Hey, my Fellow Gardeners!
Happy New Year! Celebrating the NEW upcoming growing season with you!
Before we begin planning our gardens for 2025, let’s check out some of the outstanding 2024 highlights we all, as fellow gardeners, created together. The plants we all loved and planted the most—our top 10 most sought after and top-rated varieties based on all our 2024 selections!
These are the varieties that were relied on the MOST to feed friends and family the best in 2024 and through these winter months. Here they are—starting with #10!
10. Early Contender green bean: Your go-to green bean for early harvests! Ours too! Their prolific nature is so rewarding. So easy to fill a big bucket in a hurry!
This is the green bean we all rely on in season-- and for stocking our freezer and the canning shelves with a year’s worth of green beans for the off-season. Truly a ‘workhorse’ variety! We're so glad you love 'em too!
9. True Gold sweet corn: An old-fashioned sweet corn with the corn flavor you grew up enjoying! This one has one a place in your hearts and your precious garden space.
We’ve been growing this corn as contract growers for other seed companies for decades. This allows us to grow A LOT of corn seed plants of this variety. That means we can seek out the very BEST corn plants, saving the BEST corn seed, making continual improvement.
Always observing, selecting and saving the best! That way we can offer YOU, our customers, our BEST! And True Gold is the real winner—cuz it’s being planted in your gardens, gracing your summer barbeques, and filling your freezers for the off-season. We all win!
8. Dakota Sisters muskmelon: This is ‘A PRAIRIE ROAD ORIGINAL’—meaning it was bred on our farm. And we taste test all the best-looking melons for the best flavor! Tough job, tough job— and Dan and I are so happy to do it!
As we taste test, we save only the BEST seed as our stock seed. That way we not only maintain-- but continually improve that sweet flavor! And YOU are noticing our efforts to make it THE BEST tasting melon. Your purchases put Dakota Sisters in our top ten! 🙌🏻 We're so proud of this baby!
7. Homemade Pickles cucumber: Your go-to cucumber! Cuz who doesn’t like a good cuke? Crunchy texture with extra-sweet, never bitter flavor! Great for pickles AND fresh eating.
We’ve grown Homemade Pickles under contract for other seed companies too! That means we get to plant a WHOLE LOTTA cucumbers. And there’s A LOT of cross-pollinating going on in the cucumber patch-- the bees and other pollinators make sure of it! We all benefit ‘cuz Mother Nature is mixing up all that genetic diversity. That makes the variety stronger—no inbreeding here!
We love it when we get to grow Homemade Pickles! 'Cuz like you, we LOVE ‘em too! Fresh or pickled-- they're fantastic!
6. Uncle David’s Dakota Dessert squash: Another ‘PRAIRIE ROAD ORIGINAL’! This squash was bred by my brother-in-law, David and we’ve been taste-testing and saving seed from the very best tasting squash every winter for more than four decades!
We love hearing it’s accolades, “The best tasting squash we’ve ever had!” “I’m always comparing other squash to Uncle David’s—the others always leave me disappointed.” “Uncle David’s has spoiled me—no other squash even comes close to the flavor!”
So gratifying to know that our efforts to select for deep orange color, a smooth texture, and that rich, sweet flavor is winning a place in your garden, on your plates, and in your hearts for Uncle David’s Dakota Dessert squash. Who needs dessert?
5. Sugar Snap peas: The best garden snack ever! Sweet-crunchy-juicy delight!
As a kid I used to raid my mom’s pea patch—and I still do. Sugar Snaps are my go-to!
And I’m not alone in favoring them—apparently! These seed packets literally fly off the shelves-- Sugar Snap peas for planting adventures. I’m always telling Dan, “We need more Sugar Snap seed packets!” and “Ohhhpp! We’re out again!! Gotta pack more Sugar Snap peas!”
We love sending these out and imagining your delight as you stop for a summer snack session in the garden. Does it get any better than that?
4. Sweet Dakota Rose watermelon: Well, yes it does get better! A summer watermelon feast tops Sugar Snaps—at least for me! AND for many of you!
Sweet Dakota Rose watermelon edged out Sugar Snaps—not by much but enough to earn it the #4 seed! So sweet! So juicy! Drip down your chin delight!
There’s no such thing as moderation when eating this watermelon! I love to go to the fridge—pry that heavily laden plate from where we stuff it in, and heft it to the counter. I am a confessed watermelon glutton!
So much so that I froze HUGE amounts of it this year for my winter smoothies. Summer has nothing on winter here! (OK—that’s not true! But frozen watermelon helps!)
3. Sweet Dakota Bliss beets: Yes! BEETS made the TOP THREE!! Can you believe it? And it's A ‘PRAIRIE ROAD ORIGINAL’! Meaning-- we brought this variety to you!
I would not have guessed that! But there it is!! The numbers don’t lie—you guys voted with your purchases and Sweet Dakota Bliss beets made the top three!
Beets were always a staple when I grew up. We ate a LOT of beets. My Dad didn’t love ‘em—I remember that! But I DID. (Note to self—do a blog post on how my Mom prepared her beets!) My Mom had to cook a pile of beets with me at the table!
Beets have a compound in them that some people are more sensitive to-- it makes beets taste like dirt to them. Sweet Dakota Bliss beets contain very little of that compound. So that means even people who don't normally like beets, do like Sweet Dakota Bliss!
Yep, I love beets-- and beet pickles-- and it is so awesome to see Sweet Dakota Bliss beets in your Top Three! Good for you! (Pun intended!)
2. Dhat, Tah, Dada! Dakota Tears onions: Your number TWO favorite variety—another ‘PRAIRIE ROAD ORIGINAL’! This was bred for our long winters—long winter storage onions! We are NEVER without onions.
These onions store until your next onion harvest comes in—no kidding! David bred these onions ‘cuz he wasn’t happy with his onion storage. He decided it was important enough to dedicate time and energy to breeding a long-day onion variety with excellent storage!
By planting back the ones that make it through the winter—year after year—and letting those go to seed, we’ve dialed it in for you! We’ve been working on these onions since the 1980s. We set great store by them-- ‘cuz they store for us! 🙌🏻 We’re so happy to share them with all of you! Thanks for giving them your support!!
🥁 Drum roll please 🥁 (Imagine you can hear it!)
Our #1 Selling Variety in 2024—Nash’s Best Carrots!!
OMGOSH! So happy to reveal this fan favorite! This fantastic carrot variety was bred by our dear friend and colleague, Nash Huber! He bred it as a market carrot with unsurpassed flavor, strong vigorous tops for shading out weeds in organic growing conditions, and strong tops for ease of harvest. We have customers who come back year after year after year to purchase THIS variety. Clearly, Nash's Best carrot has cultivated quite a following!
AND we are the only seed company Nash granted the ultimate privilege of selling seed for his baby! We KNOW how much effort goes into breeding open-pollinated varieties. We could not be more honored to offer this variety to you, our customers. All sales culminate into a breeder’s commission—a gratuity, if you will, to Nash—for gracing us with this BEST SELLER!
There you have it! 🥳 Our 2024 Top Ten countdown!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
We hope this helps you plan for your best garden yet in 2025! 👍🏻
Your garden coach,
Theresa
PS. Watch for our 2025 Prairie Road Organic Seed catalog-- arriving in mailboxes all across the US this week! 🙌🏻 Let me know when yours is delivered!!