Choosing Varieties for Dowling Community Garden

by Anne Czernek, Hennepin County Master Gardener

• How to find varieties that perform well in MN gardens

  • Local garden centers like Mother Earth or Agrarian tend to source plants that do well locally vs a Home Depot or Lowe’s is less consistent

  • Local/ regional seed companies can be more adapted to our conditions - Driftless, Prairie Road, Experimental Farm Network

  • National/ Regional Awards: https://all-americaselections.org/ 

  • UMN Extension Master Gardeners volunteer to do seed trials every year to see what varieties perform best in MN home and community gardens https://shorturl.at/9HImp 

  • Something wrong? Try What’s wrong with my plant? - a guided set of questions https://apps.extension.umn.edu/garden/diagnose/plant/ 

• Tomatoes

  • Disease resistance

    • We see pretty much all the common diseases and symptoms at Dowling - verticillium wilt, fusarium wilt, blossom end rot, mildew

    • Hard to eradicate in our environment - rotating planting locations and removing diseased plants (not in compost) helps

    • Best to buy disease-resistant hybrids (F1) and ideally ones resistant to the above wilts… heirlooms are vulnerable

      • Cherry tomatoes: Sun Gold, Sweetie 

      • Slicers: Early Girl, Celebrity, Big Boy, Big Beef, Mortgage Lifter VFN, Pink Brandymaster F1

      • Determinate/ Sauce: Tiren, Granadero Paste, Mountain Merit

      • Cornell has a very long list! But may be hard to find many.

  • Earliness and yield

    • Days to maturity on plant tag - count from the day they go into the ground

    • Want tomatoes in June? Look for early varieties or smaller tomatoes (eg cherry)

    • Making sauce? Determinate tomatoes all come in at once. Tend to be later.

• Strawberries

  • Everbearing (annual)

    • Everbearing are more usually productive and will fruit the same season

    • Smaller berries but two harvests - early and late summer

    • Treated as annuals in MN - they may grow back but no fruit

  • June-bearing (perennial)

    • Bigger berries and perennial in MN

    • One big crop in June!

    • Pinch flowers the first year to encourage better establishment

• Squash

  • Powdery mildew

    • Trellising (vining) or staking (bush)

    • Water at the base

    • Prune leaves for air flow

  • Squash bugs and squash vine borers

    • Cucurbita Moschata tends to fare better than Cucurbita Pepo/Maxima (more common)

      • Moschata winter squash - Butternut, Honeynut, Long Island Cheese Pumpkin, Crookneck

      • Moschata summer squash - Cocozelle, Tromboncino

    • Physical controls

      • Row cover or netting as soon as planted until flowers appear

      • Crush eggs

      • Drop adults in pail of water

      • Rotate planting locations and remove dead plants - bugs overwinter in debris

• Onions and garlic

  • Rotate planting locations every year to avoid diseases/ viruses

  • Day length

    • Onions are day length sensitive - buy long day varieties for the North

    • Some other veggies like fennel are also day length sensitive - look for varieties like Preludio

  • Overwintering

    • Garlic needs to be hardneck varieties - buy at a local garden center - not the grocery store!! 

    • Garlic planted in fall after first hard frost but before ground is frozen

    • Likes dose of blood meal and lots of water in spring

    • Harvest scapes once they curl 2x - this leads to bigger bulbs