About Vegetable Variety Citizen Science

What varieties will grow best in my garden? No doubt gardeners have been asking their fellow gardeners this question for centuries.

Today's gardeners ask the same question. But now this website provides an avenue for gardeners to share their knowledge with a much wider community.

The concept is simple: Gardeners visit this site and report what varieties perform well - and not so well - in their gardens. Other gardeners visit to view the variety ratings and read the reviews to decide which might work well for them.

The Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners citizen science project also provides an opportunity for researchers to involve knowledgeable and motivated citizens in meaningful scientific research. Research on the performance of vegetable varieties is often limited to commercial production for many reasons. Home gardens may be overlooked, in part, because visiting thousands of home gardens to collect data would be an overwhelming task.

Asking gardeners to partner with researchers by collecting and sharing their own observations via the web could prove to be a winning combination for all. With a multitude of gardener observations at their finger tips, researchers can gain new insight into the performance of vegetable varieties under a wide range of conditions and practices, and ultimately provide more insight into which varieties perform best. At the same time, gardeners can get advice from a larger community of gardeners to help decide which varieties to try in their own garden.

Gardeners - young, old, beginners, experts - join the research team today.

Another citizen science opportunity sponsored by the Department of Horticulture at Cornell is the Viburnum Leaf Beetle Project, where citizen scientists partner with Cornell researchers to track the spread of this devastating pest of native and cultivated shrubs.

The Vegetable Variety Citizen Science Team:

• Lori Bushway, Citizen Science Project Director/Senior Extension Associate, Department of Horticulture. Website questions? Citizen science questions? Email: vegvariety@cornell.edu
• Thomas M. Jahn, Programmer Analyst II, Department of Horticulture
• Ari Rockland-Miller, Extension Support Specialists,Department of Horticulture
• Angela McGregor Hedstrom, Program Assistant,Department of Horticulture

Additional team advisors and previous members:

• Steve Gabriel, Program Assistant,Department of Horticulture
• Craig Cramer, Communications Specialist, Department of Horticulture
• Russell Welser, Educator, Cornell Cooperative Extension, Ontario County
• Marcia Eames-Sheavly, Senior Extension Associate, Department of Horticulture
• Charlie Mazza, Senior Extension Associate, Department of Horticulture
• Paul Treadwell, Web Administrator, Cornell Cooperative Extension