Chris: This is it! What you’ve been waiting for since last March: Installment one of six (Sunday through Friday) of the world-famous Bobblehead coverage of the California Pack Trials … er, Spring Trials, as the kids are calling them these days … which makes sense, because I haven’t seen a single pack yet.
Ellen: Get with the program, Chris. Think spring—Spring Trials!
Chris: Anyway, fellow Bobblehead Ellen Wells and videographer/editor/fact memorizer Jennifer Zurko (you’ll hear her voice popping into the videos when Ellen and I can’t remember how many colors a particular series has) started our coverage Friday afternoon at Golden State Bulb, and spent our first full day at the next three stops listed above.
By the way, somebody asked “Why are you called the Bobbleheads?” Well, watch the front of one of our stellar videos and you’ll note that our heads bobble. The first year we debuted that effect, we walked into a trial and somebody exclaimed, “The Bobbleheads are here!” And there you go.
Ellen: And, a little bobbling helps loosen the neck. Feels good! Anyway, wanna jump into it?
Chris: A ton to talk about is, so we’ll keep the witty banter to a minimum. Okay, first stop, Friday afternoon:
Golden State Bulb Growers
Callas are Golden State’s specialty, but the first thing I noticed was how much emphasis they’ve put on marketing callas, not just growing them. Fifty percent of their greenhouse was devoted to packaging and sales ideas, such as Christmas (up four-fold in the last three years).
Ellen: That’s right. They had some great holiday décor ideas. And I really liked their container ideas they presented. For instance, a 6-in. calla pot you can just drop into a mixed container. Another container idea is the 6-and-1 tray—it’s a tray of six 4-inchers surrounding a 6-in. centerpiece. And finally, the “tri-pot”—three triangular pots that fit into a nice gift pot, a great way to mix colors. Check out all the container ideas on our VIDEO.
Chris: Cool ideas, especially the tri-pot, which is from Japan, they said. But varieties are why we’re here, and they had several. All were limited availability: from one case per order to 5% of your order. First is a series of compact callas called Callafornia. There’s Red, Sun (yellow) and Fiesta (orange and yellow bicolor). Loads of flowers on these.
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Ellen: Don’t forget Carnival. It’s a true potted orange that starts blooming light and turns darker with time. Nice one.
Chris: One of my favorites. Lastly, we saw a big, maculated yellow called Gold Fever, with what they say are the deepest gold colored flowers of any variety they sell. But if you want see them all, check out our video at
www.youtube.com/growertalks.
Ellen: It was a nice way to kick off Trials. Let’s move on to Saturday, shall we?
Chris: First stop Saturday ...
Danziger
Danziger displays as they have for years at Headstart Nursery, a vegetable and ornamental young plant producer. In previous years, they shared space with Oro Farms, but since Oro’s been bought by Fides, Headstart has put in a big display, showing what they do in their 2.1 million sq. ft. of space at several locations. In fact, they’ve partnered with Hortus Group, which displayed their cyclamen, including a funky new one called Wave Umbrella—a bicolor with drooping flowers. Oh, and Hortus Group is even doing tomatoes! They’ve got one called Heartbreaker Vita, a heart-shaped hybrid that’s good for home gardeners or professional producers. Seems like everybody is into vegetables these days.
Ellen: Veggies are good, but let’s talk about flowers. Like Danziger’s additions to their Sun Harmony New Guinea impatiens. These are their sun-tolerant New Guineas, and to the series they’ve added Deep Orange (a replacement for their regular Orange) and Violet.
Chris: A new category of annuals is vegetative lobularia (don’t call ‘em alyssum) and Danziger introduced the first of a series called Stream last year—Silver Stream. This year, Stream gets three more: Lavender Stream, Summer Stream and White Stream. These lobularia are said to be tidy (small flowers drop off and disappear) and heat tolerant. I’d use them for containers or as a border plant or in rock gardens.
And lastly (at least for this quick email), a couple of Marvel Beauty Petunias: Raspberry and Blueberry. These little petunias are bicolor veined, with yellow throats.
But if a picture is worth a thousand words, a
VIDEO is even better!
Okay, on to stop two of the day and three of our Trials trip:
Pacific Plug & Liner/Global Plant Source
Ellen: Lots to see here, what with the host, Pacific Plug & Liner, along with Global Plant Source—the combined Israeli companies that were once under the Agrexco name. PP&L had nice displays of their five key varieties: Hellebore Penny’s Pink, Iberis Masterpiece, the EverColor Carex Collection by way of Ireland’s Pat Fitzgerald, Dianthus Cosmic and Arenaria Lemon Ice. Honestly, too much to say about them here, so please check out the VIDEO for the whole scoop.
Chris: I think you’ll love our videos—we’re sporting a new pro camera with tremendous color quality, so the flowers look like they’re supposed to.
Ellen: It does a good job making food look lifelike, too.
Chris: The folks expect some food banter, Ellen. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be the Bobbleheads. In fact, I could mention the meatloaf and mashed potato lunch they served, proving it’s not all sprouts and tofu out here.
But back at it: Global Plant Source is the new company formed by the former Agrexco companies, Jaldety, Cohen, Hishtil and Schwartz. There was so much stuff from that there’s no way to list it all. So a few highlights from each of us will have to suffice for now.
One of my pick items is Oenothera African Sun. Rich bright yellow flowers on top of deep green foliage. They say it’s a Zone 4-9 perennial, which is impressive for something with such good color. They say it flowers spring and summer.
Ellen: I was impressed with Jaldety’s sedums. The plants themselves are good stuff, but more impressive were the combo displays. Some were created in-house by a PP&L designer extraordinaire in huge, lovely pots, and others were put together in IKEA shoeboxes. That’s right, shoeboxes. Love ideas like that!
Chris: I also liked some of the new petunias from Cohen, namely Happy Giant, a grandiflora addition to the Happy series. Two of the colors are Purple Picotee and Hot Pink. Purple Picotee reminds me of a classic grandiflora petunia—except in a more high-tech vegetative form. And I also liked Happy Punch Banana (pictured below). Funky name for a colorful flower.
Two geraniums from Schwartz caught my eye. Great names, too—Flic Flac Red and Violet. They have a jumping gene, and the name kinda hints at that, because a “flic flac” is a gymnastics handspring, apparently. Who knew?
Chris: Is that what it means? I thought it was a German breath mint.
Ellen: Which you could have used after our visit to Garlic World.
Chris: At least we spared Jen another taste test of Garlic ice cream (hilarious video from last year; you'll find it at
www.youtube.com/growertalks).
Okay, last stop for Saturday and this email:
Syngenta
This is another trial about which it’s a shame we can’t write 10,000 words. I mean, we’re talking 113 introductions in seed, vegetative, mums and even veggies. The July GrowerTalks will go in-depth. Plus, there’s our VIDEO, which will cover the seed highlights (of course, we shot all the new stuff in vegetative, new mums, a new veggie line, and those videos will be posted in coming weeks, so stay tuned).
So one of my favorites from Syngenta: WonderFall pansies. As the name implies, it’s a spreading/cascading pansy series with an “extreme” trailing habit, they say. Flowers are large and colors are “more appealing and beautiful” than the competition, as they put it. Four of the five colors are shades: Blue Picotee, Lavender, Rose, and Purple and Blue. Plus there’s a Yellow With Red Wing. Flowers are large, and plant habit is vigorous; they say you can grow a nice 10 in. basket with just three 288 plugs.
Ellen: One of my faves is the new Duvet series of petunias—“Duvet” as in the flowers create a “blanket of color.” It’s a grandiflora, so the flowers are grand, and it’s suited for small pot production. Five colors, and White was outstanding.
Next, I’ll pick the new Calliope geranium colors. Calliope is an interspecific hybrid, blending zonal and ivy characteristics (leaning a bit more toward zonal). Calliope Dark Red is one of the most popular geraniums on the market, and now it and Calliope Scarlet Fire get three companions: Hot Pink, Lavender Rose and Burgundy. While Dark Red attracts most of the attention, these new colors should get some attention.
Ellen: They’ve added nine new mixes to their Kwik Kombos, plus one improved. Nice color combos, all. But the cool thing is they’ve added two lantana mixes (Bandana Lemon Meringue and Bandana Lemon Squeeze) and an angelonia mix (Carita Summer Berry Blast). In all, there are now 28 colors in the Kwik Kombos series.
Chris: Lastly, veggies. Why shouldn’t Syngenta jump on the bandwagon? After all, they own one of the world’s big seed companies, Rogers. What Syngenta has done is put the division of Rogers that serves small growers and the packet seed companies under the direction of the flowers group. They’ve selected a dozen species and 88 varieties to market to customers outside of the main big veggie producers. They don’t have any sort of branding for “Syngenta Garden Vegetables” yet (although that’s “on their radar” they say).
Ellen: We could go on for days, but we have our day jobs to do—and that is visiting Speedling, Takii and Sakata Sunday, followed by a three hour drive south to the central trials. We’ll fill in all the rest with our coverage in videos being uploaded in the next few weeks and in our July magazine coverage.
Chris: Wait, Boston, I want to mention one more Syngenta variety: Vinca Cora Red. I think it’s the truest red color I’ve seen since Pacifica Red. And it’s got Cora’s disease resistance. It should be a seller.
Okay, now we’re done for the day. Be sure to check out our videos. And feel free to drop us an email to ask about or comment on what we’ve reported. Lastly, remember: we can’t report it all! There’s will be a ton of introductions and new ideas over the next week and we’ve gotta pick and choose. But if you don’t see it here, it doesn’t mean it won’t wind up in
GrowerTalks or
Green Profit.
See you tomorrow!
Chris and Ellen
Chris Beytes
Editor & Publisher
GrowerTalks and Green Profit
Ellen Wells
Editor-at-Large
Green Profit
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