Green Industry – The Garden Professors™

Trials and Triumphs: All-America Selections Judging and 2024 Winners

I’ve written before about my time as a trial judge for the All-America Selections program, which I did during my seven years with Nebraska Extension. I happened upon the opportunity to be a judge by accident, but really came to relish my time and the work that the organization does.

You see, All-America Selections started in 1932 as a way to actually certify the claims that newly-introduced plants were actually better than ones already available. Previously it was sort of the wild-west of claims made by everyone who had a garden catalog or wrote a garden publication. There was no way to level the playing field and certify these claims until W. Ray Hastings, the president of the Southern Seedsman Association, established the All-America Selections trial program. As a non-profit and now part of the National Garden Bureau, the organization and its volunteer judges can serve as impartial arbiters of the superiority of newly-introduced plants.

This is especially important in this day and age of spurious claims and piles of misinformation on the web. The organization uses a research-based approach in determining high-quality plants with replicated trials all across the country. Plants have to perform well in all regions of the country to be a winner. Sometimes if a plant does well in one area but not others, it will be considered a regional winner.

Ninety-one years later the organization still serves as the gold standard for performance in home garden plants. Judges have a track record of picking plants that are favored even decades after they are introduced. The ‘Celebrity’ tomato, winner from the class of 1984, has probably been grown by almost everyone who grows tomatoes and can be found in almost every garden catalog or seed rack. ‘Bright Lights’ Swiss Chard, class of 1996, is also a go-to favorite for almost anyone who grows chard. And while many plant cultivars come and go with trends and company closures, there are still seven cultivars from the first class in 1933 still available for home gardeners to purchase through retailers: Tomato ‘Pritchard’, Spinach ‘Giant Nobel’, Pansy ‘ Dwarf Swiss Giants’, Nasturtium ‘Golden Gleam’, Carrot ‘Imperator’, Canterbury Tale ‘Annual Mixed’, and Cantaloupe ‘Honey Rock’. You can check out their profiles on the AAS website to see where to buy them.

2024 Winners

So far there have been 10 winners announced for the 2024 garden season. It unlikely that any more will be introduced at this point, but they often aren’t announced until they are ready to go to market so there’s always a chance. I served as a judge for the edible crops (vegetables, fruits, herbs) for both in-ground and container trials so I’ll start with the edible winners. Then I’ll also share info on the ornamental winners. You can always find more information, including which seed and plant suppliers/retailers carry the plants, at the AAS website.

Broccoli Purple Magic F1

A striking purple broccoli with tight growth habit. Judges noted it for its great broccoli flavor that was sweeter and more tender than the green broccolis to which it was compared. It was also noted for its heat and stress tolerance.

Broccoli Skytree F1

This broccoli’s long stalks set it apart. They make the compact heads easy to harvest. It is also noted that the stalks themselves are tender, sweet, and flavorful so they should be eaten as well. It is noted as being uniform and early maturing. Skytree was a regional winner in the West and Northwest. Container suitable.

Pepper Red Impact F1

This is a Lamuyo pepper which is a Spanish pepper noted for exceptional sweetness. It is sweeter than your standard bell pepper. The fruits are huge – nearly 8” long and double the size of standard bell peppers. We noted that they were delicious and sweet, even when green.

Celosia Burning Embers

A beautiful and long-lasting celosia in the garden. It is noted for its bronze leaves with pink veins and bright flowers. It is well-branched, heat and drought tolerant, and long-lasting in the garden. It lasted well past other types trialed. Container suitable.

Geranium Big EEZE Pink Batik

This geranium was noted for its long-lasting flowers and large flower heads. The prolific and large flower heads have a unique pink and white mosaic design. Judges also noted that it was very sun and heat tolerant. Container suitable.

Impatiens Interspecific Solarscape ® Pink Jewel F1

Noted for the bright pink flowers with an opalescent sheen, these flowers lasted well through the season. These plants are sun tolerant and also noted as being resistant to impatient downy mildew, which has basically made it almost impossible to grow (or buy) impatiens lately. Container suitable.

Marigold Siam Gold F1

This large-flowered marigold was noted for season-long performance. It was also noted that the plants didn’t need staking, even though they were tall and had large flowers making them top-heavy. Container suitable.

Petchoa Enviva™ Pink

You might be asking yourself the same question I did – “what the hell is a petchoa?” And the answer is great – it is a hybrid cross between an Petunia and a Calibrachoa, often called Million bells. The result is a beautiful, mounding plant that is covered with large, beautiful pink iridescent flowers with yellow throats. The judges noted that plants performed well all summer, even in extreme conditions. Container suitable.

Petunia Sure Shot ™ White

The judges noted that this petunia performed like a powerhouse all season long, including extreme summer heat and weather. Most notably, the flowers kept their snow-white flowers all season, whereas many white flowers fade or get blemished quickly after blooming. Regional winner from the West, Northwest, and Great Lakes regions. Container suitable.

Verbena Sweetheart Kisses

This blend of verbena has pinks, roses, reds, and whites that were super attractive to bees and other pollinators. Judges also noted the fine foliage, which isn’t like standard verbena foliage. The plants performed well all season long, even in heat and drought. Container suitable.

Petchoa – bringing together the best of the Petunia and Calibrachoa worlds

Wrapping it up

Finding that AAS seal is a great way to assure that you’re buying high performing plants for your garden. I truly did enjoy my time as a judge, even though my trials were often “if it lives through this, it definitely deserves an award” type of gardening. Now that I’ve left Extension, I’ll no longer serve as an official judge, but I still plan to volunteer to help the Extension office and serve as an “ambassador” for the AAS program. I’m glad they’ll let me stick around!

Fair Judgement: garden lessons from a fair (and crop trial) judge

I love a fair! Which is a good thing since I find myself at a lot of them as an extension professional. It seems like fairs attract extension folks like honey attracts flies. We’re always involved in the 4-H activities – the livestock, project displays, and contests. Sometimes we pop up other places as well. The one thing that I get asked to do multiple times each summer is act as a judge for horticultural entries. Usually for 4-H youth entries, but sometimes for the open class where anyone can enter their best (or sometimes not so best) produce, flowers, and more. I thought I’d take a few moments to talk about what I look for as a judge, so if you ever want to enter your best tomatoes or dahlias at the fair you’ll know what to do to get the best ribbon possible. And even if you aren’t going to enter something into the fair, the rules and guidelines we use can help you select quality seeds and plants for your own garden or help you pick out the best produce at the grocery store or farmers market.

Produce items and flowers with their ribbons after judging. Each item is judged on its own merits and is not compared to the other entries (except for selection of a “grand champion” or for submission to the state fair).

The fact is, many of the same qualities I look for and skills I use when judging produce and flowers at the county fair are also ones I use as a trial judge for the All-America Selections (AAS) program. I recently attended the AAS/National Garden Bureau/Home Garden Seed Association summer summit and was discussing fair judging with some folks from seed companies. They were excited by the process, and especially by the fact that one of the things that I judge (and have gotten fairly strict about) is that the fair entry information contain the cultivar or variety name. They found this exciting because companies, especially smaller companies, put a lot of work into developing new cultivars, and when the general public identifies specific cultivars as being high quality (as in, I grow XXXX cucumbers because I think they are the best) or at least being able to identify the qualities of specific cultivars then it is sort of like a recognition of the plant breeders and distribution company’s work (and also puts money in their pockets). As home gardeners, it is important to know which cultivars or varieties work best for you and to be able to identify the qualities you prefer. It can also be handy to see cultivars out in “the wild” and be able to recall the name of plants you like, which is why the All-America Selections program has display gardens where you can see the edible and ornamental winning plants up close and personal. I’ve written about the trial process for this blog before.

Our display garden on the UNL Campus, which is our home garden for our TV show Backyard Farmer. We feature the garden each week on the show, which is one of the longest running locally produced shows in the US celebrating its 70th anniversary this year. Watch episodes.

Now back to the fairs – this year I used my judgmental eye at five county fairs in the course of three weeks – with three of those fairs in one week. I’m not sure why I’m so popular, maybe because I’m good at it or maybe because nobody else will do it. In either case, I do my best to not only judge fairly and by the rules, but also provide valuable feedback as a learning opportunity for youth. The whole point of fair entries and projects, from our point of view at extension, is not that a kid gets a blue ribbon (in Nebraska the top standard ribbon is purple, though, which I had to adjust to) but that we help raise blue ribbon kids. In some counties I actually talk to kids, interviewing them on how they grew stuff and giving them feedback on their entries. When I don’t interview, I fill out a score sheet and provide comments on positives and negatives of each entry.

Here are a few of the things that I look for when judging, and how they might help home gardeners:

Overall quality, appearance, and health – this is the one that most can identify with. Does the produce item or flower look appealing and high quality. Is it free of blemishes, diseases, bug holes, etc. You’d be amazed at the quality of some things we get at the fair. Of course, since I usually judge items for kids I do try to provide feedback on how to improve quality overall. Basically, my reference point is “would I buy this at full price a the market or grocery store”.
Correct preparation – this is one where lots of folks get tripped up. For produce items we are often looking for whether or not the item has been harvested correctly, whether or not the stem has been removed or trimmed properly. It varies by produce item. These rules seem superfluous and overkill, but they actually are based on guidelines for how to best prepare produce and flowers to extend their shelf life and storability. For example, in Nebraska our guide says to leave a ¼” piece of stem on cucumbers, to remove the blossom cap/stem (sepals) from tomatoes to reduce damage to fruit, to trim beet stems to 2”, to pull (not cut) rhubarb and leave 2” of the leaf blade attached, and so on and so forth. These guidelines all help reduce damage to produce items or keep them fresher longer – so these guidelines can be handy for home gardeners, too. Herb stems are to be cut a certain length and kept in water (like a bouquet) with the leaves below the water line removed. For flowers, rules will often state how large of a specimen to provide, and to remove the leaves below the water line. Rules vary by state and by fair, but many of them are fairly consistent here. You can find our Nebraska preparation guides for produce and flowers to see how best to harvest and prepare crops and flowers for storage or usage.
Uniformity of size, shape, color, etc. – this one also trips a lot of people up. First, most fair rule books will state a specific number of one item that needs to be provided, so that a judge may judge consistency and uniformity across multiple specimens. For example, our fairs require two specimens of larger produce items (slicing cucumber, zucchini, eggplant, etc), five specimens of medium size items (slicing tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, pickling cucumbers, beets, etc.), and twelve specimens of small items (cherry tomatoes, string beans, etc.). Flowers usually require five stems, but larger specimens like sunflowers may only require three. All the specimens provided in the exhibit should be as uniform as possible. All of the produce items and flower stems should be exactly the same size. Being the same level of maturity is also important and also leads to uniformity of color, especially in produce items. Color uniformity is especially important in flowers. I use this uniformity rule when judging our AAS trials as well – do the plants perform consistently across the whole plant in terms of harvest or flower appearance. This is a useful skill for home gardeners as well, as you can judge how well a specific cultivar or variety performs for you. You want to grow plants that perform well and provide consistent produce or flowers and not plants that only produce a few good items here and there with questionable produce or flowers mixed in.
Correct identification and cultivar names – as I stated earlier, the correct identification of the plant (like don’t enter a jalapeno pepper as a bell pepper) and the cultivar or variety are important. Knowing what the actual end product is supposed to look like is helpful for gardeners to know what they are growing, understand the traits that they want in the plants, and how to select the seeds or plants with the traits they desire. That’s why the seed company reps got excited about this part – because having gardeners identify specific (newer) cultivars as the ones with the traits they want is important. It takes garden selection from “I want a slicing tomato” to “I want this specific cultivar of tomato because I know it does X, Y, and Z, so I’ll buy it from this specific seed company that sells it. That in part is what we do with the All-America Selections trials. We try out new things (before they hit the market) to test them out for taste, color, disease resistance, and a whole bunch of other things to give a “stamp of approval.” So any time you see that AAS symbol you know there have been several judgmental eyes (including mine) have assessed those plants and found them worthy.

So next time you visit a fair take a look at the exhibits to see if you see what a judge looks for. And think about entering your produce or flowers in a fair near you just to see how your garden skills stack up with your neighbor’s. Even if you don’t win best of show you can have fun and learn a bit along the way. And even if you don’t enter at the fair, you can use your judgement to pick the best plants for your garden for years to come.

Sometimes you get to judge the “fun” stuff, too….like best dressed vegetable.

Testing, testing, 1-2-3: Trialing new plants for the home garden

How do you know that plants will do well in your garden? Do you research the types of plants for your region, study different cultivars, and select only things that have been proven to do well for your conditions? Or do you buy what catches your eye at the garden center, plant it, and then see what happens? I used to joke that my home garden was a horticulture experiment station, since I’d try all kinds of random plants or techniques and see what works for me. Now, I get to do that as a fun part of my job through the All-America Selections (AAS) program. You’ve likely seen the AAS symbol on plants or seed packets at the garden center or in catalogs. Heck, you may even have them in your garden (and not know it). I compare it to the “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval” that you used to see on appliances, cleaners, etc. The AAS program is a non-profit started in the 1930’s with the goal of evaluating new plants so that home gardeners can purchase high quality seeds and plants and to assist the horticulture industry in marketing innovations from their breeding programs. You can read more about AAS and its history here.

A few weeks ago I traveled to Chicago for the All-America Selections (AAS) Annual Summit to receive their Judge Ambassador Award. I had signed up a few years ago to be a trial site for edible crops for AAS. The following year I talked my colleague Scott into signing up as a judge for their ornamental trials. The fun thing about the program is that we get to grow all kinds of vegetables, fruits, and flowers that aren’t even on the market yet. We get to see how well they grow compared to similar plants and rate them on a number of factors including growth habit, disease resistance, and performance plus flavor (for edible crops) or flower color/form (for ornamentals). It can be hard work, but it is rewarding to help identify true plant innovations and to see your favorites be announced as winners.

How the testing works
While the AAS Trials may not have the rigor of academic crop research, I do appreciate the procedures in place that provide objective and high standard results.

Breeders, developers, and horticultural companies submit their new plants that are planned for future introduction to the board of AAS for consideration in the trialing program. During the application process, novel traits of the plants are identified to ensure that the plant offers something new and exciting – these are the traits that judges will observe and score. The board reviews the application to determine if it fits within the program rules.

One great thing about the program is that trial judges are professional horticulturalists from universities, seed companies, botanical gardens, etc. – they’re people who know how to grow things and know what quality plants look and act like. There are trial sites all around the country, providing for replication and generalizeable results for most regions of the country. The conditions plants are grown in also vary by location. My trial is at a farm where management is minimal. When we were at the summit we visited the trial gardens at Ball Horticulture which looked much more maintained and pampered compared to mine. This gives data on a variety of maintenance levels as you’ll find in home gardens – some gardeners are very conscientious about maintaining their plants and others have a more laissez faire approach. In order to win as a full national AAS winner, the plants have to perform well across the country in all these different situations. Sometimes those that perform well in a few regions but not the others will be designated as regional winners.

Second, the tests are blind. This means that we do not know what the exact plant is, who the breeder or seed company is, or any other info other than what type of plant it is. To the judge, each entry is just a number. It could be from a seed company you love (or hate), your best friend, the breeder who was your advisor from grad school, etc. This makes the results fair and reduces the chance for bias toward or against a plant based on its origins. The ratings are just based on the plant.

Another part of the trial is comparison. It is one thing to grow a tomato plant and say “yep, that’s a good tomato.” Its another to grow a tomato and compare it to similar cultivars to say “yep, that’s a good tomato….but it is better than what’s already available on the market.” The goal of the program is to show how new plants have merit over older plants. We only need so many new tomatoes (and let’s face it, there are lots of new tomatoes – we test WAY too many in the AAS process for my liking). The board of AAS judges reads the entry info from the new cultivar being tested and selects plants (usually two) to compare it against. If the trial is a yellow cherry tomato, it will be grown and tested alongside other yellow cherry tomatoes. The scoring is based on whether its performance or taste is as good as or better than the comparisons. If most judges don’t rank it as “better” then it has no chance of winning.

Confidentiality and Proprietary Plants

The fact that the testing is blind, paired with the fact that results of “failed” tests are not released, lends itself to confidentiality. Another important factor about the testing is the proprietary nature of the tests and test sites. These are new plants that haven’t been introduced to the market (except for the case of perennial trials) and are usually for proprietary or patented plants. Test sites should have some sort of control over who enters them and signs prohibiting the collection of seeds, pollen, or cuttings are placed at the site. Believe it or not, the world of plant introductions can be dog-eat-dog and cutthroat.

So what if it doesn’t win?

One of the cool things about the test is seeing the announcements of the winners early the following year. You see the list of plants and think back to what you grew the previous season. If often find myself thinking “oh yeah, I remember that plant, it did really well” and sometimes even “how did that win, it did horrible for me.” This is a good reminder that we can’t base generalized garden recommendations on anecdotal evidence. What did well for me may not work for someone else and vice versa. All the results from the test sites go together to provide a general view of the plant performance. It will do well for some and not others.

So if most of the judges rank the crop as not performing, looking, or tasting as good as the comparisons the plant doesn’t win. And that’s it. Due to the confidential nature of the testing you won’t know that it failed the test. Even I won’t know that it failed the test. It will likely go on to market without the AAS seal where it will face an even tougher test – the test of consumer demand. Of course, many people may grow it and be successful, and some may grow it without success.

What are the AAS Winners and how do I find them?

There’s a list of plants announced each year through the AAS website and social media channels. You can find a list, in reverse order of winning (meaning most recent first) on the AAS Website. The site also has a searchable database if you’re looking for a specific plant. Since these plants are owned by lots of different seed companies and breeders, there’s also a retailer listing on the site. The AAS program also supports a number of Display Gardens across the country, including botanical gardens, university gardens, and others where the public can see the most recent winners growing. Here in Omaha we maintain a display garden for the ornamental plants at our county fairgrounds. We also have our on-campus garden which is used for our TV show Backyard Farmer (the longest running educational TV program in the country, BTW) which serves as a display garden for both ornamental and edible crops.

I recently shared the AAS Testing Program with the local news here in Omaha. Check it out:

Some of my favorite recent AAS Winners
Asian Delight Pak Choi – this was planted in May and didn’t bolt. We were still harvesting it in October.

Pepper Just Sweet – these plants were big and healthy even when everything else was struggling. The peppers were delicious.

Potato Clancy – potatoes….from seed! Just fun!

Pepper Habanero Roulette – All of the fruity sweet, none of the heat. A fun heatless habanero.

Dianthus Intraspecific Supra Pink– A reblooming, prolific Dianthus with interesting ruffled flowers.

Eggplant Patio Baby – container sized eggplant with mini fruits perfect for cooking or roasting whole.

Ornamental Pepper Black Pearl – Cute purple flowers lead to these shiny pepper pearls. Love the black leaves, too.

When spring is delayed

Enjoying our first day above 55 F in quite a while here in mountains of Southwest Virginia. We’ve had far-below-average temperature and three significant snow events over the past four weeks.

Saturday, April 7, 2018 at our farm (Newport, VA). Not making me want to garden.

For much of the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and Midwest, spring has been very slow to arrive. The jet stream has been riding mighty low, and is taking another dive next week. For gardeners, this is frustrating (see above), though here in USDA Hardiness Zone 6b, we’re still well within the “last freeze” window.

For ornamental plant nurseries, greenhouses, and retailers/garden centers in these regions, this is darn close to devastating (the South has fared much better). For growers and retailers, spring is the busiest time of the year – many see 70-80% of their annual sales between March and early June. Of that amount, at least 50% of retail garden center sales will happen over the weekends. IF it is nice. Folks stay away in droves when the weather stinks. And this has repercussions down the supply chain.

Chris Beytes, the editor of GrowerTalks and GreenProfit (two highly subscribed-to publications within the greenhouse and garden center sector), has been keeping track of spring sales for years.

Growers and garden centers self-report a weekend rating on a scale of 1 (dreadful) to 10 (can’t keep product on the shelf, happily exhausted, planning vacation in Tahiti). Not all states end up represented – either they’re too busy selling (Florida!) or too depressed to report (possibly Ohio!).

Here’s last week’s map (click for a link to Chris’s newsletter column)

Lots, lots of gray.

Closer to home: I took my Ornamental Plant Production and Marketing students on a field trip last Friday. We toodled up I-81 to visit a container nursery (woody plants) and a wholesale greenhouse focused on quality bedding plants and baskets for the independent garden center (IGC) market.

The greenhouse was absolutely packed to the gills with market-ready annuals, herbs, veggie transplants, and hanging baskets.

And it was eerily quiet.

A Friday afternoon in April, and the only folks in a wholesale greenhouse…were the owners. THIS IS NOT NORMAL. There should be workers, carts, trucks, beeping, yelling, transplanters cranking, etc.

Weather over the previous weekend and early week had been spectacularly crappy. Because the garden centers across the region had not moved enough product to restock, there was no shipping. Because there was no shipping, there was no space freed up to put anything else. Because there was no space, no transplanting could occur, and seedlings/liners were still in their trays. Calls were probably being placed to the propagation greenhouses that grow the plugs/liners, asking them to hold off on shipping until the finishing grower could clear out the backlog of plug trays. Plus perfect plants stay perfect only so long. Pesky things tend to grow/flop/get pests and pathogens.

I love for students to see the real-world hustle/bustle/insanity of spring that growers face each year. The act of growing plants is what sparks the interests of the students – but understanding the supply chain and market behavior is just as important. We did get great tour – along with a lot of fodder for class discussions.

Hopefully things will warm up; garden centers across the regions will be jam-packed, and all will be well. If this paralysis continues much longer, the window of opportunity will start closing. It gets warm/hot, schools let out, folks go on vacation…and lose that got-to-garden feeling.

You can help repair this logjam (yes you can!). Regardless of the weather this weekend (because you’re a tough cookie/Garden Professors reader), get thee to your favorite garden center or retail greenhouse this weekend. And buy! Buy! Buyyyyy!