We’ve been coming to the Northwest Flower and Garden show in Seattle for years and it’s always exciting to see what’s new, see the extravagant displays, and hear experts speaking on various subjects. We’re really looking forward to coming back to this lavish display of the latest and greatest in the gardening world. This year, the show starts on Wednesday, Feb. 3 and Kathryn and I are presenting a program on Sunday, Feb. 7.

I remember the first time I ever attended the show. It was many years ago. Kathryn and I went with my mother and father, and several of my siblings and their spouses. It was quite a family affair with all of us crammed into the orchid displays oohing and ahing over the amazing orchids. At the time, Kathryn and I owned an orchid nursery and tissue culture laboratory in Hawaii and my father had a greenhouse full of orchids in the backyard of his home.

This photo is of BLC Larry’s Gem, a hybrid created by Kathryn and me in our orchid nursery in Hawaii and named in honor of my father, Larry. We registered it with the Royal Horticultural Society in Great Britain, the official registrar of all orchid hybrids.  BLC Larry’s Gem is in the Cattleya alliance, with very large flowers on a large vigorous plant. Most members of this alliance are tricky to grow as houseplants because they want more light than some other kinds of orchids.

Phalaenopsis hybrids are much easier to grow in the home than Cattleya alliance orchids. Called moth orchids, they prefer the low light levels and warm temperatures found in the average home.

Paphiopedilums, or slipper orchids, are also easy to grow as houseplants. Like moth orchids, they prefer the shaded warm conditions provided by the average home.

At the Northwest Flower and Garden show you will see numerous examples of these and many other kinds of orchids. Check it out. You’ll be glad you did.

David and I have been having a great time teaching Master Gardener classes the last couple of weeks.  Recently we spent six hours covering some good answers to the question they’ll get every day in Plant Clinic: “What’s Wrong With My Plant?”

Sometimes it can be difficult to determine whether you are dealing with a disorder, a disease, or a pest. But 80% of the time the problem is a “disorder”, that is, a problem with the growing conditions.

Accurate diagnosis requires detective work. Like a forensic scientist, you need to collect evidence, examine the clues, and arrive at a diagnosis. The process involves asking questions designed to detect information that eliminates, one by one, all alternative causes and results in an accurate diagnosis.

Leaf symptoms can look remarkably similar, but have very different causes. By asking the right questions about the plants’ circumstances, you can come up with an accurate diagnosis.

The leaves at the tip of the branch, in other words, the young leaves, on this pachysandra (Pachysandra) turned completely yellow. Plants that require partial shade can suffer from this condition in a variety of circumstances.

Solutions include moving the plant to a shadier area, planting a larger plant nearby to give this ground cover more shade, or constructing a small trellis overhead to cast shadows below.

This pothos (Epipremnum) grew in soggy soil because its pot stood in a water-filled saucer. The leaves at the base of stems, namely the older leaves, turned yellow and dropped off.

A simple solution. First of all, make sure the pot has good drainage and the growing media has a chance to dry out between waterings. Then, after watering your house plants, make sure the saucer does not have standing water in it. Dump the water out.

The soil was not soggy, yet this leaf at the base of a rhododendron (Rhododendron) branch turned completely yellow and dropped off.  All leaves have a limited life span. Even conifers and broad-leaved evergreens like rhododendrons shed their oldest leaves.

The solution to this one is easy – don’t worry about it.

Leaves at the base of branches are the old, mature leaves. When they begin to turn yellow, while the main veins remain green, as they have on this lilac (Syringa), they point to nitrogen or manganese deficiency.

Maintaining healthy soil helps eliminate this problem. Add organic compost, fertilizer, and mulch twice a year to encourage all the beneficial soil organisms to thrive, thus nurturing a balanced soil micro-eco-system (boy, that’s a mouthful). If this is a nutritional emergency try a liquid fish fertilizer.

Kathryn and I taught a Master Gardener training class on plant disorders, diseases, and pests yesterday. We’ve learned through experience that most plant problems result from poor growing conditions. Growing conditions are physical and cultural environmental factors that affect the well being of your plants.

Light, water, temperature and soil nutrients, for example, are all physical factors of the environment that profoundly affect plant performance. Cultural environmental factors  are the things we, as plant managers, do to the plants in our care, including pruning to improve air movement, thinning heavy crops of fruit, and avoiding overcrowding among many others. Good growing conditions are the foundation for plant health, and eighty percent of plant problems are due to poor growing conditions.

Sunlight is, of course, vital. All green plants manufacture food from sunlight through photosynthesis. Fertilizer and mineral nutrients are sometimes called “plant food” but that is an erroneous concept. Sugar is actually “plant food” and plants create sugar out of solar energy, water and carbon dioxide. Obviously, if a plant does not get enough sunlight it becomes malnourished and could even starve to death.

Water, like sunlight, is also absolutely vital for a plant’s well being. It moves through the plant’s veins like blood in our own bodies. Water transports food and mineral nutrients to every cell. Roots absorb water, which moves up through the stem, and is lost to the air through the leaves. Losing water through the leaves is the pump that drives water movement through the plant’s body. If the pump stops, the plant can get into serious, life-threatening trouble very quickly.

Many people pay attention to a plant’s temperature needs, because they are aware of the danger of winter cold. In the United States, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) created a winter hardiness zone map, and almost all plant labels in U.S. nurseries list the USDA zones to which the plant is adapted. For example, a plant label may list appropriate zones as 9 through 11. This means that the plant will freeze to death in zones 1 through 8. This zone system does not reflect other temperature factors, such as heat tolerance, or whether a plant needs winter chilling to flower and set fruit.

Healthy soil is a microcosmic ecosystem, filled with millions of bacteria and fungi, and with organic matter. This teeming micro-flora and fauna maintains mineral nutrients, out-competes pests and disease-causing pathogens, and conserves water. If your soil is healthy and rich you have met the most fundamental requirement for happy, healthy plants.

Plant problems caused by inadequate growing conditions are called disorders, not diseases or pests. A disorder is caused by too much or too little of some critical factor: light, water, temperature, or nutrients. Disorders can also be caused by poor management, such as failure to thin a heavy crop of fruit, lack of dead-heading (removing the spent flower clusters before they make seeds), or pruning at the wrong time of year. By contrast, a disease is caused by a pathogen, such as a fungus, bacterium, or virus. A pest is a destructive organism, such as an insect, mite, nematode, bird, rodent or deer.

Sometimes it can be difficult to determine whether you are dealing with a disorder, a disease, or a pest. Yellowing leaves, for example, can be due to many different causes, such as lack of nitrogen (disorder), root rot fungus (disease), or aphids (pests). Accurate diagnosis requires detective work. Like a forensic scientist, you need to collect evidence, examine the clues, and arrive at a diagnosis. The process involves asking questions designed to detect information that eliminates, one by one, all alternative causes and results in an accurate diagnosis. In our book “What’s Wrong With My Plant (And How Do I Fix It)?” Kathryn and I created an innovative new diagnostic system using pairs of questions arranged in illustrated flow charts. It’s easy to use. And you don’t have to know the name of a plant in order to figure out what’s wrong with it!

Yesterday David and I taught an all day long Master Gardener class about insects. What fun! Insects come in so many different colors, sizes, and shapes it boggles the mind. Some insects (the good bugs) are a gardener’s friend and some (the bad bugs) are foes. Learning how to identify friend from foe really helps in successful garden management. Your friends are the beneficial insects, the predators, parasites, or pollinators. Predators and parasites eat the insects that ruin your garden and pollinators pollinate the flowers on your fruit trees and vegetables. The list below is a continuation from David’s last blog posted on Monday, January 18.

           Butterflies and Moths. All of these insects belong to the order Lepidoptera, meaning scale-wing, because their wings are covered with minute, often colorful scales. Adults have four large wings and are often much appreciated for their grace and beauty. Their larvae, on the other hand, are caterpillars, cutworms, hornworms, corn earworms, tomato fruitworms, and many other very destructive pests of our food crops and ornamental plants. All lepidopterans have complete metamorphosis with larvae that are worm-like caterpillars which pupate in a chrysalis, cocoon, or in the soil. The larvae have chewing mouthparts and the adults have straw-like mouthparts for sucking up nectar.

Grasshoppers. These insects belong to the order Orthoptera, meaning straight wing. The order also includes the cockroach, praying mantis, and cricket. Adults of some species have four large, often membranous wings while other species have very small wings, or no  wings at all. These insects have incomplete metamorphosis. Their young are nymphs that resemble miniature adults without wings. Nymphs and adults have chewing mouthparts and eat the same food. Of all the insects in this order, grasshoppers and locusts are perhaps the most destructive.

Thrips. Thrips are insects in the order Thysanoptera, meaning fringe wing, because their four slender wings are fringed with tiny hair-like projections. Thrips are extremely small insects, long and slender, often very hard to see with the naked eye. Thrips have incomplete metamorphosis. The nymphs resemble the adults but have no wings. They have rasping and sucking mouthparts and nymphs and adults are often found feeding together on their host plants. Thrips nymphs, like the adults, rasp away the surface tissue of plants leaving telltale patches of silvery dead cells behind. Adult thrips can fly but are not strong fliers. If you suspect a thrips infestation, hold paper under the suspect plant and tap the plant. If thrips are present they will fall onto the paper.

Aphids, Leafhoppers, Psyllids, Whitefly, Scale, and Adelgids. All of these insects belong to the order Homoptera, meaning whole wing. They have four membranous wings. All are plant eaters and many are quite destructive. Most are readily identifiable as insects, but scale and adelgids look more like bumps or cotton wads than insects. They have incomplete metamorphosis. The nymphs in some species resemble miniature adults without wings. In other species the nymphs  are quite different in appearance and are called “crawlers.” All have piercing/sucking mouthparts. Many are sedentary as adults, sitting in one spot with their beaks inserted into a plant’s vein while they suck out the life-giving sap. They often occur in large numbers in colonies.

This week Kathryn and I are teaching Entomology, the study of Insects, to the Master Gardeners. Insects are absolutely fascinating animals, some are the gardener’s friend and some are foes. How can you tell which is which? Use this handy guide to help you distinguish between pests and beneficial insects on your plants.

Beetles, Weevils, and Curculios. All members of this group belong to the order Coleoptera, meaning sheath (coleo) wing (ptera). In this group, the wing covers (the two fore wings) are hard, often shiny and colorful, and completely cover the abdomen. These insects have complete metamorphosis. The ladybird beetle (aka, lady bug) is a familiar representative of this group and one of the most beneficial insects in your garden. Many destructive pests are found in this group, in addition to the beneficial ones. As a group they are rather clumsy fliers compared to many other insects. They have mouthparts adapted for chewing.

Beetle eggs hatch into larvae that are distinctly different in appearance from the adult insect. Some are C-shaped, white grubs with brown heads and three pairs of jointed legs. They live in the soil and feed on plant roots. Others, like the ladybird beetle larvae, look like tiny monsters crawling over the leaves of your plants searching for aphids to eat.

An adult Japanese beetle illustrates the main features for identifying beetles in general. Notice that the head is blunt and rounded, not elongated into a snout and that the wing covers shield the whole abdomen.

Curculios and weevils are closely related to beetles, but their eggs hatch into larvae that lack the three pairs of jointed legs. Many are C-shaped, white grubs with brown heads, like beetle larvae, but the absence of jointed legs is their  distinguishing feature.

Adult curculios and weevils have a distinctive long snout, a feature that beetles lack, making them fairly easy to identify.

Flies. Flies are members of the order Diptera, meaning they only have two wings instead of four. This group includes many beneficial insects such as syrphid or hover flies, and tachinid flies, both of which are predators of destructive insect pests. Destructive flies include a host of different fruit flies from med flies to apple maggots. Nuisance pests in this order include mosquitoes. Members of this order have complete metamorphosis. Flies are extremely adept at aerial navigation. Hover flies, for example, are as adept as hummingbirds in their aerial maneuvers. Fly mouthparts are adapted for sucking up food. They cannot chew.

The larval form in this order is a maggot, a worm-like animal with no obvious head and no legs. Maggots are often whitish or yellowish, small, and slimy.

An adult fly’s wings are often held out at an angle, away from the body, as opposed to lying flat along the back of the insect. The position of the wings frequently serves for rapid identification of this group.

True Bugs. The true bugs are all members of the order Hemiptera, meaning half wing. All insects and many other small animals are often called “bugs” colloquially, but genuine bugs are found only in this order. The fore-wings of true bugs are hard and sometimes colorful, as in the beetles, but they only partially cover the abdomen. Destructive bugs include squash bugs, stink bugs, tarnished plant bugs, and others. Beneficial bugs include assassin bugs, big-eyed bugs, and minute pirate bugs. Nuisance bugs include bed bugs. Members of this order have incomplete metamorphosis. The larvae are nymphs which resemble miniature adults without wings. All members of this order have piercing/sucking mouthparts.

Squash-bug nymphs somewhat resemble the adults and are often found in mixed populations feeding with adults. Nymphs and adults stick their needle-like beaks into plant cells and suck out the contents.

Squash bug adults are wary and are excellent fliers.

Bees, Wasps, and Ants. All of these insects belong to the order Hymenoptera, meaning membrane wing. They have four membranous, transparent, and durable wings. They are excellent fliers. Ants develop wings only briefly, and just in the young queens and males, preparaing for their mating flight. Adult bees and wasps have permanent wings. Destructive insects in this order include sawflies and carpenter ants. The order also includes several species of ants that are “dairy farmers,” who cultivate and care for their “cows” (aphids, scale, mealybugs) to milk them for honeydew.

Beneficial hymenopterans include honeybees, of course, and many minute wasps which are parasitoids of destructive insects like caterpillars. Many larger wasps feed on caterpillars or spiders. Nuisance insects in this group include yellowjackets and wasps that are attracted to sweet fruit. All hymenopterans have complete metamorphosis. Hymenopteran larvae resemble maggots except that they have an obvious head. For many bees and wasps, the larvae live in individual cells constructed of wax, paper, mud, or wood. They pupate inside the cell and emerge only as adults. Adults have mouthparts enabling them to both chew and to suck up liquids. Many members of this group protect themselves by stinging when threatened. Many are also social insects which live in large colonies founded by a fertile queen.

Adult yellowjackets are frequent nuisances at picnics and around fruit trees when the fruit is ripe. They eat fruit which has been pecked open by birds, but generally cannot break open fruit on their own. They are not destructive to your plants, but they are aggressive and their sting is severe.

I am immersed these days in the language of botany. It is just as though I have signed up for one of those immersion programs used to learn a foreign language. Which I guess is what I am really doing, after all. I had Latin in high-school, but can’t remember much of that.  But David knows the language well.  And in the classes we teach on Plant Identification, we talk about the features of plant flowers that tell us its name.

Botanical Illustrations show the technical features botanists use to identify plants. Here are some for you to enjoy:

If you’re like most people there are plants somewhere in your personal environment with which you are unfamiliar. You don’t know their names, either the common names in English or the scientific names in Latin. This happens very often when purchase a “pre-owned” home and the former owner’s garden and landscape now belongs to you. Sometime in the first year of ownership, as the various plants in your landscape grow, flower and set seed, a mystery plant will appear.

Why is knowing the name of a mystery plant important? It could be a plant you love and you would like to find more of it but you can’t buy it if you don’t know its name. You also need to know the name of the plant in order to look it up in a decent garden reference book so you can learn how much or how little sunlight it needs, how much to water it, what are its winter cold and summer heat temperature tolerances, and the soil and nutrient requirements. Also, if the plant is in trouble due to pests or disease it can be helpful to know the plant’s name in order to diagnose the problem and then correct it. Finally, you might want to know whether the mystery plant is a nasty weed or not.

You could take a piece of the plant down to your local garden center and ask a knowledgeable professional nurseryman to identify the plant for you. You could also take a sample to your local Master Gardeners at their Plant Clinic where you will also get an accurate identification. Or, you could learn how to identify plants yourself, something that’s fun and easy once you learn how.

Tomorrow Kathryn and I are teaching Plant Identification to the Master Gardener class of Jefferson County, Washington. This coming Saturday we teach the same course to the Master Gardener class of King County so I decided to write today’s blog about plant id.

All plants are classified into groups based on features of their anatomy and life cycle. Some plants have flowers, for example, and some plants do not. Plants without flowers include all the conifers like redwood, pine, spruce, and gingko. Other groups of plants without flowers include ferns and mosses. Plants with flowers include tulip, rose, oak, and apple among many others. The flowering plants, the Angiosperms, some 260,000 species strong, are further classified into two groups, monocots and dicots based on features of the flower.

Monocots usually (but not always) have flowers with parts arranged in three or sets of three — three sepals and three petals, for example. They also usually (but not always) have leaves with parallel veins. This group includes lilies, palms, grasses, orchids, tulips and daffodils along with many others. The name monocot comes from the fact that these plants have one cotyledon, or seed leaf.

Dicots usually, but again not always, have flowers with parts arranged in four or five, five sepals and five petals for example, like a wild rose. They also usually have leaves with veins that connect to each other like the threads of a net. The dicots are a huge group that includes all our fruits, nuts, and vegetables, and many ornamental flowers. The name dicot comes from the fact that these plants have two cotyledons, or seed leaves.

All the plants in the monocots and dicots are broken down further, or classified, into families. The rose family, Rosaceae, for example, along with roses, includes peach, apricot, plum, cherry, apple, pear, almond, blackberry, raspberry, and strawberry in addition to ornamentals like Geum, Pyracantha, Cotoneaster, and many more.

All the plants in each plant family are broken down even further, or classified, into genera (genus) and species. In the rose family the genus Prunus includes the cherry (Prunus avium), the peach (Prunus persica), and the almond (Prunus amygdalus).

The classification system which determines what family, genus, and species a plant belongs to is based on features of the flower, the plant’s reproductive organs. So the whole process of plant identification begins with learning all the parts of the flower, especially the female and male sex parts.

Once you’ve learned to recognize these structures and know their names you’re ready to begin to identify that mystery plant. It’s daunting at first. The vocabulary of botany can be a huge impediment initially, but you’ll learn. And you’ll have fun. I promise.

Our fingers are stiff with cold. It is winter here in the Northwest. David picks up his end of the measuring tape, and a hundred feet away, I pick up mine. We walk ten feet downslope and lay the tape on the ground again. Steamy clouds of our breath hang in the air. Dry leaves and twigs crunch underfoot. David turns on his recorder and walks across the slope toward me. He records the name and size of every plant the tape touches.

“How’s it look?” the landowner asks. She stands beside me and is concerned. A year ago, the bluff on which her home sits started sliding toward the beach. Saturated by heavy winter rains the glacial till became unstable and slumped. Afraid her house might fall into Hood Canal she called on us to help her manage runoff, re-establish appropriate native vegetation and stabilize the slope. Today, we conduct line-intercept transects along permanent monitoring points to see if any movement has occurred in the last year. If the land is moving, then the plants will have shifted position.

“So far, so good,” David responds. “Nothing has moved.”

The woman smiles in relief.

David slowly rewinds the meter tape onto the yellow spool. “The beach strawberry is doing a great job of stabilizing the slope. The mix of other perennials and shrubs we selected are providing good cover.” He bends over to examine the small plants at his feet. “And I see a dozen new starts of your alumroot. Looks like volunteer seedlings.”

A colony of our native small-flowered alumroot, Heuchera micrantha, occupied the slope prior to its collapse. Now the new seedlings’ bright green leaves spread across the brown leaf litter on the ground.

“Great. I love them.” The woman stamps her feet and flaps her arms to get her blood moving. But she grins with pleasure and relief at David’s news and at the appearance of a favorite plant.

The tail end of the tape-measure slips home. “All done. I still have to transcribe the data but it’s clear that this slope is no longer moving. Your new French drains collect and redistribute the up-slope runoff. And the new plants control the erosion.”

We walk back to her house through the garden. As part of her effort to control the erosion that threatened her home, she has removed the lawn, put in berms, and planted low maintenance perennials and shrubs that she doesn’t have to water. Closer to the house, she has placed plants that need slightly more water. She stops and points to her Heuchera hybrids. “Look at them. Mid-winter and colorful as ever.”

“Isn’t this one ‘Amber Waves’?” David touches the golden leaves of one variety. “Did you know that one of its parents is the native species growing on your bluff?” He points to another with nearly black foliage and another with brilliant chartreuse leaves. “This must be ‘Obsidian’, and this one, ‘Key Lime Pie.”

She nods, delighted to talk plant with another aficionado. “I love all the color you get from these, all year long, and they’re totally trouble free.”

Many Heuchera hybrids have achieved celebrity status in recent years and have become glamorous stars of the perennial garden. Like Academy Award winning actors, these new hybrids appear on television, in magazines, and win “Oscars” in perennial trials across the country.

Our native Heuchera micrantha is a humble denizen of the floor of the emerald forest on the Olympic peninsula. Like any parent of a child star, our native alumroot stays in the background, allowing her celebrity children to take the spotlight.

The common name, alumroot, suggests medical uses, and Native Americans pounded the dried roots to make a poultice to stop bleeding and promote healing of cuts and sores. This medicinal usage followed the plants from America to Europe where Linnaeus gave the name Heuchera to the genus in order to honor Johann Heinrich von Heucher, Professor of Medicine at Wittenberg (1677-1747).  Modern pharmacopeias included Heuchera in their texts well into the twentieth century.

The second part of the name (the specific epithet), micrantha, means small-flowered, and gives rise to her common name, the small-flowered alumroot. While individual flowers are small, white, and not very showy, they are borne in great numbers on long, one-and-a-half-foot tall many flowered stalks.

David Douglas (1798 – 1834) named Heuchera micrantha based on his collection of the plants from the Columbia gorge in 1823. Haenke, the botanist on the Malaspina expedition from Spain collected specimens of this species on Vancouver Island in 1791. However, Douglas published first, so the plant gets Douglas’s scientific name, despite the fact that Haenke was the first European botanist to collect it.

All fifty-five species of alumroots are members of the Saxifrage family and all are native to North America. H. americana, whose native range is from New England to the Midwest states, traveled first to Europe and is another important parent of modern hybrids. A third  parent, H. villosa, comes from Virginia, Georgia and Tennessee. All three of these species, H. micrantha, H. americana, and H. villosa, figure prominently in the genetic background of all the modern Heuchera hybrids.

The bright red flowers of another species, H. sanguinea, attract both hummingbirds and humans. Coral Bells, as it is commonly known, comes from New Mexico, Arizona and Mexico. It contributes genes for larger, brightly colored coral-red flowers to numerous hybrids in the genus.

We gratefully enter the warmth of the home-owner’s country kitchen. Sipping chai spice tea beside the fire, David relishes more conversation about plants. Whenever genuine garden devotees gather they seem to spout lists of names. Scientific names, cultivar names, obscure botanists from the past. Their pleasure brings me a smile as I leaf through plant catalogues, winter inspiration to the avid gardener.

Beyond the window snow flurries swirl. My companions are lost in their discourse. Outside, a cobalt blue pot, stuffed with the many-colored Heuchera, sits on the patio. The glowing leaves, ignoring the cold, provide all the colorful inspiration we need.

New 2010 seed catalogs arrive in the mail filled with gorgeous color photos of the latest and greatest new vegetables. They’re so tempting. The seduction begins with color, continues with persuasive and evocative text, and caps it off with price reductions to seal the deal. I want them all, but of course, I can’t have them all. There’s not enough room or time to have everything that looks good. So, how does one choose? I have several criteria that I apply to winnow the field of choices down to a select few.

First, choose varieties which do well for you in your climate and put the right plant in the right place. That may sound simple-minded, but many people don’t realize what a difference it makes. Read the catalog descriptions and the package labels carefully and pay attention to the number of days to maturity and the sunlight, temperature, and water requirements. For example, climate has a huge influence on productivity and flavor of tomatoes, the number one crop, nationwide, grown by home gardeners. If you live in a place that has hot, humid summer nights and a nice long growing season then you have numerous choices of tomatoes you can grow successfully that will actually taste good. Any of the ‘Beefsteak’ type tomato cultivars, for example, do well in the eastern half of the USA. They do not do well in the western half because the west is dry and nights are cool. If you live in a place that has cool, dry summer nights and a short growing season the number of tomato cultivars you can grow is quite limited, and some of them have no flavor at all. Learn what your growing conditions are in your area, and go online or on the phone to check with the Master Gardeners for their recommendations of varieties that do well in your climate. You can also check with your neighbors or your local garden clubs to learn which cultivars are successful in your area and which are not.

Second, look for words or symbols in the catalog description or on the package label that indicate whether or not a variety resists certain diseases or pests. If the description says “resistant to powdery mildew” then I recommend choosing that one instead of a variety that has no resistance. Many vegetable cultivars also have a series of letters that follow the name or the description, letters that indicate valuable genetic resistance. For example, PM means resistant to powdery mildew, N means nematode resistant, TMV means tobacco mosaic virus resistant, CBM indicates resistance to common bean mosaic virus, F has resistance to Fusarium fungus disease, and so on. When you choose vegetable varieties that are genetically resistant to common pests and diseases you reduce the amount of work, time, and money you need to spend in order to get a successful crop.

Third, start with disease-free seeds, roots, and bulbs. When you purchase certified seed, seed potatoes, or onion sets from a commercial grower you expect them to be disease free. If you save your own seed you should inspect it prior to planting and make sure it is firm, healthy, and the right color. Off color seeds, tubers, or bulbs, or those with spots, or ones that are soft and mushy, may be infected with bacterial or fungal pathogens that will only give you grief.

Fourth, I recommend purchasing certified organically grown seed whenever possible. The farmer growing the organic seed for you is using tried and true least-toxic farming techniques that help our environment. Whether the seed makes a difference in your personal vegetable garden or not, it makes a huge difference in the production fields. By supporting the farmers producing organically grown seeds you are helping to make a difference.

So the bottom line is, enjoy the new seed catalogs, they’re pretty and they’re informative. But make your final decisions about what you want to grow in your garden using the four criteria outlined above.