Create a winning garden with AAS Selections
Deciding what vegetables you want to grow is just the first step in planning your garden each year. Once you’ve figured out your “must-haves,” then comes the actual selection process: out of the hundreds of varieties available, how do you choose? This can be challenging even for seasoned gardeners.
The folks at the All-America Selections (AAS) organization have figured out how to make it easier. Each year, AAS judges evaluate vegetable entries for a range of characteristics: taste, quality, earliness of harvest, total yield, ease of harvesting, plant habit, disease and pest resistance, and seed production. AAS winners are varieties that have proven to grow well in a wide range of climates, soils and growing conditions throughout North America. This puts them in a loose category of “easy to grow,” so they are particularly recommended for beginning gardeners.
Here are this year’s AAS vegetable winners:
Tomato “Galahad” F1
Galahad is a high-yielding, greattasting tomato. Judges agreed that the sweet, meaty flavor is better than that of the comparison varieties and boasts of being crack resistant. Large, clean fruits grow on highly productive, disease-resistant plants. (Seed available from Harris, Johnny’s, Territorial)
Watermelon “Mambo” F1
Mambo watermelon will grow and yield well even in cool, cloudy conditions. The sweet crisp flesh is extremely tasty and holds well (doesn’t overripen) if you can’t harvest them right away. Each 9” fruit will weigh about 11 pounds at maturity, only 75 days from transplant. (Seed available from Jung, Park)
Cucumber “Green Light” F1
The yield of this mini-cucumber was higher than the comparison varieties with more attractive fruit, earlier maturity, and superior eating quality. Can be grown on stakes for a productive, easy-to-harvest vertical garden that will yield 40 or more spineless fruits per plant. Succession plantings will ensure a summer-long harvest. (Seed available from Totally Tomatoes)
Tomato “Celano” F1
Celano is a patio-type grape tomato with a strong, bushy habit. It is best grown with some support. This semi-determinate hybrid is an early producer of sweet, oblong fruits. Plants grow to 40” in height and spread to 24” and have excellent late blight tolerance. Judges noted sweeter flavor, better texture, healthier plants, and a phenomenal yield. (Seed available from Park, Totally Tomatoes)
Tomato “Chef’s Choice Bicolor” F1
Indeterminate plants produce large (7- to 8-ounce) fruits with beautiful pinkish-red internal stripes within a yellow flesh. These tomatoes are as sweet as they are beautiful, with a better flavor and texture than the comparisons. Gardeners will enjoy earlier maturity and more uniform fruits that hold up all season long. Each plant can produce about 30 fruits per season. (Seed available from Totally Tomatoes)
Tomato “Early Resilience” F1
Early Resilience is a rounded Roma tomato with a deep-red interior color, uniform maturity, and good quality flesh for canning and cooking. Determinate, bushy plants can be staked but it is not necessary. Very resistant to Blossom End Rot, resulting in a high yield and less fruit loss. Judges rated this as an excellent variety that would be “a home canner’s dream.” (Seed available from Totally Tomatoes)
Note: “Determinate” tomatoes grow to a specific height. “Intederminate” vines continue to grow throughout the season. “F1” designates a first-generation hybrid variety.
More information and prior years’ winners at https://all-americaselections.org/
Coming Up: Sunday, February 2, from 2-3:00 p.m., Renowned garden designer and author David Culp will discuss his upcoming book about his Chester County garden, Brandywine Cottage, a 2-acre hillside filled with upward of 3,000 plants, a garden that MainLine Today cited for its “perpetual beauty.” Culp’s goal is to spread information that will help gardeners provide year-long interest in their gardens as well as blur the line between inside and outside. At the Lang Performing Arts Center, Swarthmore College. FREE. Cosponsored by the Hardy Plant Society/Mid-Atlantic Group and the Scott Arboretum.