Home Vegetable Variety Trials

What are the Home Vegetable Variety Trials?

There are different varieties of your favorite vegtables and flowers! For example, "Teddy Bear" is a dwarf sunflower with puffy, dark yellow flowers, while "Gummy Bear" is a variety of dwarf sunflower with light yellow flowers. Choosing a well-adapted variety can lead to higher yields, tastier produce, and less need for chemical pest and disease control.

Virginia Cooperative Extension and Master Gardeners frequently receive inquiries about the best varieties for their area. The adoption of a citizen science based approach to vegetable trialing to address these questions will allow us to have the answers for Virginia Home Gardeners.  Information about plant performance will be used by Extension to assist Virginia home gardeners in selecting crops and cultivars. 

Varieties were slected from sources available to home gardeners and include both tried and true varieties as well as promising new varieties.  

How do I get involved?

All Virginia Home gardeners are welcome to participate, whether you are a gardening novice or an Extension Master Gardener!  

1.  Select the trials

Visit our 2025 Home Vegetable Trials page.  Review the eight different variety trails offered this year.  Each trail contains two varieties that you will grow side by side to compare throughout the season.  You can select up to a maximum of 5 trials.  Do you have a youth gardener?  You may request one free youth trial to be mailed with your other selections as long as supplies last!

The cost is $2 per trial to help cover the cost of seed.

Each trial is enough seed to grow a 10' row of each variety, but you don't need to plant them all.

2.  Grow your trials

Grow your trial(s) throughout the season!

When you receive your seed, you will also receive a recordkeeping sheet to have all the information you need to submit for the end-of-season evaluations.  You will be noting things like germination, disease susceptibility, yield, and flavor.  

3.  Submit your evaluation

At the end of the growing season (September 1 - October 31) electronically submit your evaluations and data collected on your recordkeeping sheet. 

At the end of the year, we will compile all of the results from across the state into a publication to help know what varieties are the best for Virginia Home Gardeners!  

This progam is conducted for eduational purposes only.  No profits are made from this program. 

For more information on this program, contact Ed Olsen, Consumer Horticulture Extension Specialist; edolsen@vt.edu.