It’s not too early to start thinking about mouth-watering
vegetables and brightly colored flowers. We’re talking
award-winning vegetables and flowers, courtesy of
It’s not too early to start thinking about mouth-watering vegetables and brightly colored flowers. We’re talking award-winning vegetables and flowers, courtesy of All-America Selections. AAS, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2007, is a nonprofit organization for evaluating new seed-grown flowers and vegetables from around the world for home garden performance. All of the 2007 award winners will be available this coming garden season in seed or already-started transplant form.
For 2007, there are three flower winners – petunias, vinca and celosia – and one vegetable winner, a pepper. All the winners have been tested at independent test gardens throughout the country. More information can also be obtained at the AAS Web site: http://www.all-americaselections.org. The site includes a retail locator section, which provides some of the retailers offering AAS winners. Without further ado, here are the new “All-Americans.”
“Opera Supreme Pink Morn” petunia – There are many spreading petunia varieties on the market, but none of iridescent “pink morn” blooms.
This multi-colored petunia offers an iridescent pink color that shades to creamy white with a yellow throat. Flowers are nearly three inches in diameter. Plants spread three to four feet.
Plants are just as much at home in hanging containers and window boxes as they are in the ground. Plants can even be used as a groundcover, flowing up or down a slope.
Like “Opera Supreme Pink Morn” petunia, “Pacifica Burgundy Halo” vinca is another bedding plant award winner. A bedding plant winner differs from a flower winner because the bedding plant category tests annuals in both the greenhouse and the garden. Two evaluations and scores are given to each AAS bedding plant award winner, making it more difficult to win.
“Pacifica Burgundy Halo” vinca has distinct velvety burgundy flowers that form a “halo” with a large white center. The unique color design and freedom of bloom were two traits that AAS judges scored for the variety to win. Like most vinca, this winner is easy to grow in full sun throughout the summer. Once established, it is drought-tolerant. Flowers are nearly three inches in diameter. They bloom on plants that grow a foot high and wide.
“Fresh Look Gold” celosia is a plumed or feathered-type celosia. It features a deep golden yellow flower that blooms on a 12-inch-high plant. The flowery plumes do not brown out as the summer heat comes on, and plants offer continuous color. Plants are very undemanding. Heat and drought-tolerance are top characteristics. The golden plumes can also be cut and hung to dry for arrangements.
The lone vegetable winner in 2007 is “Holy Mole” pepper. This is an improved pasilla-type pepper, which has a specialized use: mole sauce.
The peppers are green when immature, elongated from seven to nine inches long with a width of almost two inches, tapering to a blunt point.
As the pepper matures, the skin turns chocolate about two weeks after the green stage. This is the stage to harvest fruit.
All these All America Selections winners will be available at garden centers this spring and summer. Look for the red, white and blue AAS display signs. You can also buy seeds from large mail-order seed companies.
