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

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371 Top 10 Homegrown Vegetables Transcript

Farmer Fred

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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