gallon to two gallons.  And they were over three feet tall and stocky and gorgeous. The ones I started a month later, some of them are still in four inch pots. They're ready to go into bigger, but they are just stunted in comparison. I mean, they're doing well, but I mean, the size difference and the thickness of the stems is just amazing.  They need to go in bigger pods, and I will do that next year. My problem is I ran out of bigger pots.

Farmer Fred

Well, it's worth the investment, I think.

Gail Pothour

I think you're right.

Farmer Fred

And if you check with your neighbors, I bet somebody's got a pile of one-gallon containers behind their garage.

Gail Pothour

I'm sure.

Farmer Fred

More than likely. But even the peppers that I transplanted from the four-inch containers into one-gallon containers, they're bigger and stockier as well. Not as dramatic as tomatoes, but the sweet pepper plants are much bigger as well.

Gail Pothour

And something else I've been doing the last couple of years is following Debbie Flowers' technique of germinating pepper seeds. And I've become a believer because pepper seeds typically take several weeks. I mean, they're slow to germinate, even with a heating mat. Her technique is soaking the seeds in hydrogen peroxide for 10 minutes. And I'm a believer. That's the way I'm going to be germinating them from now on. It seems to be really working. I don't know why. If it just softens a seed coat, if it, I mean, I don't know. But it has worked for me really well.

Farmer Fred

It's worked for me as well. Well, it's taken the germination from what used to be three weeks down to about a week and a half.

Gail Pothour

Right. The same here. Yes.

Farmer Fred

Another option, too, in that regard, too, is to germinate the pepper seeds between moist coffee filters. And as soon as they germinate, as soon as you see that little root come out, plant it in a seed starting mix and you can get plants quicker that way, too.

Gail Pothour

Good idea. I haven't tried that. I will. I will.

Beans: A Versatile Crop

Farmer Fred

Going on to number four on the top ten list of the home garden plants worth trying in your garden are Beans. Now, originally, the National Garden Association said green beans. But I think beans in general are recommended and very tasty, too.

Gail Pothour

Probably snap beans, maybe more so than dry beans or something, although I do grow dry beans as well. But if it's snap beans, the typical bean, mostly it's green beans you see in the grocery store or whatever. But there's also yellow beans that are called wax beans sometimes. And there's purple beans as well. There's some that are slender and flat. Those are the Roma type. Those are my favorite. And then there's varieties that are a bush or pole. So some will need support, a tall support, the pole especially.

Farmer Fred

Canned string beans, what are they made of?

Gail Pothour

Canned string beans?

Farmer Fred

Yes, string beans that you'd buy in a can. What kind of bean is that?

Gail Pothour

I don't know. I mean, I would assume it's, I don't know.

Farmer Fred

I don't know either.

Gail Pothour

It doesn't list the variety name on the container, so I don't know.

Farmer Fred

And there is, I mean, if you went looking for string bean seeds, I'm not so sure you would find any.

Gail Pothour

Yeah, I don't know.

Farmer Fred

Well, maybe there's snap bush green beans, and that would include things like Contender, Harvester, Roman, or Tender Crop. Among the snap pole green beans are Kentucky Wonder, Romano, and Scarlet Runner. And Scarlet Runner has the attractive scarlet flowers as well.

Gail Pothour

Right. Depending on where you live, you may not get a crop or much of a crop of beans. They dislike hot summer that we have here in the Sacramento area. We still get flowers on them, but we don't get beans. I know down in the Bay Area or cooler summer areas, you can get beans on them, but up here, it's ornamental and they're beautiful flowers.

Farmer Fred

Now, that's not to say that there aren't warm season legumes like certain bush beans that can grow here in the summertime. And some heirloom varieties. I grew one called Bingo, which was very productive.

Gail Pothour

My favorite bush is a green bean that's called Strike. I've had great luck with that. Really prolific. the plants have been pretty disease resistant. And then we do like the Romano or the Roma type that are more flat, wider and flat. And I think they're meatier. They have a little different flavor. So that's a favorite one that I'll grow. And then I like to have color in my food. So I don't do just green beans. I'll do yellow beans and purple beans as well. The yellow one, my favorite is Roc d'Or, which happens to be an heirloom. And then Purple Queen, it's gorgeous. It's this deep purple. However, when you cook it or blanch it, it turns green.

Farmer Fred

Oh, that sounds interesting. Yeah. You know, the Internet knows everything. And I quickly did a search for string beans and it was the University of California again came up with the answer. Snap beans, also known as green or string beans. So you've got snap bush greens, the ones we mentioned, Contender, Harvester, Roman and Tender Crop and the Snap Pull green beans, the Kentucky Wonder, the Romano and the Scarlet Runner. So there's your string beans.

Gail Pothour

You know, I think they were called string beans way back when because they had strings on them. When you would cut the stem end off, you'd have to pull that string down. And I think that's, I have a recollection that that's why they called them string beans. But now they've bred them to be more tender and not have that string.

Farmer Fred

He was also a featured banjo player on Hee Haw.

Gail Pothour

Was that right? Oh, yeah. I'd forgotten about that. Yeah.

Farmer Fred

Okay. All right. So beans, there you go. The number four crop grown in home garden vegetables. And according to the National Garden Association, something like 37 percent of all gardeners have grown them in the past or will be growing them again. So beans are up on that list. 39 percent. All right.

CARROTS

Farmer Fred

Number five. Oh, boy, here we go. It's a crop that I think because it's a root crop, you can grow it just about year round, depending on your climate. Carrots.

Gail Pothour

I have actually never tried growing them in the summer here because I think we're too hot. I think the roots would be too woody. It's generally a fall crop into spring in our area. But yeah, carrots can be easy to grow. Depends on your soil. They do like to have deep loose soil, no stones or clods in them. If you have real heavy soil, there are varieties that are shorter and can maybe a little sturdier and can tunnel right through that clay, but they typically like to have a real loose soil. And you can get that if you have a raised bed. We have clay here. I couldn't grow carrots in my ground. I can do it in a raised bed or a large container.

Farmer Fred

And you're absolutely right. Or if you have rocky soil too and you want to grow carrots, it might be a good idea to grow the shorter varieties like Danvers Half Long.

Gail Pothour

And Danvers. And there's a type that's called a Chantenay and they're real blunt and sturdier. They're thicker at the top and they can just power their way through heavy soils easier than the ones you find at the grocery store, which typically are the Imperator types. They're long and slender and you really need to have good, loose, deep soil to grow those varieties.

Farmer Fred

Yep. A Raised bed is the perfect solution for growing carrots. And here in USDA Zone 9 in California, you can plant carrots from seed, which is, I don't even know if you can. Have you ever seen carrots at a nursery as a transplant?

Gail Pothour

I have actually. I have recently and I was astonished because I don't know how you would transplant a carrot without getting that root to be disturbed. I mean, it could twist or it could bend and that's what you're harvesting. And so you want good straight roots. So I don't know how you would do that.

Farmer Fred

Were they in just normal size containers or were they in like nine inch tall tree pots?

Gail Pothour

No, it was a six pack.

Farmer Fred

Oh, no.

Gail Pothour

Yeah.

Farmer Fred

Oh, my. Well, you can plant carrots from seed. That's a lot safer. And here in USDA Zone 9, You can plant them in March, April, May, and like you mentioned, the fall through winter planting season of August through December of planting carrots from seed. Debbie Flower once gave us a very good tip for planting carrot seeds. Because they're so small, they're very difficult to put them in place one inch apart. They tend to,  because they're so small, there's a clump of them and you need to get that thinned out so that they stand two or three inches apart, ideally. And one of her students came up with it, and they used moist chopsticks. They dipped the chopstick in water and then dipped it in a bowl of carrot seed and then we're very carefully shoving the carrot seeds off the chopstick into place in the garden, a couple of inches apart. That seems to work.

Gail Pothour

I haven't heard of that. I'll have to give that a try. Because, yeah, carrots, the seeds are so tiny that it's impossible to, almost impossible, to spread them out at their ultimate thinned destination. But, wow. Okay, I'll have to try that. They do take a long time to germinate, I have found. I mean, it could take several weeks, three, even three or four weeks. So you've got to keep them pretty moist. And at the Horticulture Center, what we typically do is put a piece of Agribon row cover over it. You could use burlap or whatever and then soak that. And that would keep the soil moist until they start to come up. But they have a long germination period.

Farmer Fred

Another tip to help thwart that waiting period or at least let you know that, oh, “I’ve planted there. I better not disturb that soil”. Well, Debbie Flower gave us this tip is to plant radishes nearby the carrot seeds because radishes germinate so quickly, it will let you know that there are carrots also waiting to come up in that spot. So don't go digging around there.

Gail Pothour

That's right. Yeah, that's a good tip to do. And radishes germinate so quickly and you'll have them harvested before the carrots are even ready to thin much. So, yeah, that's a good tip.

HOW TO GROW CILANTRO IN A HOT SUMMER CLIMATE

Farmer Fred

All right. Right. We can't finish yet, though, because I got to tell you the tip for growing cilantro in the summertime.

Gail Pothour

Oh, yes.

Farmer Fred

This tip came from Renee Shepard of Renee's Garden Seeds. And I was discussing this with her once and her supplier of cilantro seeds, who does it in the Bay Area, told her that when he wants a crop of cilantro in the summertime, what he does is he grows it as microgreens, in a shady area. He will just every couple of weeks scatter seeds across a flat in some good potting soil or seed starting mix. And let them grow one to two inches tall, and then harvest those microgreens, those cilantro microgreens, and use it just like regular cilantro.

Gail Pothour

And I grow microgreens all the time. It never occurred to me to do cilantro. And he does them outside.

Farmer Fred

And he does them outside, yeah. Okay. All right, because they don't have time to bolt.

Gail Pothour

That's true. Oh, I'm going to give that a try. Yes, thank you.

SMART POTS

Farmer Fred

Smart Pots are the original award-winning fabric planter they're sold worldwide smart pots are proudly made 100% in the USA. Smart Pots are also BPA free, there's no risk of chemicals leaching into the soil, your herbs, vegetables, and other edibles. That's why organic growers prefer Smart Pots. Smart Pots breathable fabric creates a healthy root structure for plants. Smart Pots come in a wide array of sizes and they can be reused year after year. Speaking of the cold weather that's on the way, if a frost or freeze is in the forecast, moving your frost tender plants that are in the Smart Pots that have handles. That makes them even easier to move closer to the house for added warmth, or you could even move them inside for the winter. Visit smartpots.com slash Fred for more information about the complete line of SmartPots lightweight fabric containers. It's SmartPots, the original award-winning fabric planter. Go to SmartPots.com slash Fred for more info and that special Farmer Fred discount on your next SmartPot purchase. Go to SmartPots.com slash Fred. 

DAVE WILSON NURSERY

Farmer Fred

If you haven't shopped at your favorite independently owned nursery lately, well, you're missing out. Now arriving, our Dave Wilson Nursery's excellent lineup of Farmer's Market favorites. It's great tasting and healthy fruit and nut varieties. They're already potted up and ready to be planted. We're talking about almonds, blackberries, blueberries, boysenberries, figs, grapes, hops, kiwi, mulberries, olives, pomegranates, and much more. Oh, you want more? Well, here you go. Your favorite Dave Wilson bare root deciduous fruit trees are arriving. Peaches, plums, cherries, including my favorite, the plum apricot cross, the pluot. Wholesale grower Dave Wilson Nursery has probably the best lineup of great-tasting fruit and nut trees of any grower in the United States. Find out more at their website, DaveWilson.com. And while you're there, check out all the videos they have on how to plant and grow all their delicious varieties of fruit and nut trees. Plus, at DaveWilson.com, you're going to find the nursery nearest you that carries Dave Wilson's plants. Your harvest to better health begins at DaveWilson.com.

 AMERICA’S TOP 10 VEGETABLES TO GROW AND ENJOY, Pt. 2

Farmer Fred

Let's get back to our conversation with Master Gardener and vegetable expert Gail Pothour about America's favorite vegetables to grow and enjoy.

Farmer Fred

We're on to part two of the top 10 most popular garden vegetables to grow. It includes summer squash, onions, hot peppers, lettuce, and peas. That, according to the National Garden Association and the Rapid City, South Dakota Journal newspaper. Gail, let's get going on six through 10.

Gail Pothour

Yes, let's do that.

SUMMER SQUASH

Farmer Fred

Moving on to number six in the most popular garden vegetables to plant at home. I laugh because, well, who hasn't had way too many zucchini summer squash? And zucchini is just one form of summer squash. There's all sorts of summer squashes.

Gail Pothour

Oh, yeah. In fact, some of my favorites, my favorite heirloom zucchini, another heirloom is I'm interested more in heirlooms for tomatoes for the flavors. But there are some other crops that have heirlooms that are really good. It's called Ortolana di Faenza. I don't know how to say it in Italian, but it's a light green zucchini instead of that dark black green that a typical zucchini has. Real prolific, and so I grow that every year. And then there's yellow crookneck, or there's the scallop or the patty pan. So there's a lot of different ones. I love Butterbelly. That happens to be a hybrid yellow crookneck. And I grew it up a pallet last year. It's a bush variety, but I wanted to get it up off the ground. So I propped up a pallet and grew it up the pallet and it saved space and it was easier to pick. And it was an outstanding variety. It was new for me last year. Zephyr is always a good one. It's a yellow crookneck with green at the bottom, kind of a light green color. And then my favorite scallop is Sunburst. It's a yellow patty pan with a green button on the bottom. And that happens to be an All-America selection winner.

Farmer Fred

Among the scallops that are recommended by UC Davis, and these are varieties that you'd probably find at your local nursery if you wanted to plant them from transplants. But they're really best planted from seed. But refer back to our story of why you don't want to cram the roots.

Gail Pothour

Oh, yeah. just like cucumbers they don't want their roots disturbed.

Farmer Fred

Yeah that's why it really is much easier from seed on on summer squash but Peter Pan hybrid, Sunburst, Scallopini, early white Bush are the scallops recommendations. Among the yellow summer squashes they like Early Prolific Straightneck, Sundance, Early Golden summer crooknet, Dixie. And among the zucchini varieties: Aristocrat, Grayzini, Ambassador. Gold Rush, and Burpee Fordhook. I think a lot of the problems that people have with summer squash is, well, first of all, they're doing the right thing by planting from seed. And usually the recommendations from planting by seed say, mound the soil up about eight inches tall and about 12 inches wide, sort of like a plateau of really enriched soil, maybe mix some manure in there. And then in that plateau, that is 12 inches across, put six seeds in a circle.

Gail Pothour

And then wait.

Farmer Fred

And then you don't thin them.

Gail Pothour

No?

Farmer Fred

Well, you feel like, “oh, look, it's growing. I don't want to take that out”. No. Oh, you better. Honestly, if you have, let's say, two mounds of zucchini seeds planted, and you've got six seeds in each, and you want a normal-sized garden, and you don't want too much zucchini, thin it out to one per hill. Good luck on that.

Gail Pothour

Yeah. I am sort of hesitant in that I'm going to grow two different squash this year. Generally, I do one. That's plenty for me and my husband. But I'm going to do my favorite zucchini and the yellow crookneck, the Butter Belly. I'm going to do two different plants, and I'm thinking I might be crazy because that's probably twice as much squash as I need. I've already been collecting recipes on what to do with all that squash. Good idea. But, yeah, it's very prolific. And if you keep harvesting them when they're small, that will keep them producing. If you want to stop the production, let them grow to a baseball bat, and that will slow them down a little bit.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, okay.

Gail Pothour

Yeah.

Farmer Fred

Ideally, for best flavor, they're best harvested when they're eight inches or less.

Gail Pothour

Right. They'll get too seedy otherwise. They're starting to get over mature and they'll get real seedy inside. So, yeah.

Farmer Fred

A lot of people, they plant the seeds, the zucchini seeds or the squash seeds in May. And by June, they are complaining, look, look at the fruit that's coming out. It's stunted. It's short. It doesn't look right. What's going on? It's usually incomplete pollination because of the fact that they have separate male and female flowers and they don't produce male and female flowers necessarily on the same day if it's too hot or too cold. And well, the bees sometimes don't help out very much, but usually it's that incomplete pollination. But if you're just patient, if you just wait, you'll get normal size zucchini wwhen the weather will even out and you will have more zucchini than you know what to do with.

Gail Pothour

Exactly. Yeah, and generally the male flowers start out first. Right. And so you'll have all these flowers and you think, I have no fruit. Well, the female flower will have a little immature fruit at the base of it. And so you can tell the difference. And the males start first, then the females, when they need to get in sync with each other in the morning because generally they're viable in the morning. And it takes a while and the weather can disrupt that. So, yeah, you just got to be patient.

Farmer Fred

As the University of California, Davis says, under good growing conditions, fruits are ready for first harvest 50 to 65 days after seeds are planted. And in the world of summer vegetables, that's pretty darn quick.

Gail Pothour

It is quick. Yes.

ONIONS

Farmer Fred

Moving on in our list of the 10 most popular garden vegetables to grow at home. Number seven is onions. And onions, Gail, take patience.

Gail Pothour

Oh, absolutely. And I find growing bulbing onions, a typical big onion, to kind of be a challenge. So I rarely grow onions in my own garden. If I do grow them, I'm going to grow one variety and it's called Stockton Red. And it's getting  more difficult to find seeds for Stockton Red, but that's one that I really like. But onions are day-length sensitive. So you need to grow a type of onion, whether it's long day, short day, intermediate day, or day neutral, depending on your latitude. I think that's where a lot of people have problems, they are growing a variety that maybe isn't suited for their latitude. And so they either bolt prematurely or they don't bulb at all. So with Sacramento being in about a 38 degree latitude, we're an intermediate day-length. So choose varieties that say they're intermediate day or that are day neutral. Day neutral means it doesn't matter. Anybody can grow them. So that's kind of the key. And where I've run into problems, if I buy sets or something, They don't necessarily tell you if they're long day, short day, intermediate day, whatever. And so I'm buying the wrong variety. Stockton Reds, if you can find them, will do well here. So that's an intermediate day. But onions can be a challenge. And so as I say, I don't grow them that often. I'll grow green onions or I'm currently growing Egyptian walking onions, but bulbing onions I don't do too often.

Farmer Fred

Generally, onions are planted in late summer, early fall here in USDA Zone 9, September, October, and aren't harvested until June or July if you're going for the bulbing onions. Now, green onions are a different story. Green onions include scallions. You can grow those year-round here. Varieties like evergreen white, southport white, white sweet Spanish, white Lisbon, Tokyo long white, which I planted for the first time this year. And if you use a lot of green onions in your recipe preparations, always have a pot of onions growing.

Gail Pothour

That's what I found. Green onions are something that I use more. Well, I use regular onions a lot too, but I use a lot of green onions. And so those are easy to grow. I can grow them in a container. I can grow them practically any time of the year. If it's too hot, I can move them into the shade. So yeah, that's a good one to grow.

Farmer Fred

Yeah. Unfortunately, by the time they are ready to harvest, it's not like you can take the onions out and plant something else. Actually, you could. When the onions are harvested, if you reinvigorate the soil, you could probably put in zucchini or another summer squash or a winter squash.

Gail Pothour

Or set that space aside for planting your fall crop, because some of those can go in in August or September. They like to have warm soil to germinate, but they don't necessarily like to have heat to mature. They need cool climate to mature. So a lot of our cool season crops, we would start growing when the soil is still warm, but we want them to mature when it's cooler out. So once you took those onions out, you could then plant something for the fall.

Farmer Fred

Among the onion bulbing varieties recommended by the University of California, Davis's Vegetable Research and Information Center are Grano, Granex, California Early Red, Fiesta, Yellow Sweet Spanish, White Sweet Spanish, Southport White Globe, Southport Red Globe, and the Stockton Yellow Globe.

Gail Pothour

No Stockton Red in there, huh? We actually did an onion variety trial almost 10 years ago at the Fair Oaks Horticulture Center where we grew several varieties of long day, intermediate day, and short day to see how they would do in our climate. And all the long day bolted and some of the short day did as well. But that's what's critical is to grow the right type. And what I mean by long day, intermediate day, and short day is if you look at a map and you see your latitude, long days are going to be up north. So they need 14 to 16 hours of daylight in order for the bulbing to start. Intermediate day is 12 to 14 hours. Short day is 10 to 12 hours. That's down south. So it does have a lot to do with your latitude.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, exactly. if you live in Edmonton, you can grow long day onions.

Gail Pothour

And we did grow them here and we found they don't do that well. So it doesn't work.

Farmer Fred

I am not surprised on that. 

HOT PEPPERS

Farmer Fred

Well, here at Barking Dog Studios, we are running through the top 10 list of the most popular garden vegetables to grow. We now come to number eight on our list and it's time for the hot peppers to shine. Hot peppers, the eighth most popular home garden vegetable to grow. 31% of gardeners across the United States say they grow hot peppers. And they range from mildly spicy to thermonuclear. There's all kinds of varieties to suit many tastes and degrees of heat tolerance. There are some mildly warm ones that I like to grow, like Numex Joe E. Parker. That doesn't offend my taste buds too much. But for those that like it hot, really, really, really hot, you can grow those ghost peppers, the Bhut Jalokia, the Charleston, and the others. But there's a lot of good, tasty warm peppers, too, like Anaheim or Fresno, or even some of the jalapenos.

Gail Pothour

Yeah, I'm just shaking my head. I don't eat chilies. I can't tolerate that heat. So one of the Hot peppers that I grow is called “Tricked You”. It's a heatless jalapeno. So it's not classified as a sweet pepper, but it's a heatless jalapeno. And I grow that every year. And it's a hybrid that does great and has huge yields. I like the flavor of the jalapeno without the heat. And that's what you get. My husband, on the other hand, likes hot peppers. And so every year I grow a little hanging basket of Pot-A-Peno. It's a little miniature jalapeno. It's an All-America selection winner. The fruits are only one to two inches long. And so I satisfy his heat requirement with those. But that's a good one to grow in a container. I could grow it in a hanging basket like we do. And we also do it at the horticulture center in a hanging basket or a small container. It's very prolific for something that size.

Farmer Fred

I grew one last year called Nada Peño. And it looks like a jalapeno, but it's not hot at all. And it was actually very tasty. I couldn't convince my wife, though, to cook with it because she was convinced it was a hot pepper. And she wouldn't take a bite of it because she won't fall for that trick again. And so I would eat it in front of her. Look, it's not hot. See, am I running for water? No, I'm not. But no, she says. Nada Peño looks like a jalapeno, but there is very little heat associated with it. We mentioned some of the varieties that are popular that are fairly mild in their heat. The Anaheim, for example, the Hungarian yellow wax, which is moderately hot. That isn't too bad. And among the heirlooms, as I mentioned, Numex Joe E. Parker is one of my favorites with a wonderful flavor, too. The problem with a lot of hot peppers is the heat overwhelms the flavor. You miss the flavor.

Gail Pothour

Well, that's why I like the Tricked You jalapeno because I can actually taste the jalapeno and I like the flavor of it. The heat just kind of overpowers. So, yeah, I'll leave the hot peppers to other people.

Farmer Fred

There's another pepper out there called Shishito. You talk to some people, they'll say, oh, it's a sweet pepper. You talk to others, they'll say, oh, it's a hot pepper. I've grown Shishito. So I grew them for three years in a row because I couldn't figure out why nine out of 10 of the peppers at any one time that had ripened on the plant would be mild. But there was one that was hot.

Gail Pothour

And you never knew which one was hot.

Farmer Fred

They all looked the same. It wasn't a case of it had changed color or anything like that. So the Shishito, I think, is a tricky pepper. If you want to play Russian roulette with your mouth, get the Shishito.

Gail Pothour

I actually did try it one year. Someone convinced me to try it. They said, they're so good, you pan fry them, and oh, they're great. So I did grow them, and I did hear that occasionally you'll get a hot one. Well, every one I had was hot. And I read somewhere where they say you have to be sure to pick them when they're small. If they start getting larger, they'll all be hot. So I've not tried them since, but...

Farmer Fred

Well, that's a good tip to have.

Lettuce: A Cool Season Favorite. Plus: SWISS CHARD

Farmer Fred

All right. Now we come to number nine on the list of the 10 most popular garden vegetables. And it's a cool season crop here in California. If you live in a very mild climate such as the Bay Area of California, you can certainly grow all the lettuce varieties you want most of the year. Lettuce. And I can see why people grow lettuce. And I hope that you try something different than Iceberg. Iceberg, to me, is the most nutritionless, tasteless lettuce that has fallen into mass marketing because there's a lot of leaf lettuce varieties that are so much tastier and also can withstand heat better than iceberg.

Gail Pothour

Yeah, I'm going to say Iceberg doesn't do that well in the Sacramento area. We're too hot. And so we generally recommend to try a loose leaf or romaine or one of the butterhead types. But if you have to have an Iceberg, pick that up at the store. Don't try growing it. It won't do that well here.

Farmer Fred

Yeah, it's a waste of space, as a matter of fact. Now, I have been on a lifelong garden search for a lettuce variety, a loose leaf lettuce variety that can take the summer heat here. Some are better than others as far as getting maybe through July. But it seems like when July turns into August, they all start bolting.

Gail Pothour

Right. And actually, several years ago, we did an experiment two years in a row at the horticulture center because we get this question a lot. Why can't I grow lettuce in the summer? So we thought, OK, let's find some varieties and grow them through the heat of summer and see how they do. First off, you need to start with some varieties that are heat resistant, like Jericho. That was bred in Israel, so it's a little more heat resistant. And we tried a half dozen or so different varieties. We monitored when we planted them, how many weeks it was before they started bolting. Some did better than others. Some did pretty well. But what we found is you need to mulch heavily to keep the moisture in, keep them well watered, provide shade during their entire lifespan in the summer, and then be prepared as soon as one starts to bolt, take it out, and then replant with another transplant. So kind of a succession planting. It is possible, but it's a lot of work. Let's say it takes a lot of water and shading and monitoring. Not sure if it's worth it or grow it in the shade if you have a shady location. But often it's not just the sunlight, it's the heat. And even in the shade in Sacramento, we can be fairly warm in the summertime. So it's a tough thing to do.

Farmer Fred

The closest green I've found that can be grown year round, and especially if you do it in the shade, it does okay here. and that's Swiss chard.

Gail Pothour

Right. Yeah, that can be grown year round. I have done it in an area of my yard where it got some afternoon shade in the summertime and it was able to over-summer. But yeah, any of the other leafy greens are going to be a little tough. One of my favorites, oh, absolute favorite lettuce is called Pomegranate Crunch. It's a red romaine and it is very good. I get it as pelleted seeds, which makes it a little bit easier to germinate. Lettuce can have a difficult time germinating. Lettuce does need light in order to germinate. So don't plant the seed too deeply. Pelleted seeds don't have that problem. But I think if sometimes people have difficulty getting lettuce to germinate because maybe they buried it too far. It needs light. It's one of the few vegetables that needs light to germinate.

Farmer Fred

And I believe it's one of those seeds that will not germinate in heat.

Gail Pothour

 Right, right. If you tried sowing lettuce seed in the summer, maybe for a fall crop, if your soil temperature is too warm, the lettuce seed can go dormant. So if you're also starting it indoors, whereas I use a heating mat to get a lot of my seeds to germinate, you don't use a heating mat for lettuce because the soil will be too warm and lettuce seeds will go dormant in heat.

Farmer Fred

Some of the varieties that have been recommended as heat-tolerant lettuces that I've grown over the years, and they're barely heat-tolerant, are Black-Seeded Simpson and Deer Tongue. They're pretty good, but like I said, they do eventually bolt. But if you're looking for a…first of all, I think one good rule to remember is if you want lettuce to last in the yard as long as possible, grow loose-leaf varieties, not head lettuce.

Gail Pothour

Right. And of the ones that we did in our heat-tolerant trial, The ones that did well, besides Jericho, was Year-Round Bronze. It's an oak leaf. And it was late to bolt in the summer, so it actually did very well. Red Cross is a red butterhead. Merlot, a dark red leaf lettuce. And “Paradai”, a red oak leaf. That's one of my favorites, but I can no longer find seeds for it. And then Nevada, it's a green loose leaf, kind of a semi-heading type. So all those did well, as well as can be expected in our summer heat. So they did better than a lot of other varieties.

Farmer Fred

I'm glad you mentioned Nevada because I have grown that one before and it was pretty good. But I think if you want a dependable green, do the Swiss chard.

Farmer Fred

Another variety of a green that can withstand the summer heat that I recently discovered is Tokyo Bekana. Tokyo Bekana is a type of Asian cabbage, described as a cross between Napa cabbage, bok choy and lettuce.

Tokyo Bekana can be eaten raw in salads, or cooked.

Roasting, grilling or searing brings out a delicious nutty flavor.

Add it to stir-fry recipes for a succulent crunch.

When searching for recipes, try looking for recipes that use bok choy or Napa cabbage, and substitute Tokyo Bekana instead.

It is a distinct, loose-heading heirloom variety of Chinese cabbage that is native to Japan. Also known as Small Chinese cabbage, Tokyo Bekana is a fast-growing variety that can be harvested at multiple stages of maturity, including microgreen, baby leaf, petite leaf, and at full size. Tokyo Bekana cabbage is a cut-and-come-again variety, providing several crops throughout the season, and is favored for its mild flavor and delicate texture.  Tokyo Bekana is also an excellent source of fiber.

Gail Pothour

Right. I agree.

Peas: Sweet and Succulent

Farmer Fred

All right. Well, let's wrap this up with the number 10 most popular garden vegetable grown, according to the National Garden Association and the Rapid City Journal, the Rapid City, South Dakota Journal newspaper.  It's peas. I think a lot about peas. I'm looking out my window here. And through the Abutilon jungle I’m looking at what I have growing in barrels, and I've got some Oregon II sugar pod peas.

Gail Pothour

I don't grow a lot of peas at home, but we grow them at the Horticulture Center. And there's a new one that we're growing. It's an All-America Selection winner called Snack Hero. It's a relatively new winner. And it was amazing. It looks like a green bean. So it's more cylindrical, long and slender like a green bean is, and about four inches long. And it was so tasty. We were snacking on them raw at our workday the other day. It's really good. But it's not a tall plant, maybe a couple feet tall. So we have it growing up an old umbrella frame that we have collapsed down to make like a pyramid. And then we ran some strings of it. So it's growing on that. But it was an exceptional variety. Very tasty, not woody or stringy at all. So really sweet, called Snack Hero.

Farmer Fred

When did you plant that?

Gail Pothour

Well, you know, they planted it when I was out of town. So it was probably in October,

Farmer Fred

Maybe. Okay, so there was a cool season pea.

Gail Pothour

Right. Yeah, and then we have another variety of snap pea growing up an umbrella frame that we've opened up and then run strings. Up or some kind of a mesh for them to grow up. So a lot of peas are vining type, so they need some kind of support. So that's one way to use up your old umbrella if that canvas is torn, grow them up an umbrella frame.

Farmer Fred

All right. There you go. The 10 most popular garden vegetables from tomatoes to cucumbers, sweet peppers, beans, carrots, summer squash, onions, hot peppers, lettuce, and peas. By the way, with peas, do you soak the seeds before you plant them?

Gail Pothour

 I don't know if we soak them or not since I wasn't here. You can. That's a good way to get them to germinate is soak them overnight, I've heard. I don't know if they need to be soaked that long.

Farmer Fred

Usually six hours or so is plenty of lukewarm water.

Gail Pothour

Yeah, I would think so.

Farmer Fred

Yeah. Now, you had mentioned before we started that you were disappointed that melons didn't make the top 10 list. I'm disappointed beets didn't make the top 10 list.

Gail Pothour

Yeah, I'm surprised at that as well. I thought beets would be on it. Well, it depends on the list. I've seen several top 10 lists and they have had potatoes on them, different things. So it just depends on which list you're looking at. But  if I had to pick between only two things to grow, it'd be tomatoes and melons, I think.

Farmer Fred

OK. And what I like about beets, this reminds me of something My uncle Hubert used to say back on the family farm in Beach, North Dakota. He raised pigs and he said, “we use all parts of the pig except the oink”. And beets are like that, because the entire plant is edible.

Gail Pothour

Oh, yeah. I can do beets as micro greens. Yeah. So you eat the tops all the time.

Farmer Fred

And the leaves this time of year are lush and make great salad material.

Gail Pothour

Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Okay. Well, my favorite melon is a musk melon, what we call cantaloupes here in the U.S. It is Sarah's Choice and one called Divergent. And I think those are my two favorites now. They're just so sweet. Oh, they're wonderful. So I'm growing them this year, as always.

Farmer Fred

My favorite beet variety to grow, because it reminds me of something psychedelic, is the Chioggia beet that has a concentric red ring throughout the entire middle.

Gail Pothour

Like a bullseye on a target.

Farmer Fred

Yeah. Yeah, and it's delicious, too.

Gail Pothour

Yeah, I'm not a big beet fan, but I've learned to eat them. But if I grow them, I like to do the golden beets. They're not as beety, I guess that's a word. So they're a little milder. But if I'm growing microgreens for the tops, I do Bull's Blood.

Farmer Fred

Ah, okay.

Gail Pothour

Yeah, it's real good for the tops.

Farmer Fred

And do you wear an apron during all this?

Gail Pothour

You have to because you get that red all over you, you know.

Farmer Fred

So, Gail Pothour, we have offered people a short, sweet education on growing home vegetables, and I hope more people try it this coming year.

Gail Pothour

We have, and it was fun. I enjoyed it.

Farmer Fred

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred comes out every Friday. It's brought to you by SmartPots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Garden Basics, it's available wherever podcasts are handed out. For more information about the podcast, as well as an accurate transcript, visit our website, GardenBasics.net. And thank you so much for listening and your support.