263 The Top Homegrown Vegetables Pt. 1

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GB 263 Transcript Top Vegs 1-5 FINAL

Farmer Fred  0:00

Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, 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/Fred.

Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, 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. Master Gardener and vegetable expert Gail Pothour and I talk about each of those 10, along with growing advice for each one, our favorite varieties, and tips for having more backyard success with those vegetables.

We actually got into such detail about each, we have to divide this chat into two episodes: today’s and next week’s Garden Basics podcasts. So today, we are talking tomatoes (no surprise there that is America’s favorite vegetable to grow) as well as cucumbers, sweet peppers, beans and carrots.

It’s all in today’s episode 263, the Top 10 Homegrown Vegetables, Part 1. 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, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!

TOP HOMEGROWN VEGETABLES, #1&2: TOMATOES AND CUCUMBERS

Farmer Fred

Have you ever wondered what are the top 10 garden vegetables that people grow in their backyards? 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 these Top 10, 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. 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% of gardeners saying, “we plant tomatoes”.

Gail Pothour  2:40

It's number one on every list I've ever seen or in 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  2:53

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  3:07

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

Farmer Fred  3:10

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

Gail Pothour  3:14

Oh, yeah, I would like to know. Mine suffer.

Farmer Fred  3:17

Remind me to tell you,  don't let me forget. All right. Let's start with the beginning gardener. If you're growing your first garden and you want tomatoes, America's most popular homegrown vegetable, start with something with training wheels, something that might be easy, and usually, the most seasoned gardeners will advise to 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  3:50

Right. Especially a cherry tomato, I think they pretty much can be grown by anyone anywhere, as long as they have some sun. Cherry tomatoes can take a little bit of shade. That’s unlike full size tomatoes or indeterminate tomatoes that need to have full sun, at least six to eight hours. Cherry tomatoes are 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 if we get into temperatures over 90 degrees. The cherry tomatoes will continue to produce. They're easy, they're small, they're great for kids to grow.

Farmer Fred  4:25

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

Gail Pothour  4:35

You need some air circulation to  avoid some of the fungal diseases. Tomatoes are a vine. There are different classifications of tomatoes and the types of fruit and the vines. There's indeterminate, determinate, and dwarf. Typically, indeterminates are long vines. 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 then the foliage On the ground, you can get diseases and insects and that sort of thing. So indeterminate tomatoes need to be caged or staked some way.

Farmer Fred  5:06

Exactly. A very good idea is to train those tomato plants. Use stakes or a cage. And you can make the cages out of sheets of concrete reinforcement wire; you can buy cages,  too. But I gotta tell you, if you're gonna buy tomato cages, make sure they're a good size. They should be at least four feet or five feet tall, with a diameter at the top of probably two to three feet, that would be ideal. And that goes back to how far apart you should plant your tomatoes as well, which would be to plant them at least three feet apart, if not four feet apart.

Gail Pothour  5:36

Right. I have 12 foot-long beds, and I will get four in there, maybe 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. Um, I have found that the four or five foot tall tomato cages generally aren't tall enough for some of the indeterminate varieties. So I have to put an extra piece on top to make it about six feet tall, because they can get six, seven feet tall.

Farmer Fred  6:10

What are some of your favorite tomato varieties to grow?

Gail Pothour  6:14

It's like asking, who is your favorite child? Well, I'm  in 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 include “Brad's Atomic Grape”, which is an open pollinated, variety, one that Brad Gates has developed for his Wild Boar Farms. And it's a kind of a grape tomato, which is a cherry tomato but it's elongated, kind of egg shaped,  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. That means you don't have to pick it right when it becomes ripe. It'll hang on the plant. I've been growing this variety the last several years and it's become one of my favorites.

Farmer Fred  7:01

I have so many favorites. I really am hesitant to mention just one or two. I'm going to defer to the vegetable experts at UC Davis at their Vegetable Research and Information Center. Who, when recommending cherry tomatoes, mentioned the “Cherry Grande”, “Sweet Cherry”, the “Sweet 100”, and the “Red Cherry”. For suitable container varieties as far as cherry tomatoes go, they name “Patio”, “Toyboy”, “Better Bush” and “Small Fry.”

Gail Pothour  7:34

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. Anything smaller and it would fall over, because it would become top heavy. So look for varieties that have “patio”  in their name, such as “patio boy” or it has the word “dwarf” in its name, indicating 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  8:15

Yes, indeed. I call them pepper cages.

Gail Pothour  8:19

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  it's an heirloom. It's called “Thorburn’s Terra-Cotta” and it's this most amazing terracotta color, It’s kind of orangey or honey brown in color, and it's it's amazing. The flavor is great, had pretty good yields on it. I like “Green Doctor”. that's actually my favorite cherry tomato. It is a green cherry that's prolific and 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 yellow. So, wait awhile until it  it has a yellow cast to it. One of the hybrids that I've been growing in the last over years is “Purple Boy” hybrid. And I've had really good luck with that. It's kind of a medium sized black-colored, which in the tomato world is kind of a dusky rose with purpley overtones and 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. It’s kind of squat, pear shaped red fruit with 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 which is great for cooking.

Farmer Fred  9:50

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

Gail Pothour  9:53

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

Farmer Fred  10:18

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, such as  Ace, Better Boy, Early Girl, Champion. Those are just a few of the ones that are, shall we say, normal size 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 mentioned my favorite beef steak heirloom tomato, such as Dr. Wyche’s Yellow, I know that somebody's going to try it and not have good luck with it.

Gail Pothour  11:12

That is right. I've tried Brandywine, which is  probably the gold standard for heirloom tomatoes. And I can't get Brandywine to grow. I've grown a couple of other heirlooms, such as Paul Robeson and Black Krim, that are supposed to be fabulous. And I got one fruit on it. So yeah, I stick with the heirlooms that I have success with.

Farmer Fred  11:36

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  11:56

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 variety. It's small, like baby cucumbers. So you pick them when they're little. And they are 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. For planting cucumbers, we won’t 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  12:49

Remember. we're talking soil temperature here. And right now, even here in sunny California,  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.

Gail Pothour  13:17

Yeah, and cucumbers are something that you can plant all through the summer here. They grow fairly quickly, they produce quickly. So you don't have to start  early in April or in early May, late April or early May. Wait until  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. But remember, 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, 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  14:14

And the easiest way to do that is to 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  14:24

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. Grow them up a trellis and it makes for straighter fruits and you get better air circulation that way as well.

Farmer Fred  14:36

According to the Vegetable Research Information Center at UC Davis. some of the varieties they recommend for containers (which would indicate they have a smaller growth habit): Pickle Bush, Bush Champion, Parks Bush Whopper, Salad Bush, and Spacemaster. 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  15:07

And they say, by trellising, 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. A lot of the crops in that cucurbit family can get powdery mildew, so you want to have good air circulation.

Farmer Fred  15:25

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

Gail Pothour  15:36

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 the hill and then thin them to 2 plants. 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  16:02

Probably one of the biggest complaints you might hear about cucumbers is bitterness. And they can 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 the skin on that end. And that can help control the bitterness.

Gail Pothour  16:38

Yeah, and those compounds you're talking about, and I've been wanting to say this all day, is cucurbitacins. And that's the compound that does make the fruit bitter. It's also the compound that attracts cucumber beetles. So I know that they're trying to breed cucumbers that don't have those 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  17:18

Also avoid growing cucumbers in cool or shaded locations. 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  17:40

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

Farmer Fred  17:51

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  18:05

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

Farmer Fred  18:08

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.

Gail Pothour  18:31

It certainly does.

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TOP HOMEGROWN VEGETABLES, #3: SWEET PEPPERS

Farmer Fred

Number three on the National Garden Association of the 10 most popular garden vegetables are 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 sweet peppers than I do tomato plants. who would have thunk that? It's just 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 more mature for the most part.

Gail Pothour  21:19

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 pepper that has thick flesh, like the ones you buy at the grocery store. Big and blocky. 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  21:44

Well, I tell you a what. if I have a Big Red or Early Sunsation peppers that are leftover after 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  22:04

Okay, I would love to try that.

Farmer Fred  22:07

Good. yay! we’re moving plants today.

Gail Pothour  22:10

One of my favorites that has become a favorite when I grew it for the first time last year had 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, 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 72 peppers on it. I had to go back and look at my calculations, thinking, “that can't be right”. I do a tick mark for everyone and it came out to 72. It was amazing. Wow. Yeah.

Farmer Fred  22:51

Among the hybrid sweet peppers that are recommended by University of California Davis include “Gypsy’ which is one of my favorites. My favorite, too. 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 pepper sweet peppers that you'd find in a grocery store, that sort of big green,”$1 each” look. But to me, they're just kind of bland.

Gail Pothour  23:22

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

Farmer Fred  23:31

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

Gail Pothour  23:46

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

Farmer Fred  23:49

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, obviously, the Totally Tomatoes catalog. Go figure.

Gail Pothour  24:01

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  24:10

All right, I'm adding Tequila to the big red and early sensation list. We're gonna move out more plants. All right. This is good. 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 in Davis, CA  shared that with us a few weeks ago. 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 will take on a vigor that will surprise you and will probably end up producing tomatoes quicker than if you planted it from a four-inch pot,  because there's less stress. If you leave that plant in a 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, and they get stressed. 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 I have been transplanting into the larger containers in just the last three weeks.

Gail Pothour  25:34

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 at 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 that 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. They're doing well, but I mean that size difference and the thickness of the stem is just amazing. Yeah, I agree. They need to go in bigger pots, and I will do that next year. My problem is I ran out of bigger pots.

Farmer Fred  26:21

Well, it's worth the investment.  Check with your neighbors. I bet somebody's got a pile of one gallon containers behind their garage. I'm sure more than likely. 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  26:45

And something else I've been doing the last couple of yours is following Debbie Flower’s technique of germinating pepper seeds, and I've become a believer, because pepper seeds typically take several weeks. 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 now. 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 the seed coat I guess. I don't know. But it has worked for me really well.

Farmer Fred  27:18

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

Gail Pothour  27:24

Right, Yes.

Farmer Fred  27:26

Another option to do with pepper seeds in that regard 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  27:43

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

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Farmer Fred  27:48

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TOP HOMEGROWN VEGETABLES, #4: BEANS

Farmer Fred

Going on to number four on the top 10 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  29:23

Probably snap beans maybe more so than dry beans, although I do both, dry beans as well. But if it's snap beans, the typical being mostly the green beans you see in the grocery store. 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 Roman type those are my favorite. And then there's varieties of beans that are  bush or pole so some will need support, a tall support. The pole bean especially.

Farmer Fred  29:55

String beans. What bean are they? You know, string beans that you'd buy in a can. What kind of bean is that?

Gail Pothour  30:04

Um, I don't know. I mean, I would assume it’s… I don't know, Either. It doesn't list the variety name on the container so I don't know.

Farmer Fred  30:15

If you went looking for string bean seeds I'm not so sure you would find any with that name.

Gail Pothour  30:20

Yeah, I don't know.

Farmer Fred  30:23

Well, maybe they're snap Bush green beans. And that would include things like Contender Harvester or Roman or Tendercrop. Among the snap pole green beans maybe a string bean is Kentucky Wo