Backyard Treasures Plant Sale 2024 – Page 2 – Extension Master Gardener Volunteers of Durham County

By Bev Tisci and Melinda Heigel, NC State Extension Master Gardener^SM volunteers of Durham County

Scenes from the July 2024 tasting event where members of the Extension Master Gardener volunteer team known as the Seed Starters conducted scientific and delicious taste tests to determine the most flavorful, disease-resistant tomatoes and peppers to grow. (Image credit: Melinda Heigel)

Taste testing has a centuries-long history. Ancient Egyptian rulers and Roman emperors had “official tasters,” who were tasked with ensuring food safety. In the early twentieth century, the USDA employed taste testers as a way to bring overlooked agricultural products into the American diet like soy, mung beans, and lamb. And in 2024, Durham County has a crack team of Master Gardener volunteers growing, tasting, and analyzing tomatoes and peppers so they can bring you the best of the best.¹

Creating Seed Starters and Taste Testing

After volunteering for her first annual Backyard Treasures Plant Sale as a freshly-minted Durham County Master Gardener, Bev Tisci noticed that the sale was focused mostly on ornamentals. She saw an opportunity and volunteered to head up a group who would focus on increasing the number of vegetable plants offered in future sales, thus the birth of the Seed Starters. Tisci and her team painstakingly grow from seed all the vegetables we offer at the annual sale–in the 2024 sale over 1,200 plants! This group also helps train and mentor Master Gardeners in best practices for growing from seeds.

But the work of the Seed Starters doesn’t just begin with sowing seeds in February and March for the April sale; it begins in July when the group comes together to analyze the tomatoes they grew in their own gardens over the summer. The taste testing event features varieties they sold to the public, old-time favorites, and new finds they’ve never tried before. The result? The winners of the testing will make the list for the next year’s sale.

(Left to right) Bev Tisci, Seed Starter team leader and tasting-test creator, holds up a yellow Chef’s Choice tomato. Eric Wiebe tagging his home-grown tomatoes for the blind tasting-testing event. (Image credit: Melinda Heigel)

Growing seeds indoors can be a solitary pursuit, so Tisci started pulling the group together for casual tastings many years ago. As the group expanded and our plant sale grew, the testings have evolved to become more scientific–while just as yummy and fun. Now the group blind taste tests their vegetables, because as Tisci says, “When you don’t know what tomato you are tasting, the results are often different than you’d expect. There is always a chance for a surprise. You might pick something you wouldn’t have otherwise!”

Putting the Tomatoes (and Peppers) to the Test

Tisci sets up the event by creating numbered tent signs for each sample and evaluation sheets where tasters rate each tomato on appearance, texture, and flavor. They also ask the important question, “Would I grow this again?” They discuss other factors like ease in growing and disease resistance. With her years of experience in the garden, especially growing tomatoes, Tisci says, “People are always looking for heirloom tomato taste, but they also want protection from the diseases that are common here in our hot, humid climate.” In her mind, the combination of taste, disease resistance, and high yield makes a variety a clear winner.

While tomatoes have always been the star of the taste-test show, this year the group introduced both sweet and hot peppers to the table. Peppers are popular at the plant sale, so it’s likely this veggie-come-lately may appear in future tests and be subjected to more rigorous evaluation.

Let the nibbling begin! Master Gardener volunteer growers tackle the delectable work of tasting and evaluating their bounty. Volunteers award tomatoes gold, silver, or bronze ribbons. (Image credit: Melinda Heigel)

So what was on the growers’ table at the 2024 Seed Starters’ tasting event?

Slicing Tomatoes

Arkansas Traveler, Mountain Majesty, Mountain Merit, Marmalade Sky, Pruden’s Purple, Gin Fizz, Black Krim, Pink Berkeley, White Tomato, Chef’s Choice, Yellow

Paste Tomatoes

Italian Roma

Small Tomatoes

23 x 1020 (from 2024 Tomato Project Team),* Mountain Magic, German Lunchbox

Cherry Tomatoes

Unicorn, Valentine, Ella Bella, Pink Bumblebee, Norfolk Purple Tomato, Sungold, Sunrise Bumblebee

Peppers

Just Sweet, Carmen, Escamillo, Hungarian Paprika, Mama Mia, Spitfire

Announcing the Big Winners

Tisci and her team are studying comments and compiling results on the tomatoes they savored recently. Stay tuned for a future blog where we’ll share the top vote-getters. If these seasoned gardeners put a variety on their list to grow for the 2025 plant sale and in their own gardens, chances are you’ll want to give that tomato a try too.

Notes

1–https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/testing-for-poison-still-a-profession-for-some-61805292/#:~:text=Testing%20food%20for%20poison%20goes,he%20failed%20at%20his%20job.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/government-taste-testers-who-reshaped-americas-diet-180972823

Resources and Additional Information

To see what tomato varieties the Seed Starters deemed worthy to grow and sell for the 2024 Backyard Treasures Plant Sale, check out the list of offerings. https://www.backyardtreasuresplantsale.org/veggies

For information on growing peppers and suggested varieties, read our 2022 blog post “Picking Peppers in the Piedmont.”

https://wp.me/p2nIr1-2HI

*Follow along with our current 2024 Tomato Project calling “Tomatoes on Trial,” where Durham County Extension Master Gardeners are evaluating tomatoes for a statewide tomato trial for NC State.

Tomatoes on Trial: The 2024 Tomato Project

Article Short Link https://wp.me/p2nIr1-4PA

by Lissa Lutz, NC State Extension Master Gardener^SM volunteer of Durham County

If you’ve ever tried to reduce your carbon footprint, you know that it can take patience, persistence, creativity, and sometimes compromise. As the plant sale committee works to make our community a greener place with plants, we are also trying to keep our efforts green in the process.

As our Backyard Treasures Plant Sale name implies, much of our inventory has traditionally been sourced through generous donations from Master Gardener^SM volunteer gardens. In recent years, however, we’ve grown to understand the risks of transferring unwanted species far and wide–not just invasive plants but also unintended species such as weeds and soil-dwelling creatures that may come along for the ride. The first way to combat this problem has been to increase the number of plants we start from seed.

Starting Plants from Seed

Our veggie and herb selections have always comprised almost a third of what we sell and are lovingly home-grown by a dedicated team of seed starters. In addition we now have a team growing a variety of native plants from seed. Many of these plants are challenging to start, their seeds often requiring complex temperature cycling to initiate germination. We also rely on our propagation team, another spin-off from the plant sale committee, for providing us with a variety of propagated plants. All of these plants, whether started from seed or propagated, are grown in clean potting mixes that reduce the spread of unintended species.

A variety of native seedlings get their start under grow lights before transitioning outdoors and then they will be sold at the Backyard Treasures Plant Sale! (Image credit: Lissa Lutz)

Growing Plants by Division

Many wonderful plants that we share are still sourced through the division of garden-grown favorites, and those plants are now thoroughly washed to remove all soil from the roots before they are potted up in fresh potting mix. While not perfect, this system can vastly decrease the chance of sharing undesirable plants and organisms.

Root washing to remove contaminants reveals the beautiful intricacies of the root systems. Clockwise from left: aromatic aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium); Canadian wild ginger (Asarum canadense); Formosa lily (Lilium formosanum); celandine poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum); Columbine sp (Aquilegia sp). (Image credit: Lissa Lutz)

Searching for the Right Potting Mix

Two years ago the committee began efforts to move away from peat-based potting mixes. Peatbogs, the source of peat for these mixes, are unique ecosystems and carbon sinks that are extremely slow to replenish. The committee had fun developing its own formula of a non-peat-based growing mix using coconut coir, perlite, vermiculite and compost. We tested the look and feel of various mixes to try to replicate the consistency of our traditional brand.

Soil mixing party with Durham Master Gardener^SM volunteers Bev Tisci, Lissa Lutz, and Durham County Extension Agent Ashley Troth. (Image credit: Lissa Lutz)

Scaling up proved to be challenging, time consuming and very dusty! There is a reason the best mixes are proprietary secrets, and indeed the seedlings in our concocted mix languished. For now we continue to start seeds in a peat-based mix for best results, while still searching for an economical and sustainable alternative. We have found an acceptable non-peat-based mix that we use for divisions and potting up seedlings once they are established.

From Plastic to CowPots®

This year, our focus has been on reducing our reliance on single-use plastics, specifically with respect to the pots we use. Most garden pots and flats are difficult to recycle because of the mix of plastics. Our approach to this problem will be twofold. First, we are trying to use a single pot size more consistently, namely what we call a quart pot. We are tagging plastic quart pots this year with a label that reads, “Return clean, intact quart pots to 721 Foster Street by May 31st.”

Our hope is that our local buyers will rinse and return the pots once they have planted their purchases. With a little extra care we should get at least one more season out of them and are excited to see what percentage of pots come back to us. In addition, we are spreading the word about how pots and flats can be recycled.

Second, we are piloting a biodegradable pot in our sale. After researching a variety of biodegradable options, we landed on CowPots®, a pressed pot made from dehydrated cow manure sourced from a dairy farm in Connecticut. The size is roughly equivalent to our plastic quart pots. They can be fragile to handle especially when wet, but the entire pot can and should be planted in the ground with the plant and should be completely degraded by the end of the growing season.

Plants grown in CowPots® are reported to have healthier root systems because of air pruning, a process that starts when the roots begin to grow through the sides of the pot. When the root tips meet air on the outside of the pot, it stimulates lateral growth from the root back inside the pot, as opposed to the circling of the root that occurs when it meets the side of a plastic pot. Additionally, the pot itself provides amendments and a small amount of nutrients to the garden soil as it slowly decomposes. These pots are only slightly more expensive than the plastic pots. It will be interesting to see how they are received by the public. Only a small percentage of plants this year will be grown in the CowPots, to give us a chance to evaluate them and address any problems that arise.

(Left to right) Canadian wild ginger (Asarum canadense) in the back and perfoliate bellwort (Uvulariaperfoliata) in the foreground growing in CowPots®; Pink turtlehead (Chelone lyonii) and mountain mint(Pycnanthemum muticum) getting established; CowPots® allow roots to penetrate their containers as they grow and prevent damaging root circling that occurs in plastic pots. (Images credit: Lissa Lutz)

Adding these green initiatives to our plant sale practices has not necessarily made the work easier, less expensive, or even better in some cases. But it does feel like we are moving in the right direction to be responsible stewards of our land and to set an example for our community.

Resources and Additional Information

To learn more about the environmental impacts of plastic horticultural pots, check out “2023 State of the Pot” by the Association of Professional Landscape Designers’ and Healthy Pot, Healthy Planet Initiative.

https://www.healthypotshealthyplanet.org/_files/ugd/5ceae1_56fb60127c1f4794a94b0c38b3cd90a0.pdf

For more information on Cowpots®, an example of a more environmentally garden pot, visit their site.

https://cowpots.com/marketing

To learn about additional ways to be green in the garden, see our August 2022 blog post “Minimizing the Use of Plastic in the Garden” by Extension Master Gardener^SM volunteer Wendy Diaz and NC Cooperative Extension’s factsheet.

https://durhammastergardeners.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=9832&action=edit

https://pender.ces.ncsu.edu/2021/10/recycling-plastic-plant-pots-and-containers/

Article Short Link: https://wp.me/p2nIr1-4p9

Extension Master Gardener Volunteers of Durham County

Category: Backyard Treasures Plant Sale 2024

2024 Seed Starters Taste Test: Revealing the Best Tomatoes and Peppers