Trial: Annual

Year Trialed: 2009

Good Qualities

Pretty color (4); Nice fragrance (2); Easy to harvest, very little foliage to strip; Dainty flowers, easy to grow; Nice filler, good for short vases; Would make a nice bedding plant; Very nice patterning; 20 days earlier than ‘Amazon Neon Rose’; Productive, early; This produced well into the summer in a hot greenhouse and put out a ton of stems, a very good producer, the color was unusual and eye catching, I believed we finally took it out in the middle of July after we had 9 days in a row of 116 degrees in that greenhouse; Easy to harvest. Easy to see where cut should be made to keep growth coming; Attractive form; Early flowers, could cut as a one plant clump.

Problems

Too short (7) for anything except short bouquets; Doubleness and pattern are not consistent from plant to plant; Colors didn't work too well with other flowers; Few florets open on flower at one time, and these fade as others open; Since is was a bouquet dianthus, it took forever to pick, but worth the time; There were three shades - light, medium and dark, the light pink ones were shortest of the three, the dark ones were medium length and medium color was the longest - stems got thinner as cuts were made and the number of stems went down, but stem length went up.

Similar Cultivars

No comments made by trialers.

Comments

Would not grow again; I have left it in the ground to see if it will overwinter and come back taller; One florist said she liked it when she saw it in my field, she thought it would be a good filler in oasis arrangements, but she never bought any, too short; Harvested 6/26 to 7/8 (planted in field 4/25, Zone 5); I think this next season we will try it again and put it outside and see if it produces longer than the middle of July for us; Will it over winter well?

Postharvest

Doesn't need anything special; Use very little bleach in the water if any at all, the stems are thin and more fragile, the stems turned white and soft when I used a 10% bleach solution; Water; None; Vase life was forever.

See separate postharvest report for results from NC State University postharvest evaluations.

Trial Data

¹1 to 5 scale, with 5 being the best. Market ratings are based on sales to wholesalers, retailers, or final consumers direct.

Supplier

Goldsmith Seeds P.O. Box 1349 Gilroy, CA 95021