Award Winning New Plants - The Best of the Best?

The best known award for annual plants in the US is the All American Selections (AAS) program.  New flowers and vegetables are grown side-by-side with comparable available varieties and are evaluated by garden performance, size, taste, disease-resistance  and any other characteristic important to the home gardener. 

2017 Winner Okra Candle Fire

Judges deem the performers that  show clear superiority to their comparison as AAS winners.  There were 16 AAS winners this year, including a red zinnia, a miniature watermelon, and a purple okra. 

There was a time when I grew every new AAS winner each year.  This stopped in 1992 when “Thumbelina Carrot” (above) was designated an AAS vegetable.  No way was I going to go to the trouble of germinating and weeding carrots to harvest a root “roughly the size of a golf ball” at the end of the season.  New is not always better.

AAS was founded in 1932 and hundreds of plants have been designated winners.  Very few of the early winners have had staying power.   Most of those “new” prize-winning seeds are no longer available, demonstrating that they either did not live up to the judges’ expectations or they have been superseded by an improved variety.  

2017 Winner Celosia Asian Garden

Some remain stalwarts in many gardens today.  Sensation cosmos was an AAS winner in 1936 and Early Prolific Yellow squash won in 1938.  Red Sails lettuce won in 1985   Other previous AAS winners that I grow are Rocket snapdragons, Snowcrown cauliflower, Carmen peppers, the Profusion series of zinnias, certain petunias from the Wave series and Bright Lights chard.  Two widely grown tomatoes that have received the AAS award are Celebrity (1984) and Big Beef (1994). 

2017 Winner Yellow Patio Choice tomato

More about new plants winning awards in the next blog....

New and Unusual Annual Flowers for 2016

When it comes time to order new plants for the next growing season, I am the proverbial kid in the candy store.  I want to try out everything that's new.  Unfortunately most of the recently developed cultivars are grown from cuttings and they are sold in flats of at least 50 starts.  So I am forced to experiment with a large number of plants.  I always hope my customers share my curiosity.                                           

NIGHT SKY PETUNIAPhoto Courtesy Selecta

Night Sky Petunia is one of the more unusual new plants I have to offer this year.  I’m not crazy     about this speckled look, but I don’t care for black petunias either and customers seem to love them. 

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XANTHOS COSMOS

Photo Courtesy Fleuroselect

Xanthos means yellow in Greek and that’s what this new cosmos bipinnatus is all about. Xanthos Cosmos is dwarf, early flowering and uniform.    The soft yellow should be great for bouquets. Cosmos really need deadheading to keep the new flowers coming.

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BIDENS BEE DANCE RED STRIPE

Bidens is kind of a sprawly plant which is ideal for mixed containers, but not so great as a stand-alone plant.  Until recently Bidens has been limited to solid yellow.  Bidens beedance red stripe is a new take on this cultivar.  Its star-shaped orange/red blossoms with yellow centers will spill down the edges of window boxes, large pots, and planters.  Bidens is long blooming and drought resistant,

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VERBENA ESTRELLA VOO DOO STAR

photo courtesy Westhoff

The Estrella series of Verbena come from Germany.  The blooms are close to foliage unlike many other verbenas that tend to be leggy.   Estrella Voo Doo Star is good for baskets and is drought resistant.

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CRAZYTUNIA STARLIGHT BLUE
Photo courtesy Westhoff

Crazytunia Cheesecake with it's red and white star appearance did well in my greenhouse last year, so I will give this Starlight Blue a try this season.  I will soon share MORE "new" annuals to be offered at Amanda's Greenhouse.

What is New for the Garden

First, I'll tell you what is new for me - both knees. I had bilateral knee surgery in December and have spent most of the winter recovering, exercising, and generally getting back on my feet again.

We are having a mild winter here in northern Vermont and I know the lack of snow has been difficult for anyone associated with winter recreation. We covered our perennials in pots later than usual, but I still worry that they got too warm under the various layers. We shall see.

Meanwhile I am ready to start blogging again about one of my greatest pleasures - gardening.

Every year the All-American Selections competition (AAS) chooses the “best new, never-before-sold plant varieties.” Four entries with “superior garden performance” are given the AAS Award. The competition has introduced a total of 637 plants since 1933.

Some of the past AAS winning plants, like ‘Bright Lights’ swiss chard or ‘Sensation’ cosmos have gone on to become classics. Others, like ‘Harkness’ tomato and ‘Melody’ marigold have disappeared from the horticultural marketplace.

The two winning flowering plants for 2012 are salvia ‘Summer Jewel Pink’ and an ornamental pepper, ‘Black Olive.’ Normally I grow every every new AAS selection, but I’m stepping back this year.




‘Summer Jewel Pink’ (above) is the sister of ‘Summer Jewel Red’ which won the AAS award last year and I did grow that plant last summer. Perhaps it was the wet season, but its performance was underwhelming.



’Black Olive’ (above) is a decorative pepper with dark purple fruit growing along the plant’s stems. It is edible, but if I’m going to grow a showy pepper I choose ‘Super Chile’. It is very pretty and a great producer of inch long bright red hot peppers. Super Chile was an AAS winner in 1988 and it produces three times as many peppers as regular chile peppers.



The two vegetable winners are ‘Cayennetta’ peppers (above) and ‘Faerie’ watermelon. ‘Cayennetta’ pepper is a “mildly spicy pepper that is easy to grow.” This variety produces red chili peppers about 3 to 4 inches long on a compact, well branched upright plant. It is 69 days to maturity and I may be tempted to try it as a container plant.




‘Faerie’ watermelon (above) has a yellow rind with thin stripes. It yields “sweet pink-red flesh with a high sugar content and the vigorous vines spread only to 11 feet .” You can grow melons in our area, but for me they use up too much garden space for their relatively small yield.

A new concept that is turning up more and more in retail seed catalogues is the “fuseable” seed. This is when more than one seed is combined in a pellet form. Different colored coleus or petunias are often combined, and sometimes two different species are combined, like bacopa and petunias. The idea is to take the guesswork out of nice color or plant combinations.

I’ll pass for now. I’d rather create my own combinations and I also worry about one of the seeds in the pellets not germinating. It will be interesting to see how successful this new trend becomes. I will discuss more new plants the next time I blog.