New Cultivars and Old Favorites for the 2018 Garden

  • Post published:01/05/2018
  • Post comments:8 Comments
Super Hero Spry Marigold
Marigold “Super Hero Spry”

New cultivars and old favorites plants are a part of every garden. When I was a Girl Scout we sang a song with the line “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver but the other gold.”  As I look out at my garden and look at the dawning of a new year, I am thinking about the new things I may plant and use in the garden, but I know there are certain things that I will always keep.

This is the time of year when the catalogs can fill our mailboxes, or our emails, with colorful photos of new varieties of familiar plants. The All America Selections has chosen 12 special edible and ornamental plants to recommend for 2018. They chose Pak Choi Asian Delight, a beautiful Marigold Super Hero Spry and Canna South Pacific Orange which is a real stunner.

The All America Selections (AAS) program was created in 1932 to provide a testing service so that gardeners would know which new seeds were truly improved and would be successful over most of the country. The 2018 Canna South Pacific Orange can be grown from seed, attracts pollinators, is more vigorous and more uniform than other varieties with more basal branching. They are also smaller and suitable for containers.

"Asian Delight" Pak choi
Pak Choi “Asian Delight”

‘Asian Delight’ produces a beautiful mini 5-7 inch head with tender white ribs that has been rated vastly superior to other varieties because it does not bolt as fast as others which means it will have a longer harvest season.

I love marigolds and the ‘Super Hero Spry’ is a compact 10-12 inch French marigold with beautiful colors that needs no deadheading. Plants that are self cleaning, that need no deadheading, are one of the great gifts of hybridizers.

The Perennial Plant Association has named the ‘Millenium’ allium its Plant of 2018. It is a compact allium with rosy purple rounded clusters of blossoms. It blooms in late July and August. Alliums are easy care plants, increase nicely and attract pollinators, especially butterflies. Last year the PPA chose ‘Asclepius tuberosa’,  butterfly weed, as one of its winners because it is a butterfly magnet. Gardeners are becoming more aware of the importance of pollinators and their needs.

Because Johnny’s Selected Seeds is an employee owned company, does not use GMO seeds, and has dependable organic seeds it is one of my favorite seed companies. This year they announced that they are adding 150 new offerings, many of which are new varieties.

‘Valentine’ is a new bright red grape tomato, rich in the powerful antioxidant lycopene. Along with its rich flavor it has good resistance to early blight.

‘Fino’ is a new fennel with a larger, heavier bulb with good bolt tolerance. This is a good vegetable for succession planting because it can be planted in summer for fall harvest.

‘Carmine’ larkspur is a new variety of an old favorite with deep pink flower spikes between 9-12 inches long. It is useful in flower arranging, and attracts hummingbirds.  I have grown larkspur, but somehow never realized that all parts of this plant are poisonous. If you have young children or pets you need to be aware of this.

Of course, there are the new ‘olds,’ those heritage varieties that have their own new place in the sun. The Seed Savers Exchange has been around since 1975, with the goal of saving heirloom seeds, sharing those seeds with gardeners and working to preserve the biodiversity of our food crops. It is important to keep many types of a vegetable in production because we never know what blights or diseases may arise, or what genes will be needed to create a new hybrid.

Seed Savers Exchange does have a seed bank with 25,000 plant varieties, but it also grows seeds, and makes them available to gardeners to grow for their own use, and to save themselves. Nowadays you can sometimes finds Seed Savers seeds on sale in familiar packets at the nursery center, but you can also become a member of the Seed Savers. Membership grants you a 10% discount at their online store, subscription to the quarterly Heritage Farm Companion, free or reduced admission to gardens, and conservatories through the American Horticultural Society.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds is relatively new on the scene but is an amazing company started by Jerre Gettler in 1998 when he was only 17. Now he owns Baker Creek Seeds in Missouri, Comstock Ferre and Company in Connecticut, and the Petaluma Seed Bank in California. He also instituted the National Heirloom Expo in Santa Rosa California which is possibly the world’s largest annual heritage food event.

The Baker Creek catalog is over 300 pages with hundreds of seed varieties from around the world. This year some of the ‘new’ seeds are Big Horse Spotted corn from Lima, Peru, the Achievment Runner Bean from Britain, and Aonaga Jibai cucumber from Japan.

Of course, there will always be NEW plants, and we will want to try some of them. We gardeners are great scholars and we are always ready to learn. But we also treasure our own old favorites. And that is a good thing.

I wish you all a beautiful, productive and delicious 2018 in your garden,

Between the Rows   December 30, 2017

Resources: https://all-americaselections.org; www.perennialplant.org: http://www.johnnyseeds.com;

https://www.seedsavers.org;  Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds https://rareseeds.com;

This Post Has 8 Comments

  1. Yenna Yi

    I love all those fancy names for plants especially “Asian Delight.”

  2. Pat

    Yenna – As you know those cultivar names are designed to appeal – and get you buying.

  3. I remember that song, too, in fact I’ve shared it with my kids over the years. Such good advice! And, as you say, it applies well to a gardener’s “friends,” too! So much to look forward to in the months ahead!

  4. Pat

    Beth – Right now the main thing I am looking forward to is temperatures rising above 10 degrees. And then the riches of the spring.

  5. Rose

    I ordered from Johnny’s Seeds last year for the first time when I was hunting for something I couldn’t find anywhere else. Good to know it’s such a good company–I will definitely order from them again this year. I like to look at the AAS selections, too–the Allium definitely sounds interesting. Looking through seed catalogs is a great way to spend these cold, gloomy days–Happy New Year, Pat!

  6. Gail Pabst

    Thanks for bring the new AAS Winners to light in your post! We appreciate it and look forward to hearing about how the winners perform in the homeowners garden. As you mentioned, our AAS Winners are trialed across North America and to become a National AAS Winner they must perform better than the comparisons across these trials. Asian Delight has generated a lot of interest because of being a slow bolting Pak Choi.

  7. Pat

    Gail – I am always glad to learn of the AAS Winners every year because I know I can count on their dependability.

  8. Pat

    Rose – I am a big admirer and booster of Johnny’s Selected Seeds, ever since I lived in Maine for a year over 40 years ago when Johnny’s was a new company. They have lived up to their youthful ideals.

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