Viewing comments posted by critterologist

I grew these years ago, splitting a set of $$$$ plants from White Flower Farms with a friend. Absolutely loved the flavor and fragrance, unlike any other non-alpine strawberry. Very excited to get plants from Nourse Farms this spring at a much more reasonable price per plant (even with their shipping, which is on the high side if you're just getting a few items). They are pushing new growth and looking good! Can't wait for a crop. They're an everbearing variety, small to medium size berries, and they do make runners (good if you want to propagate more!).

It's been over 10 years since I first planted this bulb, and they'd spread into a large clump. After they bloomed last summer, I dug and divided them, spreading them into all 3 "pocket beds" behind the sitting rocks around the back patio. I'm not expecting blooms this year since they can take a year to settle in, but I'm happy to see leaf tips poking up!

Laura on Garden Answer (You Tube) says PRUNE HARD in spring, take them back to about 12 inches in height. She has these "all over the place" and loves them. They have high pH soil, and it tolerates that just fine. She's a fan of their blue-green leaves and loves tucking stems into bouquets They're in high desert, but they irrigate.

Really gorgeous tomato but disappointing performance and flavor in my garden. Mine are not as meaty as the ones in SallyG's garden this year (we live about an hour apart), in fact there's such a small "core" of flesh between the seed cavities that they'd probably work well as stuffing tomatoes. Mine have been fruiting for several weeks and are the only tomato in my garden still getting BER. Flavor was mild to the point of being bland. I wonder if I just have a different strain, as mine are more cylindrical (typical paste tomato shape) than Sally's and came from a different source (SSE, I think).

First year growing these, and I'm impressed! Vigorous plants are LOADED with HUGE fruit that have excellent sweet flavor. I'm saving seeds and will grow them again!

Parthenocarpic variety that I grew successfully under tulle row cover. White spines. Pick around 5" long. Crisp, good flavor.

Delicous little pickling cucumbers! Parthenocarpic variety, so you can grow it under row cover (I highly recommend tulle) and avoid insect-borne pathogens. They grow to between 2.5 and 3.5 inches long. I just ate my first one - very crisp and very flavorful! I don't think any will find their way to a pickle jar, because they are just so tasty. I'll grow it again.

Proven Winners says on their tag for this shrub that it's an arrowwood viburnum and gives the species as V. dentatum var. deamii

https://www.provenwinners.com/...

I'm not familiar with V. bracteatum...

I bought mine last fall, and so far it's been robust (spent the winter in its pot, in fact, and just got planted this spring).

The bright color of this rose shows off from across the yard, and the fragrance reaches nearly as far! I'd describe the scent as pretty much "attar of roses," very similar in strength and sweetness to the 'Sharifa Asma' rose next to it.

I adore this shrub at least as much as the hummers do! That said, I STRONGLY advise planting it in the middle of a grassy area that you'll mow around, in order to keep the root suckers in check. Mine is maybe 12 feet tall, with 3 main trunks that are 2 1/2 - 3 inches in diameter. It's sending out shoots at least a dozen feet from the parent plant. Lots of shoots. I tend to ignore them for a year or two (they aren't really in the way) and then dig them up to share... Just loosen the dirt and pull, then pot up until they grow a nice rootball.

Color changing blooms would be gorgeous in a large clump of this dianthus. In the starter plants I saw, the blooms opened pink, shifted to a lighter peach-pink as they aged, finally turning creamy white.

The 2017-2018 Trial Garden at Penn State included this variety. It got great marks (4.5-5 on a 5 point scale) for uniformity, flowering, overall growth, but then it flunked IMO with the note that all plants were lost due to winter injury. Too bad, as the color is very pretty on the around half inch sized blooms. Compared with nearby varieties, when I saw a flat of this plant in April, the leaves were grass-green (not blue-ish).

This new basil knocked my socks off (and I've grown dozens of varieties). It boasts TWO breeding breakthroughs!

It's sterile. It's not just late to bloom -- if it does make a few flowers, it still doesn't set seed. That means the plant never enters that winding-down phase where the leaves and stems become bitter and inedible. Not only can you harvest it all summer long, you can even bring it inside before frost, and it'll keep producing tasty leaves on a sunny windowsill. (Like any basil, when you harvest it, don't just pick off the leaves -- pinch through the stem, leaving 1 or 2 pairs of leaves on the stem, and it will branch to create 2 new stems. Bushier plants = more tasty leaves.)

Downy mildew issues? Not this plant. The area where it was growing with many other varieties was innoculated heavily with downy mildew spores. All the plants became infected from head to toe... but there was one spot of bright green. This variety was simply unaffected. Officially, they say it's DM resistant, but it's pretty close to being DM proof.

But how does it taste? Sterile and downy mildew proof... neither means a thing if the flavor is blah. I was invited to pinch off a tip and see for myself. Delicious!!! The flavor is more intense that garden-variety "sweet basil," with no harshness. There's a slight spice-anise note that's likely due to its Cinnamon Basil genes.

I must must must find this basil for my garden this spring. This is the most exciting plant I've seen in years!

(I'm not affiliated with PW in any way, but I do enjoy their annual exhibit at the Philadelphia Flower Show.)

I talked to the Proven WInners representative (Dave?) about this plant. He said the dense branching was the improvement in this variety. They do not pinch and prep the container plants they exhibit. Although I didn't look to see how many plants were in that pot, the branching was impressive and created really dense foliage. You could use this variety as a ground cover! Most ornamental sweet potatoes make great container "spillers," but this one would be a solid "filler" as well. The color was clean and bright, too. I'll look for it as a companion for the coleus my mom loves... and I'll try to dig and store the tuber at the end of the season, so I'll have it again next year.

'Diamond Mountain' is Proven Winners latest addition to its "Diamond" Euphorbia lineup. They are touting the vigor and size of this one -- bigger blooms and more of them, a bigger plant that can hold its own against other enthusiastic annuals. At 2-3 feet tall & wide, it's almost too big to be a container plant. I could imagine its mounds of foamy blooms working well with wave petunias. If I plant one, I might try digging it up and cutting it back hard (just to make it smaller), then giving it a spot in a sunny window over the winter.

Proven Winners is putting this knockout on garden center shelves this spring (2019). This bright magenta is a "breakthrough" color, according to the PW website. I'm not sure if it's a new cross between S. longispicata and S. farinacea or another induced sport from the 'Indigo Spires' line. According to the info on this database, there was an initial cross that gave us Salvia hyb. 'Indigo Spires', then a irradiation induced sport, 'Mystic Spires', and a colchine induced sport, 'Rockin the Blues'. For sure, it's nothing like the pale pink or lavender pink colors sometimes found in S. farinacea, and there's nothing remotely pink in S. longispicata varieties.

I first saw this as a young plant at Black Creek Nursery. At the 2019 Philly Flower Show, it was the only hosta in the Proven Winners exhibit, striking coloration. Confusingly, it had "Hosta of the Year" on the corner of its label. In fact, it's a sport of the Hosta Growers Association 2010 "Hosta of the Year," 'First Frost'. Maybe since sports are vegetatively propagated from their parent plants, awards like this are considered to be transferred? Seemed to be a stretch, although this does look like a stunning plant with great substance to its leaves, worthy of the "Proven Winners" label at least.

I just purchased this from a local nursery. The cultivar name on the tag is 'Blue Dragon', but since they also printed the species name as D. ruyschianUM, I wonder if they could have 'Blue Dragon' (a cultivar of a different species of Dragonhead, listed in this database) confused with 'Blue Moon' (a listed cultivar of this species).

At any rate, the foliage is low growing, with small rosettes of leaves arising from long stems or stolons. To me, it looks like a similar habit to a low-growing sedum or to carpet phlox. From what I can see, with the stems and leaves extending several inches beyond the rim of the gallon nursery pot, I would call it "mat forming." Time will tell how far/quickly it spreads.

There were several dried, papery seedpods in clusters at the ends of some of the stems when I purchased the plant (in October). I got at most one small (1mm?), hard, not quite round seed from each pod, although it's possible additional seeds had already been dropped.

There's something really eye-catching about this variety, maybe its deep red blooms, maybe its healthy looking dense green foliage, maybe the hummingbirds circling like planes coming into O'Hare. OK, so I've only seen 2 hummers on it at a time, but it's still one of their favorites (and mine). I've bought 2 of them. One overwintered in a pot on the deck last winter (and it was one of our colder winters here in zone 6b) and is doing more than merely "creeping" in the ground this year, so I expect it to explode when it "leaps" next year. The new one has grown from 6" to 2 ft. just this spring and started blooming.

A resilient and floriferous plant! Semi-evergreen for me, producing flowers every now and again right through the holidays. When temperatures drop to the teens and single digits (F), the leaves finally drop. Seems less prone to spring aphids than the Lonicera americana across from it.

My plant was taking over the deck stairs (again), so we pruned it back to nearly nothing, a tuft of vines and foliage topping a tangle of older stems. 2-3 months later, you'd never know it had been cut back, blooming like mad, and the stairs are in jeopardy again.

I've rooted spring cuttings (with small leaves) by sticking them in moist potting mix, but with a low % of success. I've had better luck layering vines into pots of moist potting mix (like rooting a cutting, but without severing the vine from the mother plant). I think that can be done any time of year, but time to root will vary. When you see good roots from the buried part of the vine, make a cut between the roots and the mother plant to produce an independent new little plant.