2024 Trials at Mast Young Plants Bring New Plants and New Approaches

Note: Information for this trials report was provided by Brian Weesies, General Manager of Mast Young Plants.

The outdoor trial season starts for us on the first Monday of week 23, and this year that date was June 3, 2024. As long as we have been doing our trial, we always start moving plants outside the greenhouse in week 23. We transplant into beds and window boxes in week 23.  Then we move out hanging baskets and deco pots in week 24. We finish up the final mono genera pots in week 25.

With the beds, we appreciate the advantages a dry month of June provides us, as this allows us to establish them with our liquid fertilizer as their main source of water. When we get a lot of rain in June, we worry that the feed we are applying will leach out of the soil. We will often come back just hours after a rain and run the irrigation again to put fertilizer back in the soil.  Those first four weeks of establishment are key for the plants.

The month of June was quite dry from June 3 all the way through about June 20. We had nearly no rainfall during that time. Then we got a lot of rain and made up for the lost rain earlier in the month, and by then the plants were rooted well enough that we could follow up the rains with feed to make sure the plants did well.

Our weather was what I would call a typical Michigan summer: periods of very hot and dry days with 90-degree heat followed by a stretch of milder warm days and slightly cooler nights. The stress that the plants get during those hot spells quickly relieves when the temperatures moderate.

Even as of the second half of September, our trials were still going, and we were in the middle of a stretch of sunny days featuring 80°F to 90°F heat.

Our trial garden is what we like to call our living catalog. All the varieties we root and sell for the various breeders are represented in our garden, and that totals about 2,100 varieties on display. The garden also features around 500 mixed planters displayed hanging baskets, deco pots, and window boxes.

Below are some top-rated items.

Top 5 as voted on by our visitors   

• Coleus ‘Flame Thrower Adobo Pink’ (Ball FloraPlant)
• Gomphrena ‘Ping Pong Purple’ (Sakata Ornamentals)
• Helianthus ‘Sunfinity Double Yellow’ (Syngenta Flowers)
• Angelonia ‘Angelflare Black’ (Ball FloraPlant)
• Tradescantia ‘Bridal Veil Purple’ (Danziger)

Top 5 as voted on by the Mast Young Plants staff

• Kwik Kombo Blueberry Twist (Syngenta Flowers)
• Agastache ‘Mexicana Summerlong Lemon’ (Darwin Perennials)
• Petunia ‘Capella Fuchsia Diamond’ (Danziger)
• Petunia ‘Dekko Pinwheel Purple’ (Syngenta Flowers)
• Calibrachoa ‘Lia Abstract Lemon Cherry’ (Danziger)

New this year were two feature trials that addressed common questions we receive from both growers and homeowners. These “you asked, we trialed” trials included:

• Plants Per Pot trial: People frequently ask us how many plants we put in our pots. They tend to assume that we use more plants than average growers do, resulting in pots that present nicer than those of growers and homeowners and thus could be impractical for them. In response to their questions, we grew out some of our top items with either three, four, or five plants per 16-inch pot. We typically place five plants in each large pot, which gives us consistently good results with what has been a reasonable amount of plant material. The trial confirmed that for most varieties, four plants per 16-inch pot produced a beautifully finished pot.
• Fertilizer trial: Another question we often field is about our fertilizer program. People assume we are heavily feeding the plants and that is why they look so good. While we do administer daily feed, we don’t feed heavily. In this trial, we grew one line with our standard feed of 150 ppm. We grew a second line with slow-release fertilizer in it and only gave it clear water (no liquid feed). We then grew a third line with no slow release and just clear water. The trial results demonstrated the benefits of regular fertilizing. Additionally, we learned which plants can tolerate low feed the best: coleus and begonias.

Our garden features a total of 20 landscape beds with field soil in them. Our garden is more than 20 years old, so those beds have had the same soil in them for many years of trials. In the fall of 2022, we changed out 11 beds and replaced the soil out of a concern about disease in the petunia beds. In the summer of 2023, we noticed that the 11 beds we replaced all seemed to be doing well and the remaining nine beds weren’t performing as well as we expected, so we dug out these remaining beds last fall. We planted the beds the first week of June and by mid-July noticed that the nine newest beds were still smaller than the other 11 (for the 2nd year in a row).

We shared concerns about liquid feed delivery issues with our growing and maintenance team, who determined that although the feed valves were opening and watering the beds, they were restricted and only allowing 9 gallons per minute when the other 11 beds averaged more like 20 gallons per minute.

The growing team hand fed the beds with a portable injector to get more feed in the soil. Maintenance changed the run time on the vales from the standard 15-minute run time up to 30 minutes so even if it took longer, the beds would still get a similar amount of fertigation. By the end of the summer, the performance of the plants in all of the beds has once again evened out.

Here are a couple plants that impressed me the most in 2024.

• Gomphrena ‘Ping Pong Purple’ (Sakata Ornamentals): This plant was added to our catalog and thus listed as new in our garden because we wanted it for our cut flower liner program. We had no idea it would be such a big hit as a stand-alone plant. It looked awesome and got tons of compliments throughout the entire trial season. This was the most talked about plant in our new variety area. It had great performance from June through September!
• Helianthus ‘Sunfinity Double Yellow’ (Syngenta Flowers): This plant didn’t disappoint all the hype it came into the summer with — constant blooms, large plants that got bigger all summer, and didn’t ever split and break apart. It still looked great in our garden as of mid-September with no visible signs of slowing down.
• Petunia ‘Painted Love Purple’ (Syngenta Flowers): This one got the honor of being planted in our garden on top of the pergola. This coveted spot only goes to a plant that we feel confident is going to perform, and it looked beautiful and strong all summer long. It was still going strong in mid-September and has truly unique flowers in color and pattern and was just a show stopper.

Finally, we did a homeowner night for the first time ever in our 20 years. We worked with local retailers who buy young plants from us, and they invited their customers to our garden one evening. Nearly 300 people attended and the comments were overwhelmingly positive. The main goal was to show the buying public that with good care, plants can look great all summer!

Find more 2024 field trials information here.