Catalogs help put gardeners into gear

If you’re like most gardeners, the flood of garden catalogs in the late winter comes as a welcome harbinger of spring. When the first beacon arrives in January, we know we’ll have a long wait until planting time, but we just don’t care. The bright pictures of lush vegetables and colorful flowers set us into dreaming about our own gardens, and this alone carries us through the last months of winter.

Whether you’re a novice or a longtime gardner, garden catalogs, along with the ideas you’ve gleaned from a winter’s worth of reading garden books and magazines, are the source of inspiration for improving the garden and landscape. The catalogs make us believe we can grow anything if we only try. They warp our sense of our own garden’s size, as we order entirely too many seeds and end up expanding the garden’s perimeter yet another year.

We probably would not be so tempted to overdo it if we had just our old standbys to order each year. It’s easy to blame the ever-expanding garden on all the new releases offered each season. Trying new varieties is one of the many ways gardeners educate themselves. Not only is it educational and fun to experiment, it’s an opportunity to reap the benefits of years of plant breeding and crop improvement.

Granted, some aspects of plant breeding aren’t so pleasant to think about. The thought of extensive breeding that causes vegetables to be sterile, tasteless, colorless and misshapen is enough to make anyone question the need for such research and “development.” But plenty of good things come of extensive plant breeding — things from which most home gardeners can benefit. For example, disease resistance traits frequently are isolated in plant breeding programs, until a new variety is developed that consistently shows resistance. New varieties also are bred for resistance to insects. These traits can help home gardeners reduce their reliance on pesticides. Some varieties are bred to produce a heavy yield while others are bred to produce a climbing rather than a bushy growth habit. Such benefits can help the gardener with limited space practice intensive or vertical gardening.

Plant breeding programs also focus on selecting vegetables and flowers for their ability to perform well under adversity. Vegetables are bred for an early yield, which can greatly benefit gardeners in northern New England. Flowers are bred for more pleasing color and fragrance. Some also are bred for their ability to be long-lasting as cut flowers or for reduced maintenance.

You’ll find that not all newly released varieties appear in the retail markets at the same time. Some seed catalogs and retail garden centers have newly bred offerings each year. Others wait a few years before they offer new varieties. Quite often, these seed companies will test new varieties in-house before they offer them to the publc. The flow of varieties onto the market makes it difficult to sort out which are truly new releases and which are simply new offerings for various companies. One thing is for sure: It takes a while for new releases to become mainstream. Most of the recently released vegetable and flower varieties are still not commonly seen in Maine landscapes.

A few recent releases are worth noting and worth trying in this year’s garden.

A gardener could make a pretty zesty salad out of a combination of newly released vegetables. Several new lettuce varieties show promise for the Maine garden. Optima, a butterhead lettuce, and Corsair, a Romaine lettuce, both make a great starting point for the garden salad. Optima is dark green, with thick but tender leaves. This variety shows a greater resistance to tip burn and bottom rot than its close relatives. Corsair is a flavorful variety that produces a full, heavy head of leaves. Impuls, a red lollo-type lettuce, makes a colorful addition to the garden salad and is reportedly tastier than its other red lettuce relatives. In addition, it is slow to bolt once daytime temperatures become too high for what the crop prefers. Intensive gardeners should note that this variety does well in the low light of understory, intercropped plantings.

Add a few wedges of Red Sun or Sheriff tomato to your home-grown greens. Red Sun, a medium-sized tomato, yields midseason, shows resistance to skin crack and ripens uniformly. Sheriff also has a rich tomato flavor, a deep red color and can be used fresh, dried or in sauce. It also makes a superior base for salsa.

Toss your salad with a tangy salad dressing made with a hint of Thai Dragon hot pepper. These medium-size plants yield extra-hot peppers that are about 2.5 inches long at maturity. They dry well on or off the plant.

Jumpstart, a newly released sweet corn, will make a nice addition to any summertime meal. Extra harvest stores well in the freezer. This variety matures in 71 days and germinates well in cold soils, allowing for early planting. These plants are uniform and high-yielding, with extra-sweet, 8-inch-long ears. The husk grows snugly against the ear, which may offer additional protection against corn borer.

Maybe you’ll want to top off a light summertime lunch with a fresh cup of Athena cantaloupe. This new variety matures in about 80 days and shows tolerance to powdery wildew and fusarium wilt. The fruits have a thick, sweet orange flesh, and the skin of the melons rarely cracks to expose the mature fruit.

The newly released flower varieties will make a splash in both border and cutting garden. Heavenly Lavender petunia, a double multiflora type, is the first clear lavender variety not to show dark purple veins in the center of its flower petals. The bedding plant is about 1 foot tall, and, at maturity, can range from 12 to 24 inches in diameter. Fantasy Pink Morn petunia, a miliflora type, produces tiny 1- to 1.5-inch-diameter pastel pink flowers with creamy white centers. This variety generally requires less deadheading than other petinuas, but makes only a moderate show in the border garden unless used in mass plantings.

Several recently released varieties make excellent cutting flowers. Strata salvia, Lambada bee balm and Silky Gold asclepias (butterfly weed) show superior performance in the vase. Strata is the first bicolor salvia, with miniature blue and silver petals that appear to be pastel blue from a distance. The stem and developing buds of Strata are silver and make an interesting addition to fresh and dried arrangements. The plant blooms uniformly from June to frost with little maintenance. It’s an excellent choice for the blue or silver border garden.

Lambada, a lemon-scented bee balm cultivar, has whirls of pink- and white-spotted flowers. As with other bee balm varieties, Lambada has strong, square stems, perfect for cutting. This plant will serve as a tender perennial in some areas of Maine and should be used as an annual in other areas. It blooms continuously from May or June until frost.

Silky Gold asclepias holds up extremely well in fresh-cut flower arrangements, and once in bloom (around mid-July) produces abundant color until late September. Again, this plant is a half-hardy perennial, but is best used as an annual in Maine gardens.

Depending on where you look for seeds and plants, you may find other new offerings from industry plant breeders. Why not experiment with a few new varieties this season to get a taste of what plant breeding technology has to offer.

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, c/o MaineWeekend, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402-1329. Selected questions will be answered in future columns. Include name, address and telephone number.