I have visited thousands of gardens over the past 20 years. A
few of them have
clearly been major failures. Many have been fair to good.
But a few have been truly
outstanding.
You know the type – picture-perfect, with beautiful,
scrumptious vegetables that
would make any gardener proud. Just like those gardens
featured on the cover of many seed
catalogs. 
What separates beautiful gardens from the bad and the
ugly?
Real gardeners know that no single gardening practice
will make a “silk purse out
of a sow’s ear.” Proper tillage, adequate fertility and
water and effective pest
control are all necessary. But they’re not enough.
The best gardening practices, beginning with the moment
you put the seed or transplants
into the soil, can’t overcome the limitations of a poorly
adapted cultivar.
Regardless of how well you manage and manicure your
garden vegetables, poor cultivars
will haunt you. They will limit your success from the get-
go.
There is a better way. Select and plant the best-adapted
and the most productive
cultivars in your garden.
Identifying the best cultivars is job-one. Use these
tried and proven techniques to
make “best cultivar” selection easy and fun.
Begin Early. When is the best time to start
selecting cultivars for the next
gardening season? The previous season.
Pay close attention to the cultivars you plant, and make
notes on their performance.
Outstanding cultivars this year may well be the best ones
for next year.
But you’ll need records, particularly cultivar names and
seed sources. It’s amazing the
number of times I hear gardeners say, “Those beans (or peas,
corn, squash) I planted
last year were the best ever. But I don’t remember the name
of that cultivar. Help!”
Check Out Seed Catalogs. Seed catalogs have
pictures of some of the most
beautiful vegetables you will ever see. They also have
volumes of information on
cultivars.
Remember, though, some seed companies may be a little
biased toward their own
cultivars.
Discuss Varieties with Gardening Friends.
Gardeners enjoy talking about their
gardens, especially bragging on the high-yielding, high-
quality cultivars they’ve
discovered.
A visit with them in their garden during the season can
prove especially helpful. See
for yourself what performs the best.
Conduct Your Own Scaled-Down Variety Evaluation.
The best “hands-on”
way to learn about vegetable cultivars is to try appealing
varieties on a limited scale in
your garden.
If your garden is small, plant just a few feet of row to
new, interesting cultivars. If
you have a large garden, use one or more rows for testing
new cultivars.
Don’t forget, for cultivar evaluations to be helpful, you
must keep good records.
Your County Extension Service Office. A nearby,
unbiased source of information
is your county extension office.
County extension agents can provide published information
on vegetable cultivars. In
many cases, they may know from experience the best for your
area.
In
searching for the best cultivars for your garden, look for
those with good disease
resistance that yield well and produce high-quality
vegetables.
With a little effort, keen eyes, open ears and an open
mind, you can select the very
best for your garden.
Who knows? With the best cultivars, some hard work and a
little luck, your garden may
be the one pictured on the front cover of next year’s seed
catalog.
