Day 4 of California Spring Trials – New tomatoes, black petunias and 800 roses

Vegetalis continues to expand its offerings for the home garden vegetable production with a half-dozen varieties bred specifically for home garden performance.

Floral Spires basil series consists of two compact culinary varieties – Lavender and White – both bred with ornamental value in mind. Plants have a four to five week flowering period before starting to form seed. Best suited for 4-inch pots and larger, the well-branched bushy plants have a tight rounded habit and are covered with aniseed scented leaves.

Vegetalis breeders are looking to return some of the striping coloration and higher acidity levels characteristic of heirloom tomatoes. Both Rambling Red Stripe and Gold Stripe have a vigorous trailing habit. Red Stripe produces red fruit with attractive red stripes. Gold Stripe produces yellow fruit with darker stripes.

Pinstripe is a compact eggplant that produces unique purple and white striped fruit. The 24- to 30-inch tall plants produce 3- to 4-ounce egg-shaped fruit that are about the size of a tennis ball.

In Arroyo Grande, Calif., Greenheart Farms is celebrating its 30th anniversary. The company maintains an inventory of 800 miniature rose varieties, and is developing a line of Micro Miniatures roses.

The company will initially release eight varieties with introduction at this year’s OFA Short Course in July. General manager and chief operations officer Bill DeVor says the goal of the company is to start to get growers to think of roses as annual plants. He referred to the Micro Miniatures as “pot boilers” – plants that continuously flower. Plants are hardy to USDA Hardiness Zone 5.

Black Velvet petunia is one of the highlights of this year’s trials. This hybrid vegetatively-produced petunia from Ball FloraPlant produces black velvet flowers on upright mounding plants. The plants require no special production requirements. They are adaptable to cold finishing programs with no growth regulators needed if grown cool. Plants add great contrast to combination baskets and containers.

Phantom is a black-colored flowering petunia with a contrasting yellow star pattern. There is variability in the star pattern. Like Black Beauty, it does not have any special production requirements.                

 Pinstripe is the third dark flowered cultivar released. Plants produce dark purple flowers with a thin creamy-white star pattern. It has the same plant habit and production requirements as Black Velvet and Phantom.   
 

Click here to view video coverage of the spring trials.