Do you remember what new vegetable garden varieties you were growing in 1988? The most popular variety from our trial was 'Sweet Treat' yellow supersweet corn. It's still available. Of the approximately 150 varieties we've tested in 10 years, 85 percent are still available to home gardeners. They include 'Rosalita' red romaine, a showy, productive, and widely adapted lettuce that scored highest in our 1990 test; 'Viva Italia' tomato, a great-tasting (fresh or cooked) paste tomato that was the second most popular vegetable in 1992; 'Senorita' pepper, one of the mildest and largest jalapenos, a 1996 winner; and All-America Selections winners such as 'Big Beef' tomato, which gained our highest rating ever: 93 percent of the 1994 testers said they'd buy it.
The New and Delicious
This year's new test varieties are no slouches, either. Colorful and flavorful greens are three of the top five picks for 1998. Also, the trend toward compact varieties continues with a short pea, a dwarf tomato, and a compact vine pumpkin in our top 10 varieties.
Our grading system for evaluating a test variety is based on three scores. The Test score" is the rating, on a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high), that testers gave to each variety. "Testers who would plant it again" is the percentage of testers who would buy the variety in 1998. "NG score" is those two numbers multiplied together to give a score that we feel reflects the variety's overall performance.
Charlie Nardozzi is a senior horticulturist at National Gardening.
For 25 years, the family-owned Victory Seed Company has provided the highest quality vegetable, herb and flower seeds to families across the country. We are passionate about providing you the best seeds available that give excellent germination, robust plants, and the harvest you want. With a catalog of over a thousand varieties, we have everything, and our prices are the kinds that we'd want to pay. We have hundreds of yesterday's heirloom vegetables, as well as today's award winning hybrid selections. Get to know us by visiting our website and browsing through our online vegetable seed catalog.