Year Trialed: 2008
Good Qualities
Bright butterscotch color (5); Great bedding plant (2); Uniformity was outstanding, no pest problems; Lots of quality, uniform flowers, popular with customers; Very uniform in growth habit, very floriferous, sturdy stem, attractive, petite flower head; Beautiful plant; Lovely, sweet, long blooming, colorful landscape plant, did our perennial trial get mixed up with a landscape trial?; Very prolific double rudbeckia, easy to grow and showy; Beautiful healthy plants that are early to bloom and filled with blooms, mostly flawless; Very perky, classic rudbeckia look, good addition to small bouquets, easy harvest, holds up in heat, long harvest season; Whole plant harvest; very good for low table arrangements; No problems with insects or disease; Attractive and easy to grow rudbeckia, nice addition to group.Problems
Too short for cut flower use (12); Better as a bedding plant (4): A total failure for us, dwarf plants, when cut they would wilt at the farmers market in a few hours; None; Didn't sprout; Large green collar of smaller leaves around base of flower, which we removed; Needs to be evaluated in its second year here in zone 4B to see if it will be taller; Some root rot deaths; I had good germination but the plants didn't do well growing on, by the time they were ready for field planting I had 4 plants to transplant.Similar Cultivars
I suppose, but I haven't found any as nice as these; Along with ‘Tiger Eye’, we also grew ‘Cappicino’ and ‘Irish Spring’ rudbeckia, both had great color and stems in the 18 to 24 inch range making them better as a general use cut flower.Postharvest
Used Floralife for hard water; Remove leaves; Rudbeckias are always the first thing we harvest early in the AM and go immediately into the cooler; We only used plain water; Pick early in the day and get into water quickly.Trial Data
| Yield (stems/plant) | Stem Length (inches) | Market Appreciation Rating¹ | Repeat Again Rating¹ | Ease of Cultivation Rating¹ | Average Spacing (in2) | Average Postharvest Life (days) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wholesale | Retail | Consumer | |||||||
| Average | 4.5 | 10.6 | 1.0 | 3.0 | 3.8 | 3.2 | 4.3 | 167 | 8.1 |
| Range of Responses | 1-15 | 8-26 | 1 | 1-5 | 1-5 | 1-5 | 2-5 | 36-324 | 4-14 |
¹1 to 5 scale, with 5 being the best. Market ratings are based on sales to wholesalers, retailers, or final consumers direct.
Comments
Great for people that want short flowers or for use in oasis; We did not plant seeds until this fall, we always seed rubeckias in August, transplant in Sept/Oct (Zone 6b/7a); Great bedding plants; We will definitely grow again only to sell as part of out pot crop program; Crop failure, did not germinate, perhaps we should have started this in the greenhouse; We will be selling this as a bedding plant; I will grow this cultivar again and try to cut harder to see if that helps elongate stems; I don't usually bother to grow rudbeckia, after trying quite a few and not finding the quality I need, but this variety I will try again and try to grow it better.