The Best & Worst Garden Varieties I Grew This Year.

Hello guys and welcome back to the garden. Throughout this year, you guys have seen me browse seeds online, you've seen me purchase those seeds, you have seen me sow those seeds, whether in seed trays or in the ground, you have seen those seeds grow, you've seen me harvest them, and so I thought that as the summer comes to an end, which is hard to believe that it's coming to an end, I feel like the summer has just come and gone like that, but as the season comes to a close, I thought it would be good to walk around the garden and do a little bit of an audit and give you thoughts about certain varieties that I planted this year and whether I have been pleasantly surprised, whether I've been disappointed if I'm going to grow them again, whether I've just been downright confused because some of them I have been, so we're just going to go through it. Let's start with cucumbers. I grew I think six different varieties of cucumbers this year, some heirloom, some hybrid seeds, some I've grown before, and some were new, so let's just kind of do a lightning round and go through them again. For slicers, I planted Pareso F1 hybrid from High Mowing Seeds. I planted Sweet Success from Burpee, also a hybrid. I planted Suyo, which I bought as a transplant from the garden center and that's an heirloom, and then I grew the Armenian cucumber, which technically that's melon, but we grow it like a cucumber and it tastes like a cucumber, so I'm counting it as a cucumber. That is also an heirloom variety. And then for picklers, I grew Excelsior F1 from High Mowing and I grew Hocus from Botanical Interest, which is an heirloom. I have thoughts. Some of them I've been pleasantly surprised by and some of them I have been really disappointed in. We'll start with the disappointment first. Suyo. It did not hold up. It came and it went really quickly. I got a few cucumbers. Suyo is a is an Asian variety. It's a really long slicing cucumber. It's a really tasty cucumber and you get a lot of bang for your buck because it's so big and it doesn't have a lot of seeds, like doesn't really get bitter that often. It's a great variety if your environment is suited for it. It succumbed very quickly to powdery mildew and so I don't think it's very disease resistant at all and I will not be growing that one again. I'll kind of go up from worst to best. So the next up is gonna be the Armenian cucumber. The Armenian cucumber, it tends to work really well here in North Carolina because it's really heat tolerant. Like cucumbers, they love the heat, but a lot of cucumbers really slow down when it's like really hot. When it gets really hot, that's when the Armenian cucumber tends to thrive. So when all the other cucumbers were like slowing down a little bit, Armenian cucumber was just like pumping them out. However, the disease resistance isn't that great. It's still alive right now and it's August, but it's getting powdery mildew pretty bad and I think it's gonna get ripped out really soon. So will I grow it again? Yes, just because I like the way the Armenian cucumber grows. Like I said, it's like a melon so how I eat it is I'll cut it in half and I'll scoop the seeds out just like you would a cantaloupe or something because it's more closely related to cantaloupe. And then you would chop it up. It's not bitter. I just feel like they store really well. They last a long time in the fridge. They don't go bad very easy and I just I think that it's worth it to grow and so I will continue to grow that one. Moving on up, we have Sweet Success from Burkby. That one did okay. I still have that one alive and well across my garden. I had it on my A-frame trellis and it's still pumping out cucumbers. However, it looks really diseased. I will probably rip them out and I have actually re-sown another round of the Sweet Success. And Sweet Success is parthenocarpic, which means it doesn't need any pollination and so it's really, really productive. It doesn't have many seeds in the cucumber because it doesn't need pollination. It's not seedless, but there's not a lot of seeds that you have to deal with. So it's a really great tasting cucumber. Will I grow it again? Maybe. Before I answer that, I want to talk about Paraiso F1 and how well that one has done. So this is Paraiso. I have two plants of it on this trellis here. They're still doing great. Like they are pumping out cucumbers still and it's August. Honestly, I have never had cucumbers last this long and be this productive still in August and so I'm really, really impressed with Paraiso. The seeds are expensive. I'm not gonna lie. I think it's like $12 for a pack of seeds and there's not that many seeds in there. But I don't know, like will I grow it again? Probably just because it's been such a great variety. It's produced so, so well for me. And again, it's lasting all the way into August without signs of slowing down. Like have I had to chop some leaves because they have some fungal disease on them? Yes. But it's not overtaking the whole plant. The plant is still putting out multiple little side shoots. Like the plant is just still kind of going crazy and it's just like spreading itself. And so with that being said, I probably will not grow Sweet Success next year and I will only grow the Paraiso F1 as a slicer. And I will just grow more plants of that. Once I find a variety that works really well in this environment, then I'm gonna keep growing it and keep planting it. I will try some new varieties next year because I always want to introduce new varieties and try them out and see if they're any better than my favorite. So we'll see if anything measures up to the Paraiso F1 next year, but I definitely will be growing this one again. For the Pickling Cucumbers, I was really surprised by Hocus. That plant is huge. So I planted two plants on an A-frame trellis. It honestly wasn't a big enough A-frame trellis because the plant like definitely just creeped out over the garden bed and is now growing along the ground. But like that thing did not stop. It has been so, so, so productive all season long. It's still cranking out cucumbers. The Hocus I like because you can harvest them as little gherkins, like tiny little cucumbers, and you can pickle them. Or you can harvest them when they are larger and you can slice them up into like pickles. So I was pleasantly surprised by that variety and I probably will grow it again. The only con is that it's very, very prickly. So if you're someone that doesn't like a spiky cucumber, don't grow that one because it is very spiky. I have to wear gloves when I harvest it. And honestly, now that I say that, and now that I remember how annoying they are to harvest with the gloves, maybe I won't grow that one. I don't know. The Excelsior F1 Hybrid that I had high hopes for did not perform well for me. And this is also from High Mowing. I thought that it was going to be on the same level as the Pareso and maybe it was a fluke. But I planted two of those plants and both of them, they didn't perform very well. They have already been pulled because they just succumbed to disease and they were supposed to be more disease resistant. But I found that they weren't. So I'm still on the hunt for a great pickling cucumber that is really disease resistant and really productive. Let me know in the comments if you guys have a favorite variety. For now, Hocus is going to remain on the list, I think, until I find my new favorite. Let's go over paste tomatoes. I grew three different varieties of paste tomatoes this year and only one is going to make the cut for next year. And that is the Sunrise Sauce. I was so impressed by this tomato. The productivity, the disease resistance, and the taste of the tomatoes. Also, they are bright orange and they're paste tomatoes. So paste tomatoes were making sauces, were making salsa, were making like soups. The sheer color of them is so cool. I made a salsa with them. It was bright orange and it was just fun. Like it's a fun different color. So I will definitely be growing those again next year. I see a hornworm. Oh no. Oh my god. The audacity. Hornworms will eat your tomatoes like overnight and they also are creepy. They look like little Caterpie Pokemon or something and they have like 50 eyes looking at you. I'm gonna go feed them to my chickens. Here you go my little dinosaurs. Yeah. Oh she took it and ran. Okay. Where were we? The next one, Midnight Roma. I'm very disappointed in the Midnight Roma. I will not be growing it again. It does not have great disease resistance. All of the plants in this bed had blossom end rot. I know that blossom end rot is typically caused by inconsistent watering but the other two, the Sunrise Sauce tomato plants that I have in the same bed did not have any blossom end rot. So I'm led to believe that the Midnight Roma is just extra susceptible to it. And again, I just don't want something like that in my garden. I want to grow hardy plants that I can count on. Oh my god. I see another hornworm. Oh my god. It's hornworm season. What? What in the world? There's probably more. I'm gonna have to really go hunting later. Now I'm distracted and I'm just like looking for hornworms. But anyways, I will not be growing Midnight Roma again next year. The last one is the Gladiator Hybrid which is right behind me and while I was impressed with the productivity of this plant, I'm not impressed by the storage of the tomatoes. They're the kind of tomatoes that just immediately go bad. Like even on the vine, they haven't fully ripened yet and they are already getting like mold spots on them. I hate that. I don't want that. So I'm like really disappointed because it is a really productive and disease resistant plant. I just, I need the tomatoes to store a little longer especially because this is an indeterminate paste tomato and so with indeterminates, they aren't coming all at once like they do with determinates and so it's hard to get enough of these tomatoes all at once to like make a sauce or a soup or a salsa. So that makes it even more important that the tomatoes are able to store on the counter or in the fridge for longer while you wait for more to ripen. So it's just, it's just not working. It's just not working. I'm not going to be growing it again. Let's go over the dwarf tomato patch. So all of the tomatoes behind me are the dwarf indeterminate tomatoes that I planted. If you guys want to see a full tomato taste test of every tomato that I planted this year, check out this video and I also kind of talk about some of the ones that I will not be growing again there but I will briefly go back over it. Of all of the tomatoes, I was impressed the most by dwarf tomato. It's been so productive. It has produced a ton of really big tomatoes like you would never think it was a dwarf by looking at the size of the tomatoes and the tomatoes ranked really high on my tomato taste test. I love the taste of them so I will definitely be growing that again and I think that that's probably going to get a spot on like one of my forever plants that I will grow. Love it. Rosella purple, that's also a forever plant for me. It is really dwarf. It grows much more stout like shorter than any other tomato that I grow. It doesn't have the best productivity to be honest. Like it's not like the tomato where it's pumping out a ton of tomatoes but the taste of the tomato it just makes it so much worth it because it tastes like a Cherokee purple. The taste is just like up high on the list. A new one that I was surprised by this year is Container's Choice. That is from Botanical Interest. It's been so productive. Honestly it's like it's on the ground right now. I need to take it back up. It's this one. It's supposed to be on the pole but it's not. It's fallen over. We've had a lot of storms. It's been so productive. It has a ton of tomatoes on it right now and the storage capability it lasts a long time sitting out on your counter. That is really important to me. I love that in a tomato. So I will definitely be growing that one again next year and that one I didn't realize that it is technically a determinant on the seed packet. It grows more like an indeterminate to me. I'm actually not sure but I definitely am going to be growing that one again. Antho Pink Panther I think is gonna go. I think that one's gonna go off the list because it is just not disease resistant enough and I remember that from the first time that I grew it. It's a cool tomato. It's one of the tomatoes that makes you go ooh and ah. It's beautiful. The different colors but the disease resistance needs to be a lot higher for me. However it really is productive. Like while it's going it's really productive. It just doesn't last as long as I want it to. I forgot to mention one tomato that will never be entering my garden ever again is Canary Kiss. It's a micro tomato. It's disgusting. Don't grow it. Let's talk about winter squash. Specifically the Cucurbita Machata species. So there are three different species of squash that we typically see. There are a lot of species but there's three main ones that I want to kind of go over. There's and tougher stems and they are squash vine borer resistant. So that is why all of the winter squash that I grow are Cucurbita Machata because I have tried to grow the other ones and it just doesn't work. The squash vine borer is way too much of a pest here. Cucurbita Machata I have always had success with. They just laugh in the face of the squash vine borer. Then there's Cucurbita Maxima. Cucurbita Maxima are like your Cinderella pumpkins. Like the big orange typical pumpkin. That's Cucurbita Maxima. I've never been able to grow one. I've never been able to grow one as an organic gardener. There are non-organic gardeners that can grow them as an organic gardener. It's just not going to happen. Then there's Cucurbita Pepo and that is your quick growing summer squash like zucchini and yellow squash. Those we can kind of grow because they're quick growing but ultimately they always end in squash vine borer death. So I'm talking about Cucurbita Machata. The ones that I have on my squash trellis here are my heavy hitters. These are varieties that are on my forever list that I will forever grow. We have Chombencino right here behind me. I'll always grow this one. I love this squash because you can harvest it early and you can eat it as zucchini and it tastes like a zucchini or you can let it continue to fully mature and it'll cure just like a butternut squash or like a pumpkin. It stores for like over a year. It tastes like butternut. So I feel like this squash is more bang for your buck. However, I will say that out of all of these that I'm about to mention, Chombencino is the least squash vine borer resistant even though it's a Machata. This vine has been hit by the squash borer in like several different places on the vine and it's like the stems aren't quite thin enough. The borer can still bore into it but it like healed over. Like on this spot right here, it cracked open the stem but then it just like healed over. So even though the squash vine borer can get to it, it can take it if that makes any sense. Like it can take it and it can heal. It might set the plant back a little bit but it's not gonna kill it in my experience. It's never killed the vine. So we'll grow that again. I've also got seminal pumpkin on here. Seminal pumpkin is always my go-to. If you live in the southeast, you have to grow seminal pumpkin. It's so productive. This is born and bred out of Florida. If anything can survive in Florida, it can survive anywhere in the world I feel like. It's an indestructible pumpkin. I've always had success with it. I will always grow it. There are different like forms of it. There's a large form that I'm growing along the ground and then there's a smaller form which I grow here on the trellis because they're small. Then I've got the South Anna butternut. I have three of these growing in my garden right now. I have one on the trellis. I have two on the ground that I just stuck. They're all going crazy. I have also grown several different varieties of butternut and the South Anna butternut specifically is the best one. I got all of these seeds from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange by the way. Those are the three heavy hitters. A new one that I grew this year is the tan cheese pumpkin. I have two of those growing. One has a pretty large pumpkin that is ready to harvest already on it. The other vine is like insanely large but it's August and it's just now opening up pumpkin flowers. I will get some pumpkins on it. I don't know why it's kind of behind though all of my other pumpkins. I think because it's in a shadier spot. I kind of planted it like behind my shed just as an experiment and so it might not be getting enough sun and I think that that's why. But the tan cheese like the other one, it's been growing extremely well. I will definitely add that to my forever list. Some of the things that didn't quite make it, the Tai Kang Cob. I've tried for years to grow this pumpkin. It's a Cucurbita Machata. I've read reviews. People say that it grows like crazy for them. It's a really cool funky looking pumpkin. I really want to grow it but it did get hit by the squash vine borer and it didn't make it and it also just grew really spindly like the whole time. Maybe it was the location of where I planted it. I don't know. It didn't work out. I've tried for three years now. I think I'm gonna give up. Move on. Get another pumpkin. The honey nut is a variation of the butternut. It's a miniature butternut and I've tried to grow that one for years now as well and it always like puts out a few little butternuts really quickly and then the vine just suddenly dies and I don't know why. I didn't see any squash vine borer damage on it. It just like shriveled up and died and that's happened several times so I'm not gonna try to grow honey nut anymore. I'm just gonna stick to myself and a butternut and call it a day. Luffa. I have always been able to grow like crazy in my garden. I don't even try anymore. I will have volunteers that will just pop up everywhere and anywhere and this year I had one volunteer pop up literally right beside of a trellis and then I had another one pop up so I relocated that one to the other side of the trellis and so I have luffa growing like crazy on this really small trellis and if you know luffa it gets like insane so it's absolutely swamping this little trellis but I have a ton of luffa growing on it and luffa will be on my forever list even when I don't try to grow it. It'll pop up and it will be there. Alright guys, those were like my main summer crops this year. You might ask why I didn't go over peppers. It's because I loved every variety that I planted this year. Every variety has been really productive, really tasty. If you want to know what varieties I planted you can go back and watch this video where I plant them out. I really don't have an issue with peppers. A lot of people ask me what my secret is and I think my secret is living in North Carolina. I think that we just have a really great environment for peppers. Peppers want to grow here and peppers are tricky because if it's too hot and too dry they don't want to grow. If it's too cold they don't want to grow so I think that we just have a really really good environment for peppers and we're just really lucky. Like everyone I know that grows in North Carolina can grow really great peppers. That's my secret. Again yeah I loved every single variety. I think every variety that I grew is going to remain on my list to grow again next year. I didn't nix any of them off so yeah. Thank you guys so much for coming along on this garden audit with me today. If you guys have any varieties that you think that I should try next year let me know. Also let me know what has been a pleasant surprise for you this year or what has been a huge disappointment. I'm nosy and I would love to know. You can find me on all of the things. I am also over on Substack if you like written content. I also have a podcast and we put out new episodes every single week. Give it a listen and I will see you guys in the next one. Bye!