Citizen Science in Vegetable Garden Cultivar Evaluation in Tennessee

Edible food production is a growing area of horticultural interest that can engage multiple generations of rural to urban residents with varying levels of experience. Residential or community garden food production can provide many benefits, including the production of healthy produce, establishment of community or social connections, and increased physical activity. Regardless of experience, food gardeners are interested in growing crops and cultivars well-suited to their region and which provide both productivity and crop quality. This means that cultivar selection is a common question for gardeners. However, formal cultivar evaluation is relatively rare in the non-commercial food production sector due to the number of cultivars, the challenges of replicated trial management, and the scarcity of public researchers focused on consumer horticulture. This limits the information available to support new gardeners, which lowers the chances of overall success including high-quality harvests. Such crop and variety selection questions are common for Extension personnel in the United States as well as many others who work with gardeners. Even with this high level of interest, funding for consumer garden trials is limited and the cost of replicated trials across various geographical sites is high. To fill this gap in research and address the need for high-quality data to support education, University of Tennessee Extension and research faculty have developed a citizen science approach called the Home Garden Variety Trial (HGVT) program. The HGVT is a collaborative effort between Extension and research faculty and educators, who select trials, provide seeds, and compile data, and citizen scientists around the state, who conduct the trials using their usual gardening practices in their own home or community gardens. Beginning in 2017, the collaborators have conducted five years of research involving over 450 individual gardeners in more than half of the counties in Tennessee. The HGVT is a novel and effective tool to introduce gardeners to new crops and cultivars while providing previously unavailable data to researchers. Together, researchers and home gardeners collect and compile data that supports residential and community food production success while engaging new and experienced gardeners in participatory science research.