Pan American Seed

This is another year of great year of intros for PAS. Even though it looks like I posted a lot more pics of this visit than others previous, there is even more to see than below.


Petunia Pretty Grande and Petunia Pretty Flora
Both of these new series follow in the footsteps of the Hem Limbo/Mambo series of no/low PGR bedding flat petunias, but there are significant improvements over the former(uniformity,tight flowering window,PAS seed quality, and very good red). Their tight habit, with great low structural branching allows for a short shipable/sellable plant for the grower. The benefit of the good lower branching is seen later in the summer when the plants do not crack open as much as your standard petunias.




Vinca Jams n Jelly Blackberry
This is almost as dark as this picture shows, just knock it down a couple shades in real life. Still there's no comparison out there. Very cool!




Vinca Jams n Jelly American Pie Mix
Now you have a true heat tolerant red/white/blue mix to sell for the 4th of July.




Petunia Sophistica Blackberry
We all knew that Black Velvet grew like a standard upright petunia from seed... Now we have a black petunia from seed. While Blackberry is a shade off of black, PAS says it will darken in the summer sun.




PAS is putting a large focus on breeding of new vegetables. Ellen Leue, who brought us many of the Super Elfin Impatiens, Luna Hibiscus and Serena Angelonia, is now leading the new breeding program for vegetables. This season they are introducing a hanging basket tomato that holds on to it's fruit much better, an etching resistant jalepeno and a few others.

Zucchini Easy Pick
A green and yellow zucchini have been bred for spineless petioles. Which means no scratches on your hand when you pick your zucchini.




Salvia Lighthouse Purple
I like big flowering plants like Lighthouse Salvia, so I was excited to see a purple companion to the Red.




Cool Wave Pansy
This was a soft launch this year due to a late introduction in the fall. Dr. T has done a fantastic job in this series. Compared to the competition: Freefall and Wonderfall, the flower size is bigger and the trailing habit is larger. In our area I would only recommend these for early spring baskets right now(3ppp 10"), however I was interested to hear the idea of growing it along side with an outdoor mum program in a large patio pot.





You can see how big this can grow. I think this is a 10" pot and you can see that is almost down to the bottom of the pot.

Burpee Home Gardens

Burpee vegetables.
This retail program had significant sales growth in 2012, and that was lead by the new 'Boost' program (varieties selected for high anti-oxidants). It is a fantastic marketing program, but the varieties taste good too.
They added 3 new varieties to the boost program including the pepper Health Kick and the Tomato Tasty Lee. Both have good name recognition already and now the have the Boost program to support it even more.




Bumper Crop grafted tomatoes.
This is not a new product as last year Plug Connection rolled out their Mighty Mato program. The concept is you take the heirloom that people love because of their unique flavor and/or color, and graft it on a select rootstock that is resistant to late blight and tolerant to leaf spot. The special rootstock also increases harvest, Plug Connection trials show a 30% increase.
Last year I was very skeptical of viability of this program due to the high cost of the liner ~$2+ for a 102 liner. I am not usually a sucker for packaging but this pot and tag looked sharp and high end and the signage is great too. The picture below is a 102 liner grown for 4 weeks after transplant. I really believe that if you grow this for 5-6 weeks for a bulkier plant than below, it would sell for $10-12 at retail. The signage is key, the customer must be aware of the added value they are receiving.



Burpee Flowers
This will be year two for the flower program. Burpee heard the feedback of needing more exclusives for this program and came with two brand new flowering exclusives: one a very cool and bright begonia and the other a petunia that I like, but I want to see how the flower pattern looks throughout the summer.

Begonia Sparks will Fly- begonias are hot right now and this orange is deep and vibrant against a chocolate leaf. We have seen in the past that the chocolate bonfires were a bit less vigorous to their green counterparts, but this dark leaf seems to have a decent habit.




Petunia Blue a Fuse- this was described to us as 'having lots of drama in the flowers' and the flower pattern as 'stably unstable'.

Proven Winners

Proven Winners is always a very aesthetically pleasing stop with the rolling hills and nicely designed gardens. This year is no different. It seemed like there focus on flowers was a bit smaller this year as they devoted only 1 of their four stations to new varieties.

They also had an excellent presentation on the future of marketing and customer interaction due to the Internet and social media... A bit inspiring and a bit scary. Follow this link to see this video and you will be amazed how much our world has been transformed by this new technology.

Social Media Video Link

Calibrachoa Superbells Lemon Slice
This was one of the cooler calibrachoas I have seen. It is a great yellow and white star pattern. Unfortunately Lemon Slice has the same problem has the same problem as Pretty Much Picasso, from five feet away the star pattern blends away and it just a yellow flower then. I still think this will be great seller at retail.






They also had a new cleome and a lavender match to the Snow Princess.

In their shrub area the displayed are-blooming Wiegelia to complement their rebooting Lilac.