Gardening: Nonprofit’s ratings can help you find the best seeds

The holidays are over, and it’s time to start thinking about ordering seeds for the upcoming garden season.

My mail has been full of seed catalogs, the pages of which are festooned with colorful little sticky notes for further consideration. Word has it, if you have a favorite seed, order early, as there are some supply issues.

But how do you sort through all the catalog offerings? When a catalog has 50 varieties of tomatoes, how do you narrow down the choices? Which ones will ripen the quickest? Which ones will stand up to the heat better? Which ones will fit in a small garden space?

Enter the All-American Selections that does some of the work for you. AAS is an independent, nonprofit organization that works with the seed industry to independently evaluate new vegetable and flower seed offerings being released to the consumer market.

Since 1932, AAS’ independent skilled and impartial judges all over North America rate the varieties on characteristics such as earliness, taste, disease-resistance and uniqueness that stood out in their location. A complete list of AAS winners and their test results including this year’s choices are available at AAS’ website, hall-americaselections.org.

The varieties are granted one of three awards. The AAS Gold Medal Award is given only once or twice in a decade for a unique breeding breakthrough. The AAS National Winner designation recognizes an ornamental or edible variety that demonstrated superior garden performance as compared to other like varieties on the market. The AAS Regional Winner designation is given to varieties that do particularly well in a specific region.

Many of the varieties of vegetables and flowers we have grown to love have been AAS winners. Big Beef tomato won in 1994 and Celebrity tomato in 1984. Butter Crunch lettuce won in 1963 while Black Beauty zucchini won in 1967. Arizona Apricot gaillardia won in 2011.

Recently I received vegetable and flower seed samples of the 2024 winners to evaluate. I am going to grow two kinds of broccoli, a shallot and a kabocha squash. The broccolis are Skytree and Purple Magic. Skytree, a national winner, stands up to heat and produces tall stalks on compact plants that are ready to harvest in 70 days from transplant. Purple Magic, also a national winner, has purple stalks with tight greenish purple heads. Tolerant of cool and hot weather, it is ready to harvest in 90 days, making it great for a fall harvest.

Crème Brulee is an echalion or banana shallot that produces elongated, large bulbs with rich, pungent shallot flavor that’s high in natural sugars. It is ready to harvest in 115 days and stores well in a cool, dry place.

Sweet Jade kabocha squash produces a cute, sea-green, personal-sized winter squash that weighs up to two pounds, perfect for small families or single individuals. Ready to harvest in about 95 days, this squash has an exceptional storage time.

All these varieties and more are widely available in the seed supplier catalogs for 2024.