Super Sunpatiens! And the giant Salvia!

Greeting from the Metrolina Trial Garden. Temperatures continue to be very un-summer like and most plants continue to thrive.

SUPER SUNPATIENS:
Sunpatiens always do well in the garden and this year is no different. The 3 new colors of Sunpatiens from Sakata have been great garden performers all season. The Hot Coral and PInk Flash are incredible. Compact Red is nice but often gets some flower scorch.

Compact Hot Coral

Compact Red

Compact Pink Flash


Giant Salvia!!

Salvia Brazilian Purple from Athena Brazil  has to be the largest plant we have ever tested in the garden. This plant is currently over 6 feet tall!! It doesn't have a massive color show for its size but there are plenty of butterfly and bee attracting flowers. This is definitely a single plant show case item.

Sun Caladiums

Sun Caladiums

Caladiums for the Sun have been a great addition to the garden line up. Classic Caladium has continued to come up with new great Caladiums. This years exciting new Caladiums from Classic are:

Sun Sweet Carolina: Nice mix of green and red. Great vigor.

Sun Creamsickle Anther nice red and green. This one has a more pronounced red in it.

Sun White Dynasty A new white from Classic Caladium. Nice shape but probably less vigor.

Sun Heart's Delight: This one is really nice. This one has been catching peoples attention.

Sun Party Punch Another great color with great vigor.

Cool Canna

The Plant of the Week in the very wet Metrolina Test Garden is a Canna from Takii called South Pacific. This Scarlet flowered plant has done excellent all season and is a favorite among or visitors. This is actually the second year we have had this plant in the garden. Last year it was part of the All American Selection submission. We rated it very high last year and it is doing just as well this year! Look for this in stores in 2014!

Heliotropium-Nautilus Power Lavender

I am always amused by the various plant names breeders come up with. This weeks "Plant of The Week" has the most impressive name of Nautilus Power Lavender  This Heliotropium from Volmary started the season off with pretty average scores and was not much to look at. However it has come into its own and is outstanding to look at. This one will probably needs some work in the greenhouse to get it into a form that someone would want to buy at the store. Based on the garden performance so far it looks like something they would want to buy again next year!

This Week In The Test Garden - Open House Week!

Open House: We had great weather for our two open house dates (June 19-20, 2013) and a great turn out for both our events.

Wednesday was focused on consumer understanding organized by our Marketing department and led by market research expert Kip Creel (http://www.standpointgroup.com/key-personnel.php). Consumers reviewed all the plants in the trial garden and told us what their favorites were and why (from over 942 choices, quite a task!). This was a great day and we learned a lot about on how people select plants. 

Thursday was our day in the sun for the Southern Garden Tour (www.southerngardentour.com). We had a great turn out from all the major plant breeding companies. I spent the day with the enviable task of reviewing with the breeding companies the plants we have in our "Secret Garden". The "Secret Garden" is off limits to the public and where over 700 new and improved plants are being tested under southern garden conditions. These are the plants that will eventually make it for sale if they can pass our testing . All I can say (right now being sworn to secrecy) is that are a lot of great plants coming in the future!

Plant of The Week! 
Beauty Yellow Argyranthemum. Beauty Yellow Argyranthemum is a great example of why we do the testing we do. The current Argyranthemum we are growing is call Flutterby Yellow and is a great plant. We chose Flutterby two years ago after two years of testing in the garden where is consistently did much much better than other Argyranthemums. Beauty Yellow has the advantage in that it is easier for the greenhouse grower to produce. However we never tested it in the garden. The good news is that Beauty Yellow is doing better than Flutterby in the garden. Even better news was our Wednesday focus group picked Beauty Yellow over Flutteryby due to its better habit and more flowers.

Cool Cuphea

This weeks plant of the week are 3 colors (purple, pink, rose) of Cuphea from Syngenta. Cuphea Sriracha (SIR-ACH-AH) is unique in that it comes from seed so will be more economical to produce than the ones from cuttings. This will allow Cuphea to be used in smaller pack sizes for bigger garden plantings. We had the opportunity to look at them last year in the confidential garden and they held up very well all season and really took the heat (and I guess why it is named after a hot sauce). Ratings and more information can be found at our website 

www.metrolinagreenhouses.com\testgarden.

I hope to see you next Thursday (June 20) when we have our Test Garden open house. Information about ours and other test garden open houses going on can be at viewed at  www.southerngardentour.com.

Sriracha Purple

Cuphea Sriracha Rose

Cuphea Sriracha Pink

Hello!

Well Test Garden season is in full swing. We started planting the garden on April 29 and were done on May 2! We had some lows in the 40 that slowed things down (and made the lobelia purple) but things have started to pick up and the garden will be in great shape for our open house on June 20 (www.southerngardentour.com).


Plant Of The Week: Gysophilia Gypsy White


I am starting the year with a geeky plant but one that looks very interesting. Sakata's Gypsy White Gysophilia has held up very nicely and is growing great in the garden.  You may be familiar with the gysophilia (Baby's Breath) they use in cut flower arrangement. We have trialed a few different ones in the past and they all start off looking beautiful but end with old brown flowers. We will keep an eye on this one and see what it does when it starts getting HOT!

Happy Gardening

Dr. Mark

WInter Pansy Garden Update

Fall Pansy Garden

Gardening in the winter? Yes we can do that in North Carolina. As we discussed in the last blog post, ever year we do an over wintering trial of pansies (and other fall crops) in the Test Garden. We use the plants from our October pack trial to look at the over wintering performance. We do monthly ratings  and pictures and finish up in April (before we start planting the spring/summer trial) . 

Some results from our last weeks rating (Yes it was cold).

Top Pansy/Viola Varieties:

Two of the Freefall Pansy looked especially nice. Freefall Marina and Freefall Purple Lavender Lace both scored 4. They had nice fill in and good clean flowers with little to no cold damage

Freefall Marina

Freefall Marina scored high in the pack and has been a good performer all season.

Freefall Purple Lavender Lace

This one started off pretty slow but as really taken off in the cold.

Violas:

Violas are always top garden performers in the winter.. It is always amazing how good they look after a cold snap.

One series that had some high scoring colors was Endurio (Lavender, Sky Blue, Pure Yellow). 

Endurio Pure Yellow

Other top scoring Violas were Penny (Blue, Yellow), Velocity Mimosa (we wrote about last blog), Angel (Blue, Deep Yellow), 

Next Blog: Trailing Panys/Viola Basket Trial!

Happy New Test Garden Year

We are full swing in for the 2013 Test Garden Season and have started receiving plant material to propagate for our April 29, 2013 garden planting date. Right now we are up to 971 items planned so it should be a really interesting year of new items. 

We are very excited to have all the new Proven Winner items in the garden. An armored car will be bringing them to us after they are announced at the California Flower trials :) !

Hort Geek Items on the list so far:
1. A Cistus from TerraNova Nursery sounds really interesting.
2. An Alonsoa from Plant Haven-picture looks pretty.
3. Five new Pentas from Syngenta (we tested last year in the confidential garden and they were great).


Fall and Winter Test Garden
Currently in the garden we have the Fall annual trial going on. This is mainly a Pansy and Viola trial that we planted in the garden on October 29, 2012 and will keep in the ground till April.

We did a rating last week and some stand outs were:

Velocity Violas from Ecke

These are violas from cuttings and  have done very well in the cold weather. These were started from quart pots (where the rest of the garden was from 606 flats) so they were bigger at planting but they are doing great.


Brazen Brass Mustard from Sakata
This looked rough when we planted (see below) them but has quickly filled in and taken off. This has great foliage color and habit.

At Planiting

Last Week

Cool Wave Yellow
Cool Waves from PanAmerican Seed were the big news in Pansy this fall and has been well received by gardeners. Cool Wave Yellow has nice flowering and has continue to grow under the NC winter conditions. 

At Planting

Now

Fall Trial 2013-14
Next years fall trial we are going to change up a little. We are going to move the planting date up to week 39 so we get the plants better established before going into the cold. When we have the pansy open house (10/17/2013) you will be able to look at all the new items plants in pack and in then in the ground.