Skip to content

Company Blog

Blog

California Spring Trials 2019

In late-March, California Spring Trials (CAST) took place at 15 different locations throughout the state of California in the United States. PanAmerican Seed presented brand-new products at the Ball Horticultural Company stop at its Santa Paula research facility. The event was a great success with lots of visitors from all over the world! Guests received a first-look at all of our new introductions, along with some of our existing varieties.

During CAST, we featured a mobile app where you could find all new varieties that were displayed at Santa Paula right on your phone. You could also save your notes in this app, and “like” the products that you enjoyed the most. Here is an overview of the best products according to the attendees at CAST:

The NEW Impatiens Beacon™ Series was, as predicted, part of the top 5 most-liked products at CAST. This new impatiens series offers high resistance to Impatiens downy mildew and won’t collapse due to this destructive disease. For lasting colour, you can rely on Beacon to thrive. Available in six colours and two mixes, you can fill baskets, window boxes, and shade landscapes with confidence. For more information on the NEW Impatiens Beacon Series, visit the website: BeaconImpatiens.com.

The new, compact, first-year-flowering F1 Leucanthemum Madonna also attracted a lot of attention. We already knew that this product was going to be a winner, since Madonna was recently awarded a Fleuroselect Gold Medal and is part of Fleuroselect’s Golden Trio 2020. The CAST visitors only confirmed that the market is ready for this new product.

Leucanthemum Madonna offers better uniformity in height and habit compared to the competition. This variety is an alternative to vegetative varieties that does not require vernalization and has no risk of bacterial infection. Madonna also features excellent vigour and leaf quality for optimal finishing in quarts and large containers, using multiple plugs. This variety offers a reduced percentage of “too small” plants compared to standard seed varieties. Plus, 15% of petals may feature a laced-edge look for a unique appearance.

This year marks the Year of the Salvia, according to the National Garden Bureau, and is perhaps one of the reasons that the NEW Salvia Salvatore Blue attracted so much interest from the visitors at California Spring Trials. With its beautiful, strong blue colour, it’s no wonder this product was a hit!

Salvatore Blue has a premium look, and features the largest spikes and the deepest coloured calyx, spikes and flower in Salvia nemorosa from seed. Salvatore Blue is more vigorous than New Dimension™ Blue, making it better suited for gallon/15-cm pots. Plus, it features striking black stems on well-branched plants. Salvatore Blue is ideal for annual and overwintering production, and it is possible to finish for early Spring with a 10-hour daylength, which was previously only possible with vegetative varieties.

We had several reasons to promote our renewed Calibrachoa Kabloom series during CAST 2019. To start, our seeds are now supplied as Precision™ Multi-Pellets, offering reliable plug production, with uniform quality in plug trays and improved order fill rate – resulting in a great-performing product! In addition, we had introduced six new colours and one improved variety to the series. The new varieties include Blue, Cherry, Coral, Pink, Orange and Light Pink Blast, and White Improved is the improved variety. These varieties make great additions to the existing colours within the series, Yellow and Denim.

We were happily surprised that one of PanAmerican Seed’s HandPicked Vegetable herbs also landed in the top 5 CAST app products. Basil Everleaf Emerald Towers is a beautiful, towering plant with dark green, glossy foliage. It was attractively presented at the show, as you can see in the picture. The well-branched plants have short internodes, huge harvest potential and stay tidy for many uses – including in-ground, container gardens and hydroponics. Its traditional Genovese flavour is perfect for eating fresh in caprese salads or chopped fresh in recipes.

See more California Spring Trials highlights from PanAmerican Seed in this video from GrowerTalks magazine. Hope to see you next year in Santa Paula!

Reader Comments
Be the first to comment! Share your thoughts using the form below.
Post a New Comment

Author:

Comment:


Click to confirm:

NOTE: Comments are moderated