Travis's Vegetable Garden Winners

Since Hoss Tools has been in the seed selling business, and even way before, we have seen many seeds that we consider vegetable garden winners and many seeds we do not. Over the years, we have had opportunities to try all kinds of vegetable garden seeds, and as this year's summer garden is coming to an end, we sit down and talk about what has blown us away this year. We based these top 6 on how well they produced and how we benefited by having them in our garden, whether that was by looks or by just tasting good!!

1. Gold Star Squash

2. Avalon Triple Sweet Corn

3. Red Snapper Tomato

4. Marigold Sparky Mix Flowers

5. South Anna Butternut Squash

6. Max Pack Cucumber

Greg's Vegetable Garden Winners

For Greg's chosen winners, he decided by basing it on, would he grow it again? For all of the following, the answer is YES! Two of his top 6 are seeds that Hoss Tools doesn't offer yet as we like to trial everything ourselves before selling them to our customers. The Algonquin Squash and The Gold-lite Sunflower passed the test.

1.Calendula Prince Mix

2. Guinea Onion

3. Black Krim Tomato

4. Algonquin Squash

5. Marketmore Cucumber

6. Gold-lite Sun Flower

Show and Tell Segment

It is a great time to live in South Georgia as our weather has been perfect to finish out our Summer season. These cool afternoons and mornings make for some enjoyable harvest time. One thing many of us have been busy harvesting is corn, Greg brought in some of his Hickory King White Corn which is field corn he enjoys eating. Though many don't think of field corn as a snack, it can be quite tasty, another benefit of field corn is that it isn't as prone to get worms. 

After checking out Greg's snack Travis brought out his Max Pack Pickles. This recipe was different from his last batch of fermented cucumbers because he used spheres and flavored it with hard spice and garlic cloves. He also only left them in the crock for six days, these few changes led to the pickles being a lot crunchier!

Viewer Questions

On this week's show, we had some excellent questions from our viewers. Our first question centered around what would be the best crops to grow in raised beds? This viewer explicitly needed for a fall garden, and a few of our suggestions include Beets, Broccoli, Cabbage, Collards, Kale, Onions, Radishes, and especially Elephant Garlic. These Fall crops will do great in raised beds because of the lack of space they take up, compared to vining plants such as Pumpkins. 

One plant that has a lot of vines are Sweet Potatoes, and our viewer Jeremy wondered, was he suppose to let the vines run wild or try and contain them in a row? Speaking from experience, our guys let Jeremey know that he does not need to hassle with trying to keep them in a row but instead trim on the edges, keeping them contained to their plot.

The next question asked, do you need to fertilize cover crops? Our answer was simple, NO! As Greg put it, you want to get the most gain out of a cover crop. Therefore, you don't want to worry about fertilizing it. Just give it some water and let it go! 

Many of our other crops do need fertilizer, and one of our best sellers is Micro Boost, but how do you apply it to individual veggies in a small backyard garden? For a foliage spray, we suggest 2 ounces per gallon. You can mix that up and use a simple sprayer or cup. We want our growers to understand you don't need a watering system to fertilize! 

With some of our summer crops having such short harvest windows, it can be tricky making sure you get everything picked the day it's supposed to and at the correct time. Our gardeners wanted to know Travis and Greg's opinion on what can be harvested mid-day?