The best place to find vegetable varieties that grow well where you live is your state’s extension service, the gardening and farming outreach program run by your state’s land-grant university. Most of them publish a list of recommended varieties chosen for yield, quality and disease resistance in your state’s conditions. It’s free, and a lot of gardeners have never heard of it.
Seed catalogs show you thousands of beautiful options. The catalog photo doesn’t tell you whether that tomato was bred for a cool coastal summer or a humid Missouri August. Your state’s list does.
Where to find your state’s list
Search for “[your state] recommended vegetable varieties extension”. A few examples so you know what you’re looking for:
- Missouri: University of Missouri Extension’s Vegetable Planting Calendar (G6201) lists recommended varieties plus planting dates for south, central and north Missouri.
- North Dakota: NDSU runs Home Garden Variety Trials, where gardeners across the state test varieties and the results become a recommended list.
- Oklahoma: Oklahoma State has a fact sheet, Vegetable Varieties for the Home Garden in Oklahoma.
- Virginia: Virginia Tech publishes Vegetables Recommended for Virginia and runs its own home vegetable variety trials.
Not every state has one, and they’re all formatted differently. Some are web pages, some are PDFs, some are tucked inside a planting calendar. If you can’t find yours, a neighboring state with a similar climate is the next best thing, or call your county extension office.
How to read a variety list
Let’s use Missouri’s tomato list as the example. Here are three of the tomatoes it recommends:
- Early Girl (VF): 52 days, very early, medium-sized fruit.
- Big Beef (VFFNT): 73 days, large fruit.
- Celebrity (AVFFNTSt): 70 days, determinate, medium-sized fruit with good flavor.
That looks like alphabet soup, so here’s what each part means.
Days to maturity
The number of days from setting out transplants (or from seeding, for crops you sow directly) until you can expect to start harvesting. Early Girl at 52 days is ready weeks before Big Beef at 73. That matters if you have a short season or want an early harvest.
Disease resistance codes
Those capital letters are the diseases the variety resists. For tomatoes, the common ones are:
- V: Verticillium wilt
- F: Fusarium wilt (race 1). FF means races 1 and 2.
- N: root-knot nematodes (tiny soil worms that damage roots)
- T: tobacco mosaic virus
- A: Alternaria stem canker
- St: gray leaf spot
More letters means more built-in protection. If your tomatoes have wilted and died mid-summer before, a variety with F or FF in its code is a smart pick.
Determinate vs. indeterminate (tomatoes)
Determinate tomatoes grow to a set size and ripen most of their fruit around the same time. Good for canning and smaller spaces. Indeterminate tomatoes keep growing and producing until frost. Good for a steady supply all summer.
Planting dates
Missouri’s list also gives planting windows by region. For tomatoes, it’s April 20 to May 10 in south Missouri, May 10 to 20 in central, and May 15 to 30 in north Missouri. Other states handle dates in a separate planting calendar.
A few honest caveats
- These lists aren’t exhaustive. Missouri’s publication says outright that its list is the “cream of the crop” and doesn’t include every good variety.
- Check the date. Many lists are only revised every several years. Scroll to the bottom for a “reviewed” or “revised” date. An older list is still useful, but a few varieties may be hard to find now.
- Your garden has its own opinion. A state list is a great starting point. After a season or two, your own notes about what thrived in your beds are worth even more.
Why I’m building a finder for this
Here’s what bugs me: every state publishes its own list, in its own format, in its own corner of the internet. If you want to compare, or you live near a state line, you’re opening PDFs one at a time.
So I’m building a free tool for Abundant Garden Planner that pulls these state lists together. Pick your state and a crop, and see the recommended varieties, days to maturity and disease resistance in one place. If you’d like to know when it’s ready, join the list on the homepage.
Quick answers
What does “extension” mean?
Every state has a land-grant university with an extension service that shares research with the public: gardening guides, soil testing, Master Gardener programs. Most of it is free.
Are hybrid varieties bad?
No. Hybrids are a cross of two parent plants, often bred for disease resistance or yield. Open-pollinated varieties grow true from saved seed. Both deserve a spot in a home garden.
Do these lists include flowers?
Some do. NDSU’s trials, for example, include flowers along with vegetables and herbs. Most state lists focus on vegetables.
The takeaway
Before you order seeds this winter, spend ten minutes with your state’s recommended variety list. Pick the varieties that were tested where you live, and use the disease codes to avoid the problems you’ve had before.
Your garden will thank you in August.