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.
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 is a nonprofit organization for evaluating new seed-grown flowers and vegetables from around the world for home garden performance. All of the 2006 award winners will be available this coming garden season in seed or already-started transplant form.
This week I’ll be covering the seven flower winners; next week, we’ll review the four vegetable winners. All the winners have been tested at independent test gardens throughout the country. More information can also be found at the AAS Web site, www.all-americaselections.org. The site includes a retail locator section, which provides some of the retailers offering AAS winners.
– “Skippy XL Red-Gold viola” – This is the cool-season bedding plant award winner. This new category was designed to test flowers that do best in cool weather. “Skippy” is the first viola to win an AAS Award. It offers large, 2-inch flowers that are almost the size of their larger cousins, pansies. Their flowers are ruby red with violet red shading below the golden yellow face containing penciling or whiskers.
– “Zowie Yellow Flame zinnia” – This is a new class of semitall zinnias in the 24- to 30-inch range. Semidouble flowers are a novel bicolor pattern of scarlet-rose in the center with yellow on the petal edges.
– “Black Pearl ornamental pepper” – This is a unique ornamental pepper with pure black leaves. Being an ornamental, this plant doesn’t produce great-tasting peppers. The tiny round black peppers are edible but extremely hot.
– “Evolution salvia” – The unusual violet flower spikes are 6 inches long on a 24-inch-high plant. The violet color is distinctly different from blue.
– “Perfume Deep Purple nicotiana” – This name comes from the delicate evening fragrance that emits from the 2-inch star-shaped purple flowers. The plant itself reaches 20 inches on this nicotiana, which is commonly known as a tobacco plant.
– “Supra Purple dianthus” – The small, 2-inch purple flowers are lacy, with highly fringed petal edges. They bloom on a low, 12-inch plant that spreads 10 inches.
– “Diamonte Coral Rose diascia” – This is a less-common plant that has a spreading habit perfect to trail over the edges of containers. Tiny flowers are coral-rose and bloom in abundance.
All of these AAS 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. Again, more information is available at the AAS Web site, www.allamericaselections.org. Next week, I’ll review the AAS vegetable winners.
