George's Current Ramblings and Readlings

Best New Annual Flowers of 2020

January 21st, 2020

   A new line of disease-resistant impatiens, a sunflower that thinks it’s a blooming bush, and a velvety trailer that people can’t resist touching top the list of interesting new annual flowers debuting in 2020.

Beacon impatiens performed well in Penn State’s 2019 flower trials.

   Growers, local garden centers, and other plant experts picked those and more for the four-part, best-new-plants series I write each January – a good month for gardeners to plan what to plant in the coming season.

   The article on best new vegetables, herbs, and fruits of 2020 ran last Tuesday, Jan. 14. The best new perennial flowers of 2020 runs next Tuesday, Jan. 28, and the best new trees and shrubs of 2020 runs Feb. 4.

   Some of the following new annual flowers are available in seeds or plants online and in some plant catalogs. Most also will show up in plant form in local garden centers beginning in late April to early May.

   The details:

Impatiens Beacon series

   Breeders from Syngenta Flowers last year gave us a new line of bedding impatiens called Imara XDR that fought off the deadly downy mildew disease that’s plagued our once-favorite annual flower since 2012.

   New for 2020 is a separate line from PanAmerican Seed that looks to be an even better, fuller choice.

   Named Beacon, this six-color line looks and performs like the impatiens of old, except without the threat of collapsing in mid-summer from disease.

   Deb Shearer, co-owner of Ashcombe Farm and Greenhouses in Monroe Twp., picks Beacon as her favorite new annual for their durability and because they’re “more compact than Imara. Hopefully, there will be new colors in addition to the original six.”

   Both Beacons and Imaras bloomed full steam ahead in Penn State’s Trial Gardens last summer while older ones died next to them. The Beacons scored slightly higher than the Imaras.

   “They were stellar,” Trial Gardens Director Sinclair Adam said of the Beacon series. “I didn’t see any problems with disease.”

   Venelin Dimitrov, senior product manager at Bucks County’s W. Atlee Burpee Co., likes the Beacon ‘Paradise Mix’ blend and reports that those were healthy and still blooming well into October in Burpee’s trial garden.

   Stauffers of Kissel Hill buyer Todd Kephart also likes Beacons and says some growers are starting to grow only Imaras and Beacons because they’re so much more disease-resistant than other impatiens.

   Beacons grow about 18 inches tall in shade, part shade, and with adequate soil moisture, even full sun.

Best New Vegetables, Herbs, and Fruits of 2020

January 14th, 2020

   We’re only about nine weeks away from traditional pea-planting time (St. Patrick’s Day) and the beginning of a new growing season.

‘Medium Rare’ is a meaty new tomato debuting in 2020.
(Credit: W. Atlee Burpee Co.)

   It’s not too soon to think about what to buy, order, or make plans to plant while the selection is best. Especially with sought-after new varieties, supplies are often limited.

   For your planning pleasure, I’ll take a look over the next four weeks at what growers, local garden centers, and other plant experts believe are some of the best new plants poised to hit the market in 2020.

   Let’s start with best new edibles today, then continue with the best new annual flowers next Tuesday, Jan. 21, then best new perennial flowers on Jan. 28, and finally, best new trees and shrubs on Feb. 4.

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

   The details:

Tomato ‘Medium Rare’

   Bucks County’s W. Atlee Burpee Co. is always good for at least one new tomato, and this year’s catalog star looks to be ‘Medium Rare,’ a newcomer that Burpee senior product manager Venelin Dimitrov calls the “best-tasting pink beefsteak type.”

   Dimitrov says ‘Medium Rare’ beat a farm-stand pink heirloom and the perennial flavor champ ‘Brandywine Pink’ to win a Burpee blind taste test.

   The variety matures in 75 to 80 days and produces hefty 14- to 20-ounce fruits.

Tomato ‘Celano’ is a new AAS award-winning grape tomato.
(Credit: All America Selections)

Tomato ‘Celano’

   This compact, hybrid, patio-type grape tomato was good enough to be one of three new tomatoes that earned 2020 All America Selections awards for its performance in independent national testing.

   ‘Celano’ has a sturdy, bushy habit and is a semi-determinate producer of grape-sized oblong fruits that ripen deep red.

   AAS judges said ‘Celano’ is sweeter than competitors, has excellent resistance to late blight, and is an early and “phenomenal” yielder.

Gardening Trends of 2020

January 4th, 2020

   Younger gardeners, succulents, eco-friendliness, and “plant parenting” are shaping up as some of this year’s hot trends in gardening.

Houseplants, younger gardeners, and succulents are three of 2020’s brewing gardening trends.

   Here’s what gardening trend-watchers say they see in their 2020 compost-stained crystal balls:

More gardening… and younger gardeners

   Interest in gardening continues to grow – and it’s no longer just mainly the over-50 crowd.

   Not only did lawn and garden spending set an overall record of more than $52 billion in 2018, according to the National Gardening Association’s 2019 National Gardening Survey, but participation by the Millennial generation (ages 18-34) continues to grow at a higher rate than other age groups – now equaling the Gen Xers, Baby Boomers, and beyond.

   Millennials accounted for a quarter of 2018’s record gardening spending, which NGA says comes despite these younger gardeners having lower household incomes than older age groups and being more likely to live in an apartment or condo.

   More than a third of Millennials also said they planned to spend more on gardening last year, which was higher than the overall average of 29 percent who said they planned to spend more.

   Across all generations, gardening sales grew 10 percent in 2018, according to Euromonitor International, the world’s leading independent provider of strategic market research.

   NGA says that about three-quarters of all U.S. households engage in some form of gardening or lawn care.

Houseplants are cool again.

“Plant parenting”

   This is a new term catching on that refers to plant care – especially Millennials’ flourishing interest in houseplants. At least two new books include “plant parenting” in their titles, and the term is popping up throughout social media.

   “The houseplant craze continues,” says Andrew Bunting, vice president of horticulture at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. “Just look at the houseplant influencers on Instagram. I have a colleague, Summer Rayne Oakes, who just wrote a houseplant book, and she has 127,000 followers. The houseplant trend and phenomenon is engaging Millennials, in particular, with plants and gardening.”

   The theory is that because Millennials are delaying child-rearing and often living in rented apartments and condos, they see houseplants both as a convenient, space-saving way to grow plants as well as a way to connect to nature and nurture.

   Todd Kephart, a buyer at Stauffers of Kissel Hill garden centers, said SKH’s houseplant sales have been trending upward for years and increased another 14 percent last year. “I don’t expect this upward trend to end anytime soon,” he says.

   Deb Shearer, a co-owner at Ashcombe Farm and Greenhouses in Monroe Twp., said the houseplant boom is the No. 1 trend she’s also been seeing. “Old houseplants are new again, and everyone is searching for the newest and most unusual,” she says.

   An offshoot of this trend, says Katie Dubow, author of the Chester County-based Garden Media Group’s 2020 Garden Trends Report, is that people are increasingly interested in ways to decorate with houseplants.

Read George’s column on 14 striking indoor plants to beat the winter blues

Band-Aid Gardening

December 17th, 2019

   Gardening in Pennsylvania sometimes is a little hazardous, what with ticks and poison ivy lurking, slips on wet-clay slopes a threat in spring, sunburn likely in summer, and eye-pokes on hidden stakes possible anytime.

Typical Arizona… needled chollo cactus backdropped by needled saguaro cactus.

   But our kindred spirits in Arizona have it far tougher, risking bloodshed every trip into the yard.

   I’m just back from leading a tour to Tucson, Phoenix, and Sedona, Ariz., and I’ve never seen so many plants that arm themselves. Needles, spikes, thorns, and swords disguised as leaves are everywhere.

See a photo gallery of plants, scenery, and other sights from the Arizona trip

See George’s lineup of 2020 gardening trips

   Cacti of all shapes and sizes wield sharp, stiff needles that pierce even gloved hands.

   Bushy natives such as yucca and “desert spoons” grow in rosettes of narrow, upright blades that make them look like giant pincushions.

   The popular blue agave – used to make tequila – has even bigger, fatter sword-shaped leaves that have serrated edges in addition to pointy tips.

   And even many of the trees, such as the green-barked palo verdes and fine-leafed mesquites, come equipped with little hooked thorns on the branches to make you think twice about whether you want to prune them.

   I’d go through a box of Band-Aids every week trying to garden out there.

No, Poinsettias Won’t Kill You

December 10th, 2019

   One myth about poinsettias that just won’t go away is the one that claims they’re poisonous – enough so to kill people.

This is not a sea of death.

   That belief apparently dates to a misdiagnosed death of a Hawaiian two-year-old in 1919.

   Despite numerous research reports ever since, about half of Americans still believe that poinsettias are poisonous. Many people won’t buy one or even go near them.

   It’s true that some people get a skin rash from the plant’s milky sap. And it’s true that a child could choke on the fibrous stems or that your dog might throw up if he/she somehow stomachs a cluster of the disgustingly bitter leaves.

   But according to poison control centers and Ohio State University researchers, a 50-pound toddler could eat 500 poinsettia leaves and live to tell about it (and probably go on to a career in eating competitions).

   I got a mention in humorist Dave Barry’s column once for reporting the OSU research. He mused about how researchers managed to stuff 500 poinsettia leaves down the poor toddler’s throat.

   Anyway, the myth of the poisonous poinsettia is just one of the peculiarities surrounding this queen of holiday plants. It ranks as America’s top-selling flowering potted plant (even though hardly anyone buys one other than between Thanksgiving and Christmas), and it’s the one plant that even the non-gardeniest of non-gardeners buys.

   In its natural habitat along Mexico’s Pacific coast, the poinsettia is a rather gangly 10- to 12-foot shrub that looks to be blooming red in winter.

   I’ve seen them growing in the Caribbean landscape, and although their color is eye-grabbing, the plant itself is bare-legged and scraggly, not squat and dense like the ones on garden-center benches. Those are made compact via grafting, pruning, and growth regulators.