Best Performing Plants at the 2024 DGI Propagators Trial Garden: Michigan Garden Plant Tour
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EmailDecember 18, 2024
DGI has been a young plant propagator for over 50 years. We are excited to showcase our diverse selection of quality plants from the tried-and-true standards in begonias, geraniums, and petunias, to the latest new items introduced by the leading plant breeders in our industry. Displays will be growing in the sun and shade with detailed information for each variety. Please visit and enjoy a cold refreshment and snack while touring DGI’s garden and don’t miss stopping by the gazebo area where we will display several indoor plants and many shaded varieties.
Video Transcript
So, yeah, like Brian said, I encourage you and Christie, I encourage you to stop out. You will find value. I travel, and a lot of us do to go find these plants and what we want to offer both in Europe and different countries in Europe and California every year in April, March and April is a big time to go. So we go and kind of get sneak peeks two years in advance, and then the year prior, and then we introduce them, and then it's up to you to come and see and look and learn, and then you introduce it to your client, your customer. That's the progression. And then if you go back to the beginning, the breeders have their own little trials going on at all their different sites and facilities, and they have different areas that things do better, where they breed them, where they harvest them for seed. So it's a good progression and you're the end of it. To bring it to your customer and your client. And I think you said this last year, but as a retailer or a horsesaler that supplies to the retailer, I worked retail quite a few years, and the first people of the year, the excited people of the year, they always come in and say, Well, what's new? And so it's exciting to be able to show them and offer them something new. I think. So this year, we had a really good turnout. There is. Here's just some snapshots of what we had and what we do. We have about right around four to 500 large 20 inch pots. That's how we feature our new introduction, our exciting things and not everything might be new, I might just be something that we like and that we want to introduce and that we haven't had yet. And some of it might be concepts. So this year, it's not shown here. We did multiple Calliope geraniums together in combinations just with one another. So different colors of collides to mix up. Syngenta has been doing that a little bit, and so we thought we'd kind of push that as just some different. Brian, thanks for handing those out. Appreciate it. Item that isn't brand new to the market, but it was new to us this year is BD and Spicy electric white. This was one of our favorites among the staff. We didn't this year, we didn't do an actual customer favorite, and so we're going to do that in future because I think it's really good to line up with what you guys are seeing as well. This has been really good. This cycled really well, and as soon as it would go out, it would come back in each flower. So, you know, I think bidins from the old was you dry them down, they die hard, and they don't look that good. The new varieties, the Kinsler varieties that we've been seeing a trialing, we really like them, and we just really like this color. And as far as its vigor, it matches up really well with things with most, you know, not maybe the box store type, real compact stuff that they're breeding, but some of the anything that retailers really are focused on and looking for. CalibercaKali Local Mirage. So Cali Locos are Westoff's new collection, I'll call it. It's not necessarily a series. So some of the off items that are different, so think crazy tunas for Westof, right? None are alike the colors, the size. Their focus is with the Cali Locos to create a it's not a series. It's a collection where they can put these items that they're breeding and they're finding, and it might be different sizes, different colors, different flower shapes, or not shapes, but sizes. And it's a good outlet for that for them. And it's a really nice item to take to for retailers. It was a little dark when I guess the day I took this shot. Eye catcher sunspot you can see this is an actual series from Westhoff. This is a dark eyed series with a lighter edge. We really liked this sunspot. It was a really good looking color and the contrast was really nice. All really good figure aspires this Eye catcher series. Calibrica mini famous uno Ember eclipse. You can see the color on that. It was really pretty and vibrant in the summer. Sharp looking color. I think it'll be really good with different combos to match up with items, and it's much like all the other unos that match up really well and look really good together. Dai, karma blue lagoon, so karmas aren't new to the market, but we brought on karmas this year. They're really aggressive, really big, good for grower retailers. But this blue color was really pretty and it had a lot of flowers continually flowering, and it was just a really sharp looking nice plant. Again, you can see height 12-20. They do get larger and they're really for larger containers, but we really enjoyed this series out there this year, and so did a lot of customers when they came. Dali, Miss Mandy, this is a one off from Syngenta, so kind of in its own series. Miss Mandy is a beautiful flower. You can see very large flowers, a nice, full, robust plant that has a lot of buds and flowers and they keep flushing out. So you can see it close to four inch of the big double blooms, and it's really good in large containers. Geranium glory days. So this one is hard to take a picture of. My favorite, kind of, I would say one of my favorites of the garden was glory days. I think it's the orange right down here. It's hard to even see. It's kind of like taking it's so vibrant you can't really get a good picture of it. But I would use that in some different combinations. So it's an interspecific from Dumon. Single flower, and it was really heat tolerant for us this year. Gerber Jobea, we don't do a lot of seed items, but we do some premium seed items. This is from Shaunavl Breeding. These pictures were taken in August. So the one thing we do with or I do it at my house actually with some different containers and I've done over the years is so for these plants to look like that, in my opinion, we took out the center leaves to let more sunlight down in there. So we were able to let these a lot of you probably have had that before when they get the cabbagy look and this upright look and they can't grow out like this. That is a trick that we've done, and we do it in some production as well. We'll just trim out the center leaves, and it really throws and gets good sunlight up down into the gerbs. But these did outstanding all the way through August. We were really happy with this, and they're going to come up with a double flour of these as well. We haven't trialed that yet. Quick combo perfectly purple. This is a really good combo. A lot of customers did comment on it. They really liked it this year. I think now with Syngenta and Selecta and Doman, all of them, all the different combos, the multi sub combos, they've done such a good job trialing them now over the years. It's hard to go wrong with anyone if you pick it between, you know, quick combos or Trixis alone. It's hard to go wrong. It's a matter of picking color and what your customers like. Another one is the picnic in the park. I believe Brian, you had this on yours as well. And like Brian and Kristie Christie didn't have a chance to say this, but you will see doubles, and Brian's perfect. That's what we want. We want to see this repetition of people what has been great in all the different gardens. Deco Max. They probably avoided this one because they thought everybody else to talk about it. It was a big one this year for everyone. Petunia Deco Max ink. It's a one off from Syngenta, and it's super aggressive. I think it's their take on trying to go not necessarily go after bubblegum, but it's a lot like bubblegum. It's maybe even more aggressive, maybe not quite as tall, but a little more spread out. The color doesn't exactly match up, but it's pretty close. Paint to Love, another one you've seen for the third time today. Everything they said, like Brian said, it's aggressive. Sunbkias, here's another one. Sunbecias for the last two years, have been the favorite of our trial from everyone that comes through. This plant is not a short day plant, so we really don't offer it in our spring catalogue. So this is offered in our fall catalog. It's offered for summer programs and fall programs. And like Christie said, with the graffitis and the peach was our favorite as well this year. The others maybe didn't do it as well, but that was our double flour. So the graffits Bl does a really good job. I think if you see something that comes out by bull as we move along and progress through the years, Hartwick is the breeder, Hardwick Bl. When they're bringing something to market, it is a premium item. It's not what everyone else is necessarily doing, and it's a tried and true item that you can focus on. So Sunbecks have been really good. We, we grew them in some 12 inch pots, and we grew them in larger pots and all across giant flowers. There it is again. Sunfty double yellow. You can see even some of the dead flowers they still look nice within there, right? And then they cover themselves up. So We had again this year, Domans welcome to the jungle program, so a foliage type program that was a good success for us last year. So it's been really good, all the different items. And have you go on I think we have it on our website. We have our top eight to ten sellers. And you can look at that. URC is getting a little tighter right now for some of the top sellers during the big weeks, but you can fight that by just getting them in a little elerlitle late. Here's just some snapshots. Again, people at the trials, looking at things. We host some different brokers, most of all the brokers come through as well, people that you deal with. So look at our catalogs for the next year. Our summer fall catalog, we're doing a lot of first year flowering next year, first year flowering perennials, so we will have those in our garden this next year as well. Oh.