George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

The Best New Vegetables, Herbs, and Fruits of 2022

January 11th, 2022

   The COVID-fueled boom in vegetable gardening continued in 2021, and research is showing a high percentage of newbies say they plan to stick with this dirty (but healthy) habit again in 2022.

Fig Fignomenal
Credit: Peace Tree Farm/Concept Plants

   Plant breeders and seed companies are riding the wave by rolling out lots of new edible-plant introductions this year.

   Let’s take a look today at some of the best of the new-for-2022 edibles. If any strike your fancy, don’t dawdle ordering seeds and plants because high demand and order-fulfilling issues have been widespread the past two winters.

   Next Tuesday (Jan. 18), I’ll tell you about some of the best new annual flowers debuting in 2022, then on Jan. 25 I’ll cover the year’s best new perennial flower introductions. I’ll finish off this year’s best-new-plants-of-2022 series Feb. 1 with a look at the year’s best new trees and shrubs.

   Some of the following new edibles are already available in seeds or plants online and in catalogs. Others will show up in local garden centers – seeds already and plants in April and May.

Fig Fignomenal

   Few Pennsylvania gardeners grow figs because they’re seen as not reliably cold-hardy, plus they can get big and wieldy.

   This new fig introduction from Bucks County’s Peace Tree Farm checks off both concerns by being hardy in cold climates and being exceptionally compact – under three feet tall and wide.

   Maria Zampini, president of the Ohio-based UpShoot plant introduction company, thinks Fignomenal is going to be a winner because of its “extremely dwarf and low-mounding habit, which is perfect for urban gardening, indoors as well as outdoors.”

   But she says Fignomenal is a heavy fruiter, too, producing sweet, medium-sized figs that are deep brown on the outside and pink-red on the inside.

   Peace Tree Farm owner Lloyd Traven posted an online video showing him counting 88 figs on a four-year-old Fignomenal plant.

   “It’s a truly dwarf fig that has fruit that ripens in the Northeast,” Traven says.

   The variety won a 2021 Retailer’s Choice Award from The Garden Center Group as one of the year’s most innovative new plants with the potential to become a new best-seller.

   Outside in the ground, Fignomenal plants will do best in warm, sunny, protected areas (such as along as a west-facing stone or brick wall), and for good measure, with a leaf-filled burlap wrap in winter.

   Or they can be grown in pots that are moved inside in winter and back out for the growing season.

Eggplant ‘Icicle’
Credit: All-America Selections

Eggplant ‘Icicle’

   This eggplant with the elongated white fruits is one of five new vegetables good enough to earn 2022 All-America Selections awards based on their performance in national trials.

   ‘Icicle’ has four improvements going for it: 1.) fewer spines than most eggplants, meaning less painful harvesting; 2.) fewer seeds; 3.) good resistance to bugs, and 4.) white skins that don’t yellow like most other white-fruited eggplants.

   ‘Icicle’ grows about four feet tall, averages eight to nine seven-inch-long fruits per plant, and produces mature fruits about 55 days after setting plants out in the garden. It does best in full sun.

Gardening Trends of 2022

January 4th, 2022

   Will we stick with it?

Will all of those new COVID-induced gardeners stick with their new hobby in 2022?

   That’s the big question the gardening industry is wondering after some 18 million new gardeners took to the soil in 2020 as COVID forced people to stay at home.

   At least so far, the gardening boom is showing no sign of a let-up.

   Seeds and plants were in big demand (and short supply) for a second straight year in 2021, while 86 percent of gardeners said in an Axiom Marketing research study that they gardened as much or more in 2021 as in 2020.

   That jives with a broader McKinsey Global Institute “stickiness test” survey that claims that 75 percent of people will stick with “home nesting” in 2022, a category that includes gardening.

   Apparently, a lot of us like spending more time at home… and the activities that go with it.

   Here’s a closer look at what gardening trend-watchers see unfolding in 2022:

Who’s gardening and why?

   Research by the National Gardening Association finds that the biggest growth in gardening has come from Millennials (born roughly between 1981 and 1996), although there’s been disproportionate growth in two other groups not previously into gardening big-time – renters and people of color.

    “Men under 35 show the most significant increase,” says Katie Dubow, president of the Chester County-based Garden Media Group and author of its 2022 “From Crisis to Innovation” Garden Trends Report.

   She cites one study that showed “eight in 10 young people think gardening is ‘cool’ – and that more than half would rather go to a garden center than a nightclub.”

   David Wilson, a Lower Paxton Twp. horticulturist who’s marketing director for Overdevest Nurseries’ Garden Splendor line of plants, says that COVID and the resulting work-at-home boom has shifted where younger people want to live – and therefore how they garden.

   He says that pre-COVID, “young people wanted to populate urban and inner-city areas where the interest in gardening was very limited and confined to houseplants and plant culture in containers on decks and balconies. Now, because it has become acceptable by employers to allow folks to continue to work from home, the need for ‘more space’ and ‘getting away from the masses’ has fueled a strong movement out to the countryside and into suburbs.”

   He says that should translate into more and bigger in-ground gardens and even more demand for plants.

   “The vast majority of retailers that I’ve talked to reported continued strong returns last season,” Wilson says. “Most of them see this continuing into 2022… On the whole, it looks like maybe we are seeing the beginnings of a new wave of interest in gardening that will take over when all of us old Baby-Boomers ‘down-size’ and hang up the spades, rakes and shovels.”

Slimmer pickings, higher prices

   All of this new demand – combined with COVID- and supply-chain-related staffing, production, and shipping problems – will likely add up to both higher prices and tight inventory for plants and gardening products in 2022.

   Ted Ventre, owner of Hively Landscapes in Dover and a Pennsylvania Landscape and Nursery Association board member, says there’s a “near crisis” in plant availability.

   He says tight supplies “have been brewing since the Great Recession that saw the demise of so many small nursery and propagation operations that supply the landscape industry.”

   COVID-related labor issues and the huge spike in demand accelerated the shortfall the past two years.

   “Unlike many materials that are in short supply,” Ventre said, “you can’t grow more plants simply by adding another production run. It takes five to 10 years to grow a three-inch-caliper tree.”

   He cites a recent poll by the National Association of Landscape Contractors that found 80 percent of landscapers either increased prices in 2021 or are planning to increase them in 2022 – mainly because of higher labor and materials costs.

   The plant industry also has been plagued in the past year with drought and other weather issues, shipping delays in hard goods, trouble acquiring pots, and 10- to 30-percent increases in plastic and fertilizer prices.

   The upshot? Gardeners will need patience, flexibility, and probably a higher budget in 2022. If you see the plant you really want, best to grab it rather than wait for it to go on sale later.

   “Everyone expects all of this to become worse before it becomes better,” says Ventre.

In Case You Missed It…

December 21st, 2021

   A lot happened on the gardening front in 2021.

Roundup in its current formula will soon be disappearing from store shelves.

   Pennsylvania banned the sale of barberries, lawsuits prompted the makers of Roundup to phase glyphosate out of the popular kill-everything herbicide, and lots of great new plants debuted in garden centers (although in COVID-related short supply and at higher prices).

   I thought I’d close out the year by highlighting some of what I wrote about in 2021 and giving you second-chance links in case you missed a post of interest.

   Here you go… and happy 2022!

On this website (free, unlimited reads):

   I start every new year with a look at what experts say are some of the hot trends in gardening that are brewing for the coming year. This year’s version is titled Gardening Trends of 2021.

   I then devote four weekly e-columns to highlighting some of the best new plants hitting the market. The four parts include edibles, annual flowers, perennial flowers, and trees and shrubs. Here are links to the 2021 series:

   Best New Vegetables and Fruits of 2021

   Best New Annuals of 2021

   Best New Perennials of 2021

   Best New Trees and Shrubs of 2021

   If you’re a vegetable gardener trying to zero in on the absolute best-of-the-best varieties, I posted a list in February of My Favorite All-Time Vegetable Varieties.

   One of the projects I tackled during my extended home-hiding-from-COVID time was writing an e-book on 50 American Public Gardens You Really Ought to See. The only place it’s available is through this website as a $7.95 download.

   Did you hear about the massive three-year, $250 million improvement project that Longwood Gardens began earlier this year? It’s the biggest re-do in this esteemed garden’s history. I wrote about the details in March.

   If you had trouble getting the seeds you wanted this year or spent a longer time than usual waiting for your order to arrive, you weren’t the only one. COVID caused havoc for a second year this year. I wrote about it in a March post titled Seed Slam, the Sequel.

   Another topic I cover every year to help with plant-selecting is compiling a list of the year’s various plant-awards programs. These are plants (some new, some just woefully under-used) that plant experts and plant organizations think deserve more use in our gardens. See that one in my post on Award-Winning Plants of 2021.

   Lots of area gardeners encountered masses of spotted lanternflies for the first time in 2021. I wrote a post on the best way to cope with this imported new pest, which is to go after the egg stage and Scrape Those Lanternflies Away.

   To help all of those new and fledgling vegetable gardeners maximize their efforts, I wrote a beginning-of-the-season post on 10 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Veggie Garden.

Why So Many Cones?

December 14th, 2021

   Have you noticed the huge amount of cones this year on so many of our needled evergreen trees?

Heavy cone sets like this one are common this year on spruce.

   Spruce trees in particular seem to be loaded with them.

   What gives?

   While hefty cone production isn’t a predictor of what kind of winter we’re about to have (as some think), it can be a side effect of weather past.

   Hot and especially dry summers put extra stress on trees, which can influence how many seeds the trees produce the following year.

   More stress generally means more seeds as trees “decide” they ought to ramp up production when germination and survival conditions aren’t favorable.

   Species that prefer cool climates, such as most spruces and firs, are particularly prone to hot-weather and drought stress.

   Since cones are the protective housing for seeds in cone-bearing species (“conifers”), that could partly explain why we’re seeing more cones than usual this year. You’ll remember that we had a very hot and dry spell for a few weeks in the middle of last summer.

   Besides that, though, most conifers produce heavy cone sets in two-year cycles.

   They’ll naturally produce a lot of cones one year and then produce few the next year – almost as if they’re taking a year to rest after doing such a good reproductive job the year before.

   Many fruit and nut trees do the same thing with their production of fruits, acorns, and nuts.

   So don’t be surprised that after this coneful year, you see a sparse showing next year.

Bye-Bye Barberry

December 7th, 2021

   If you wonder why Japanese barberries aren’t in garden centers next spring, it’s because Pennsylvania has banned the sale of this popular little thorny-stemmed shrub as a harmfully invasive plant.

Barberries are being banned from sale in Pennsylvania.

   Japanese barberries have been a landscape staple for decades because they’re heat- and drought-tough, deer don’t like them, they’re compact, they aren’t commonly bothered by bugs and disease, and they come in attractive varieties with brick-red and golden foliage.

   However, these bullet-proof features also make them a dominant competitor in the wild, where their prolific seeding has caused them to elbow out most everything else in pastures, untended fields, and woodlands.

   Strike two is research at the University of Connecticut that found barberries to be a favorite host plant of black-legged ticks, which are prime transmitters of Lyme disease.

   The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture decided that the harm to Pennsylvania ecosystems is great enough that Japanese barberries should be banned from sale in the state. We’re the fifth state to ban barberries, along with Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and New York.

   Barberries have been identified as an ecological threat in at least 20 U.S. states.

   Although the ban is immediate, the department said enforcement will be phased in over two years to give growers and sellers a chance to adjust and react. As of the fall of 2023, anyone selling or growing Japanese barberries in Pennsylvania will have to immediately destroy them.

   That destruct order doesn’t extend to plants that gardeners already are growing in their yards. But the Agriculture Department is asking gardeners to voluntarily yank them anyway.

   “Carefully considering the potential impact of what we plant can prevent lasting damage that is difficult, expensive, or impossible to reverse,” said Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding in announcing the barberry ban.