The Greener View: 2024 All-America Selections Winners

One way that I know a plant could work well in my garden is that I look for the red, white and blue logo of All-America Selections on seed packets, on bedding plant tags or in catalogs. Even AAS winners from several years ago are more likely to prove successful than nonwinners.

The AAS testing program is an independent nonprofit organization that tests new plants. They have about 80 test gardens from Alaska and Canada to California and Florida. They also have almost 200 display gardens all across the continent that are not used for judging but are used to show gardeners how well the plants grow locally.

Today we will cover all three 2024 vegetable trial winners and a couple of the flower winners. Next week, we will finish with the remaining flower winners.

Purple Magic is a purple broccoli. The flower buds (the part we eat) have a purple cast over a dark green, while the flower stalks are a bright royal purple. It can be cooked or eaten raw in the same way as any broccoli, but it is sweeter and more tender than regular green broccoli. It grows in full sun and can be transplanted into the garden five weeks before the average last spring frost. Harvest is in three months, and if the plant is left to grow after the initial harvest, small side shoots will be able to be harvested for several months. These smaller shoots are perfect for adding to broccoli soup.

The other broccoli winner is Skytree. It grows in a vertical shape, making it easy to harvest the tender stems and flower buds. Planted at the same time as Purple Magic, it will be harvested as much as three weeks earlier. It can be eaten and cooked the same way as Purple Magic.

The final vegetable garden winner in 2024 is the sweet red pepper Red Impact. This pepper will live up to its name in your garden. The peppers are 8 inches long, 4 inches wide, bright red and very sweet. They can be harvested green if you want to. They can be eaten raw, roasted or stuffed. Plant them when the soil warms up and they can be harvested in 75 days. The plants are very disease resistant. Each plant can have 15 of these half-pound peppers.

I am not a big fan of Celosia, but I might have to try Burning Embers. It has both bright pink flowers and bronze-colored leaves. There were more flower plumes, and they lasted longer than other Celosias in the trial gardens. It also flowered well in both hot weather and high humidity.

Geraniums are one of the most popular garden flowers every summer. The Big EEZE is a series of geranium varieties that grow very well in containers. Not being into fabrics, I didn't know what a batik fabric was, so I tried researching it. I still don't think I know what it is, but it appears that from a distance, some of the color patterns look speckled or freckled.

Pink Batik geranium flowers have a light pink to white background with dark pink to red freckling and striping. They are very pretty. The quantity of flowers is outstanding. If you have grown geraniums in the past, you can grow this AAS winner.

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Email questions to Jeff Rugg at info@greenerview.com. To find out more about Jeff Rugg and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.