Salvia “ Summer Jewel Red” was named an All-America Selections for its early and generous bright red flowers.
Who can resist springtime’s siren song to get outside and play in the soil? After a winter filled with lush promises of the landscape to come (courtesy of the onslaught of seed catalogs filling gardeners’ mailboxes), the rush to color our world is never more palpable.
Or palatable.
Bold and beautiful vegetable offerings continue to tempt with new introductions attractive enough to plant in the front yard before they’re harvested for the backyard barbeque.
A pot of petunias seems outdated when ornamental trailing front porch baskets could instead display colorful salad fixings or spicy salsa ingredients.
Trellises filled with velvety purple filet beans, like the nearly black “Velour,” or window boxes spilling the eye-catching, golf ball-sized “Pot Black” eggplant, are as pretty as they are productive.
And patio-friendly crops like sweet cherry tomatoes can be plucked from the vine while lounging poolside for a healthy snack.
Good enough to eat
Plant breeders are introducing plenty of new decorative and container-ready hybrids this year for the home garden, all ripe for the picking.
“We’re seeing a lot of vegetables designed specifically for containers that are smaller with lots of production,” says Deb Shearer, of Ashcombe Farm and Greenhouses in Mechanicsburg, who is excited by the variety of patio tomatoes and gourmet lettuce mixes. Mini-heads of lettuce like the green “Bambi” or the dark red “Rhazes” look especially fun, as do the container-friendly “Simply Salad” mixed green introductions of ornamental, multi-species loose leaf lettuces and greens to cut and harvest again and again.
Container tomatoes continue to improve, according to Diane Blazek, executive director of the National Garden Bureau and the All-America Selections program, which keeps track of the dozens of new varieties each year and chooses the best performers of the new plants to honor. Two cherry tomatoes were selected this year.
“The two tomatoes are exciting because they carry on the trend of container gardening but can be grown in containers, hanging baskets as well as in the ground. They are also resistant to cracking, which is important for cherry tomatoes,” she says. The winning tomatoes are “Lizzano” and “Terenzo,” but several other new
container tomatoes like the early “Cherry Buzz,” “Cherry Falls,” and the larger beefsteak container “Containers Choice” all look intriguing. This year a seedless tomato has also been introduced—“Sweet Seedless.”
For ease of vegetable planting transitions, Shearer plans to offer several vegetable seedlings like spinach and beans in biodegradable coconut liners to allow home gardeners a head start on the season without shocking the new plants.
The burgeoning eat-your-lawn movement has been gaining traction, according to the 2010 Gardening Trends Research Report, conducted by the Garden Writers Association Foundation, which notes that edibles now beat lawns for consumer spending priority.
It’s the first time spending on growing fruits and vegetables has surpassed spending on lawn care since the foundation began tracking trends.
To help enthusiastic new vegetable gardeners, Penn State University recently published a new guide for backyard growers, “Vegetable Gardening…Recommendations for Home Gardeners in Pennsylvania.” The guide can be downloaded for free at http://pubs.cas.psu.edu/freepubs/pdfs/agrs115.pdf or ordered for a nominal cost. Sections on seed starting, planting dates, spacing, container growing, pest management, and harvesting are all included, as well as information on vegetables that thrive in our region.
In addition to the All-America Selections winning pumpkin “Hijinks,” which produces perfect fruit for decorating, the Bureau singled out a few of the more interesting new varieties to test out in your own garden: from the pre-rooted “Quick Sprouts” potato transplants to the sweet-fleshed French heirloom “Musquee de Provence” pumpkin for decorating and eating to the ornamental “Celebration” Swiss chard.
Home chefs will be drawn to the sweet heirloom “Purple” tomatillo (which will yield a purple salsa), the white skinned pickling cucumber “Salt and Pepper,” and the colorful “Tye-Dye” tomato that simply needs a drizzle of olive oil and a bit of salt and pepper to make for a splashy meal.
Annual delights
Feeding our bodies is necessary. Feeding our senses is pure pleasure. If you’re planting just for pretty, plenty of new varieties are sure to catch your eye.
Shearer believes once your heart is set on that new fuschia or blazing orange, you’ll want to pair it with the most classic of colors.
“The hottest thing are plants with black in them,” she says. “This year Ball Seeds came out with the first pure black petunia, ‘Black Velvet,’ and ‘Pinstripe’ and ‘Phantom’ have black in them.”
Shearer will be combining these black beauties in containers, pairing them with white flowering plants like euphorbia to make for a dramatic show.
“We’re always looking for something different,” she says, while relying on superstars like the “Superbells” series of calibrachoa (which look like little petunias with a compact form and hundreds of trailing flowers that cascade over containers and spread over flowerbeds). She’s excited by two new introductions: “Blackberry Punch” and “Coralberry Punch.”
Dependable performers like the “Wave” and “Supertunia” series of petunias, the “Fantasia” series of geranium, the “Superbena” series of verbena, and the “Zahara” series of zinnias continue to delight.
“Of note in flowers are the very cool morning glory ‘Split Second’ with peony-type flowers, a white sunflower ‘Coconut Ice,’ and two foliage plants: an ornamental corn ‘Field of Dreams’ and the dark ‘Gryphon’ begonia,” says Blazek. “In regards to the most recent AAS Winners, we are very excited to have our first ever Ornamental Kale as a winner, ‘Glamour Red.’”
The salvia “Summer Jewel Red,” with early and generous bright red flowers through the season, and the viola “Shangri-La Marina,” with light blue petals and a dark blue face, were both selected as All-America Selections winners for 2011.
Perennial favorites
Familiar perennials like echinacea, gaillardia, rudbeckia, and heuchera continue to improve with new varieties boasting eye-catching colors, more fragrance, and fuller, sturdier forms. One standout is the “Pow Wow Wild Berry” echinacea, deemed the best new variety grown from seed at the Penn State variety trials. Another promising plant, the “Arizona Apricot” gaillardia, garnered acclaim from All-America Selections judges, who liked the distinctive flower color of yellow edges deepening to an apricot center, as well as its performance as a hardy, long-flowering, heavy bloomer that requires little maintenance.
For those wishing to add other award-winning perennials to a garden design, the Perennial Plant Association names a top performing plant each year.
The winner for 2011, Amsonia hubrichtii (“Arkansas Blue Star”), is a hardy native with clusters of light blue flowers in spring and ferny foliage which turns golden in fall. Best planted in masses and mixed with ornamental grasses or plants with attractive seed heads. It performs best in moist, well-drained soil in full sun to partial shade in zones 4-9. The dense, mounding plant grows 3 feet tall and wide, appearing as a small shrub.
Trees & shrubs
When it comes to making a more permanent commitment to the landscape with woody materials, Ashcombe’s assistant nursery manager Brandon Kuykendall likes the trend toward tiny specimens.
His favorite: the “Little Devil” dwarf ninebark, which features a deep burgundy foliage color on a low maintenance decidous plant.
He’s also enamored with the new dwarf butterfly bushes like “Flutterby Petite,” which, instead of the towering, sprawling tendencies of the standard plants, forms a dense, compact mound only one to two feet high.
Despite its small stature of two to four feet, there’s nothing small about the flowers of the “Little Lime” dwarf hydrangea, with full-sized lime green blossoms that age to white.
“I think the miniature flowering shrubs will be popular,” he says.
“I also like the smaller size evergreens like the dwarf boxwoods.”
Smaller is also a reason The Pennsylvania Horticulture Society named an American sweetgum cultivar as one of its Gold Medal Plants for the year.
The “Slender Silhouette” cultivar produces a smaller amount of those brown spiky seed balls that land in a small footprint and can be easily cleared, while at the same time offering the same brilliant yellow autumn color. Three other superior woody plants were singled out this year with Gold Medal awards: the dense, deciduous bloodtwig dogwood shrub “Midwinter Fire,” with its striking winter display; the pendulous deciduous pond baldcypress conifer “Debonair Morris,” with its dramatic winter silhouette; and the native variegated southern bush honeysuckle “Cool Splash,” with its vivid green and cream toned glossy foliage.
For those eager to try out the newest plants, make sure to get your orders in early, especially for those varieties that your local garden center may not carry. Seed companies often sell out of attractive new varieties early. Garden centers may also carry just a limited amount.
