Aug 26, 2014

2015: Year of the Gaillardia!

In my last e-newsletter, I shared some of my favorite new coleus varieties in honor of the National Garden Bureau’s recent announcement that coleus will be part of its “Year of the” program for next year in the annuals category.

Today, I want to talk about another “Year of the” crop. In the perennial category, 2015 will be year of the gaillardia. And coincidentally, the folks at Pacific Plug & Liner focused on gaillardia for their comparison trial during the 2014 California Spring Trials.

Each year, PP&L trials a specific crop with new breeding developments and an overabundance of choices for growers. This year they chose gaillardia because more varieties have been hitting the market recently and they wanted to see for themselves what differences exist between all the varieties.

With more than 40 varieties in the trial, I can’t list them all here. For a complete listing of the trialed varieties, click here.

In the September issue of GPN, which should be on its way to your doorstep very soon, you’ll find a detailed article with the trial results written by PP&L’ s April Herring-Murray, new product development and marketing manager.

For now, I’ll cheat, and give you a tiny sneak peek into some of the trial results. Here are some of April’s favorites from the gaillardia trials:

Best fluted variety: PlantHaven’s ‘Fanfare Amarillo’ (which has since been renamed to ‘Fanfare Citronella’)

Most interesting flowers: Danziger’s Gayla Spark series

Best series: Syngenta’s Sunrita series

Are you currently growing gaillardia? If so, what are some of your favorite varieties? Will you be adding more gaillardia to your production in 2015? Send me an e-mail at jdolce@greatamericanpublish.com, and let me know!

And don’t forget … Be on the lookout fo the September issue of GPN where you can read more about PP&L’s gaillardia trials.

– Jasmina