362 Fall Plants for Winter and Spring Color

Today, we chat with Diane Blazek, executive director of All-America Selections and the National Garden Bureau, about the best plants to be adding to your garden this Autumn for long, cool season blooms. We explore various options such as annuals, herbaceous perennials, and bulbs. Diane highlights her favorite bulbs, especially daffodils, noting their resilience and bloom timing. We have practical gardening tips too, including soaking nasturtium seeds for quicker germination and using markers to identify bulb locations. The conversation covers other plant varieties like snapdragons and dianthus. We also touch on the benefits of asters and the visual appeal of crocuses, primroses, violas, and ornamental kale. The episode is packed with expert advice for gardeners at all levels looking to enhance their fall planting efforts.

Today, it’s Episode 362, Fall Plants for Winter and Spring color. We’re podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon Jungle in Suburban Purgatory. It’s the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast, brought to you today by Smart Pots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let’s go!

Pictured: “Baby Gold” Nasturtium (Photo: AASWinners.com)

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Dave Wilson Nursery
HeirloomRoses.com (with the FRED discount link, good until Oct. 31, 2024)

Other links mentioned in today’s podcast:

AASWinners.com
NGB.org
Nasturtium ‘Baby Gold’
Snapdragon ‘Double Shot’
Dianthus ‘Capitan Magnifica’
Ornamental Kale ‘Glamour Red’

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Chapters

• 1:49 Fall Plants for Winter and Spring Color
• 17:19 Smart Pots!
• 19:30 Dave Wilson Nursery
• 20:41 Fall Plants for Winter and Spring Color, Pt. 2

Transcript

Ep. 362 Fall Plants for Winter, Spring Color  Transcript

Farmer Fred

[0:00]Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by SmartPots, the original, lightweight, long-lasting fabric plant container. It's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount. That's SmartPots.com slash Fred.

Farmer Fred

[0:20]Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, well, you've come to the right spot.

Farmer Fred

[0:31]Today, we chat with Diane Blazek. She's the executive director of the All-America Selections and the National Gardening Bureau. We talk about the best plants to be adding to your garden this autumn for a long, cool season worth of blooms. We explore various options, such as annuals, herbaceous perennials, and bulbs. Diane highlights her favorite bulbs, especially daffodils, noting their resilience and bloom timing. And we have practical gardening tips, too, including how to soak nasturtium seeds for quicker germination and using markers to identify bulb locations so you don't accidentally dig them up. The conversation covers other plant varieties, too, like snapdragons and dianthus. And we touch on the benefits of asters, as well as the visual appeal of crocuses, primroses, violas, and ornamental kale. The episode is packed with expert advice for all gardeners at all levels looking to enhance their fall planting efforts. Today, it's episode 362, “Fall Plants for a Long, Cool Season Bloom”. We're podcasting from Barking Dog Studios here in the beautiful Abutilon jungle in suburban purgatory. It's the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Podcast, brought to you today by SmartPots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Let's go.

FALL PLANTS FOR WINTER AND SPRING BLOOM, Pt. 1

Farmer Fred

[1:52]It's the cool season. Time to put in new plants. And fall, as you will see at every nursery that has this sign, “fall is for planting.” And it's a good idea, too. The days are shorter, the days are cooler, but the soil is still warm, aperfect opportunity for plants to get established. So what are some of the winning fall plants that you can be putting into the ground no matter where you live? We're talking with Diane Blazek. She is with the All-America Selections and the National Garden Bureau. She is the executive director for both. And when choosing outstanding blooming plants for the cool season garden, Diane, there's quite the combination of perennials, annuals, and bulbs. And for this purpose, let's talk about perhaps annuals and those herbaceous perennials that you might be planting. And I noticed that a recent trip to a local nursery here as fall begins, they have dedicated more space to bulbs. And there are a lot of bulbs to choose from? What are some of your favorites?

Diane Blazek

[2:52]Oh, my gosh, this is such a coincidence. Just this morning, I got a text from a friend saying, what kind of daffodils do you recommend? And my response was, oh, that's my favorite bulb crop. So, yeah, I just love the yellow daffodils that come up and the fact that you can have this really long bloom time. You know, you've got your early season, your mid-season, your late-season blooms, and they work so well to me, I think they work with crocus, whichwill be the first things to pop up, maybe through the snow. And then you've got the daffodils blooming, and then you've got the second daffodil bloom and then the third daffodil bloom. So to me, that is just the perfect combination for early and mid spring blooming.

Farmer Fred

[3:32]And what's nice, especially here in the warmer sections of USDA Zone 9 and those that don't get that much of a frost, is that daffodils are going to come back year after year. You can't say that about tulips, that prefer that more of a winter chill.

Diane Blazek

[3:50]Yes, exactly. And yeah, a lot of the tulips seem to, at least in my garden, really like to be nibbled on by the wildlife around, whereas the daffodils don't. So for me, I'm to a point where I'm like, I want easy gardening. And to me, daffodils, they're going to multiply and they just last for year after year. And so that's that's my choice.

Farmer Fred

[4:18]One tip we have learned the hard way here when planting daffodils this time of year is to maybe put a marker there, maybe a little flag or mark that area so that you know that you planted bulbs there so you don't accidentally turn it over with a shovel while thinking that this area was empty when it's really not.

Diane Blazek

[4:38]Yeah, I've done that a few times. And you know what my favorite trick is? A yellow golf tee. Yellow to me means daffodil. A yellowgolf tee. It's very subtle. I mean, it sometimes gets covered up by mulch, but those golf tees are kind of unobtrusive. So that's what I like to use.

Farmer Fred

[4:52]Yeah, that's a great idea. I can raid my wife's golf bag for old tees and maybe make a perimeter out of the tees to show exactly where the bulbs were planted. Good idea.

Diane Blazek

[5:05]It didn't come from me. Don't tell her it came from me.

Farmer Fred

[5:07]OK, I won't. All right. There's one plant, though, that is very popular. In fact, it's a winner in the All-America selections for 2025. And it'll be available soon. And that's anasturtium variety, nasturtium “baby gold” is this winner. Nasturtiums, though, can get a little wild because they're a vining plant and can take over a nearby plant. And so you have to sort of direct it to where you want it to grow.

Diane Blazek

[5:33]Yes, you're absolutely right. And this is an opportunity to talk about some of the new breeding work. So what the breeders were wanting, more and more people are gardening in containers, number one. And if you don't want this big, unruly thing, you want it more compact. So this nasturtium, there's actually four colors in the series now. You mentioned the gold, there's red, there's baby yellow, and there's rose. So there's four colors and a compact nasturtium just covered with blooms. And then the other thing that they're breeding for is that these blooms are held on top of the foliage. They're not going to hide in between the leaves and kind of, you know, you lose the impact. So that's two big things about this nasturtium baby series. It is more compact and they hold the flowers above the foliage.

Farmer Fred

[6:26]One thing about nasturtiums I like is the fact that you can buy it from seed. But should you soak those seeds before you plant them?

Diane Blazek

[6:33]That's a good idea. Yes. Yes. Do that because you're going to get a much quicker germination.

Farmer Fred

[6:38]So overnight, just put them in some tepid water and then plant them the next day. And believe me, when it gets hot, you think it may not come back. It may not be a perennial, but it's a self-sowing annual. It'll be back.

Diane Blazek

[6:50]Yes. Yes. In certain zones. I can't say that, but I think you could definitely say that in other zones. Yes.

Farmer Fred

[6:57]I've spent a lot of time, putting it where it belongs, so to speak.

Diane Blazek

[7:03]Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Put it where it belongs.

Farmer Fred

[7:06]I noticed that in your description at aaswinners.org for the nasturtium baby gold, you list it as an edible ornamental. What's edible about it?

Diane Blazek

[7:18]So, have you ever tried a nasturtium flower? They're very tasty.

Farmer Fred

[7:22]I've had daylily flowers stuffed with things like chocolate or deviled egg or something like that, but I've never had it with a nasturtium flower.

Diane Blazek

[7:30]So, with a nasturtium, you want to eat them raw, and you would just add the flowers to your salads, basically. So, it adds like a nice peppery flavor, kind of like an arugula. So, add that to your salad for it. Number one, it's pretty, and they taste great.

Farmer Fred

[7:48]All right. Now, getting back to cold zones versus warm zones with the nasturtium: here in USDA zone nine and probably seven and eight as well, you could plant them now and they would start growing. But for colder zones, I guess planting them after the last frost would be a good idea.

Diane Blazek

[8:03]Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. And they will survive the summer, you know, like in a zone five or six, they won't thrive during the summer. But then as the temperatures get cooler in the fall, they'll come bounce back again.

Farmer Fred

[8:17]All right. That's the nasturtium. The baby series, which includes four varieties you mentioned. You mentioned baby gold, baby yellow, and what else?

Diane Blazek

[8:25]Red and rose.

Farmer Fred

[8:27]All right. So those are the nasturtiums. Moving on, you're going to find this plant at every nursery, but there are better varieties out there that you could plant from seed if you're patient. But there are a lot of great winners as well that will give you some good blooms. And getting dramatic ones, that might be best as seed. But again, it takes time with seeds. And I'm talking about snapdragons. Snapdragons to me are a very popular plant. But from seed, they take some patience to grow them to full sizeplants. I think when you buy a Snapdragon plant, you want to buy one that hasn't had too many of the blooms opened yet because it's an interesting plant in how it blooms. It blooms from the bottom first and sort of goes on up.

Diane Blazek

[9:18]Yeah. So it will have that flower stalk and just kind of keep blooming on that stalk. But eventually that stalk will go away. So then you'll need to move on. But yeah, the ones that you're talking about that are AAS winners, it's called Double Shot. There's one specifically orange bicolor. So Double Shot tells you it's a semi-double flower. So, you know, when you think of a Snapdragon, hopefully you think of the little snapping flowers that kids love. Well, when you have that double flower, it's a little less pronounced and it looks more frilly, I think would be the way to describe it. orange bicolor means that it's kind of different shades of an orange red. So it's a beautiful flower. The other thing about snapdragons is to know that they come in, I'm going to generalize and say three sizes, but basically, there's a lot more than three, you can get the really small compact ones, you know, for in ground, maybe front of the border, and then your medium height ones. And then there's also tall ones you can use as cut flowers. So no matter what you want to do with them, there's a Snapdragon for you.

Farmer Fred

[10:26]I noticed that this particular one you're talking about, the double shot and more in particular, the double shot orange bicolor, it gets to a height of 18 to 20 inches, which is a nice size for a Snapdragon.

Diane Blazek

[10:39]It is a nice size. And, you know, if you don't necessarily need the three feet tall ones for cut flowers, you can still do this for a short face (open faced bloom). So I think this one is really good, a multi-purpose snap.

Farmer Fred

[10:51]All right. Talk a little bit about using snapdragons as a cut flower. Do you cut it and bring it in the house before it is bloomed, while it's blooming, or when?

Diane Blazek

[11:02]Timing is pretty important here. I mean, you can always do it when it's in full bloom. You're just not going to get as long as a face life. But if you cut it when it's just starting to bloom and bring it in, then you're going to be able to see it blooming for, geez, you might even get two weeks out of it when youclean it up a little bit as some of those blooms start to fade, but you're going to get a really long life that way.

Farmer Fred

[11:23]That's right. Yeah. They're best enjoyed before they're in bloom because as you say, they're going to last quite a while. I noticed that one of the reviews for this double shot orange bicolor talked about itthat because of that double flower, the orange and white flowers, this review says, are really eye-catching and unusual, and they're easy to grow.

Diane Blazek

[11:44]Exactly. Yes.

Farmer Fred

[11:47]Moving on. Let's talk about Dianthus. Dianthus is another cool season annual that a lot of people plant, a plant that you're going to find very commonly at a nursery. And over the years, there have been quite a few AAS winners that are Dianthus.

Diane Blazek

[12:02]Yes, there are. And it's interesting because we've had many, many Dianthus that are seed propagated. I knowJolt Pink is one. It is an interspecific. So it means that they've been breeding and crossing two different types of Dianthus to get this really top quality one. This new one that we have that I'd like to talk about is called Capitan Magnifica. Now, it is vegetatively propagated. So you won't be able to find it in seed form, but you will be able to find it at your retailers. And it's very, very worth it. This Dianthus has a little bit more heat resistancethan some of the older varieties. And the number of blooms per plant is amazing. They're beautiful. They're a dark pink with a really light pink edge on the flower and the eye. So this one, the judges just absolutely raved about. and we were talking with somebody that was working with it and they were talking about cut flowers. They were taking cuttings and I'm holding my fingers up. They're only about six inches long, but wouldn't they be cute in a little petite face? And what's interesting is the more you cut them, the more they bloom. They just keep flushing out with bloom. So you're going to get those vivid pink color for a really long time.

Farmer Fred

[13:23]Yeah, a lot of people think of Dianthus as more of a ground cover plant, but this particular one can get up to 18 inches.

Diane Blazek

[13:30]Yeah. So this is no shrinking violet, shall we say. It's going to make a bold statement.

Farmer Fred

[13:36]Right. The Dianthus Interspecific Capitan Magnifica is a 2025 AAS Ornamental winner that has a profusion of beautiful pink blooms. And as you mentioned, Diane, you cut it, it'll come back.

Diane Blazek

[13:52]Exactly.

Farmer Fred

[13:53]All right. And I guess Dianthus do best in the warmer zones like 10, 9, 8, and 7?

Diane Blazek

[13:59]Oh, well, we can use them in the cooler zones. It's just that they're an annual. They won't come back for us. So we would have them in the spring. They would maybe take a little bit of a rest during the heat of the summer. and then they'll pop back in the fall.

Farmer Fred

[14:12]All right. One plant I think, Diane, is underappreciated here in California, and it could do well here, are asters. What are some tips for planting asters, and why are they so popular?

Diane Blazek

[14:25]Asters are great. I think one of the reasons why they're coming back into favor a little bit is how great they are for pollinators. So that's a wonderful thing. They're not known for their huge blooms, but they have a large number of smaller blooms. So very floriferous. You know, they're perennial for up to, I think, zones three or five, kind of depending on the variety. They have a really wide range of colors also. So anything from white to a pastel bluish to very vibrant pink, deep scarlet, purple, you know, so a wide range of colors, great for fall, put in masks, they look great. You can put them in combination with other fall blooming items. And again, depending on what variety you have, they come in different heights. So it's kind of like there's something for everyone with an aster.

Farmer Fred

[15:18]Yeah, asters are really the superstar of a lot of fall gardens. And as you mentioned, some can reach six feet tall. The flowers, they come in a wide range of colors, white, pink, purple, lavender, and occasionally blue. But I think a plant that blooms and gets six feet tall is going to need staking.

Diane Blazek

[15:36]Yeah, it probably would. Again, this is one of those things that the breeders are working on. So they might be bringing the height down a little bit to give them a sturdier stem. So you can look out there for some of the newer varieties. If you want some of the older varieties because of their color or something, then again, there's something for everyone.

Farmer Fred

[15:57]Yeah, asters can be grown in full sun, down to part sun. They prefer moist, well-drained soil. But again, don't make that soil too wet. Don't plant them in a low spot or a clay ridden spot that's going to have too slow of a drainage. So it needs some fairly good drainage yet likes moist soil. Well, I know here in USDA Zone 9, it can be a permanent plant. And you mentioned it's a good cut flower as well.

Diane Blazek

[16:22]Right, right.

Farmer Fred

[16:23]Crocus. Now, there is an interesting little plant. And truly, it is little. But what a nice bloom it has.

Diane Blazek

[16:29]Oh, I know. They're so cute. It's because of the fact that they're short. And I like the spiky foliage. When it comes up, it says, hey, look at me. I'm a flower. You're not looking at the foliage. You're really looking at those flowers. They're short. They're popping their little heads up and saying, I've emerged after this horrible winter. And you get a big range of colors. The purples, the lavenders, the whites, the yellows, the stripes, the solid colors. But really, when they come up and it's early, you will love anything that's in color at that time of year.

Farmer Fred

[17:04]And crocus bulbs are on sale now.

Diane Blazek

[17:07]Absolutely. This is a great time to plant them. That's what you call gratification, is planting crocus and then seeing those very early in the season.

SMART POTS

Farmer Fred

I've been using the SmartPot compost sak for a few years now, and it is coming in very handy for amending and protecting the garden soil year-round. I like to amend my planting beds before putting in any of the seasonal crops or improving the bed before I plant any time. One of the ingredients that gets worked into the soil in my raised beds is compost. And making up the bottom half of my SmartPot compost sak right now is some of the richest-looking, finest compost I've ever seen made from last fall's oak leaf collection. Yep, it's beautiful leaf mold. The design of the compost sak, with a little help from Mother Nature, turned those shredded leaves into beautiful, ready-to-use compost. And I used some of the existing leaves that haven't broken down near the top of the compost sack as a few inches of mulch, and I used that year-round. The SmartPot compost sakis a large 100-gallon fabric bag. It's lightweight, yet extremely durable, and lasts for years. It can hold 12 cubic feet of pure compost. This rugged fabric is entirely porous, containing many micropores that allow for air circulation and drainage. The fitted cover is a flexible plastic top designed to increase heat and help manage moisture in the mix, accelerating the composting process. Smart Pots. They're proudly made 100% here in the USA. Smart Pots are available at independent garden centers and select Ace and True Value hardware stores nationwide. You can find the nearest location of SmartPots at their website, smartpots.com slash fred. That's where you can get 10% off your SmartPot order by using the coupon code fred, F-R-E-D. Do it at checkout from the SmartPot store. Visit smartpots.com slash fred for more information about the complete line of SmartPots lightweight, colorful, award-winning fabric containers, as well as the SmartPot compost sack. SmartPots, the original award-winning fabric container. Go to SmartPots.com slash Fred.

DAVE WILSON NURSERY

Farmer Fred

[19:29]Fall is in the air, The perfect season for planting and planning. And if you're planning to buy and grow some fruit trees this fall and winter, you need to check out the home garden page at DaveWilson.com. That's Dave Wilson Nursery, the nation's largest grower of fruit trees for the backyard garden. At DaveWilson.com, you're going to find planting tips, taste test results, fruit variety recommendations, and links to nurseries in your area that carries Dave Wilson fruit trees. Just go to DaveWilson.com, click on the Home Garden tab at the top of the page. There, you're going to be just a click away from their informative YouTube video series. Especially popular in that video lineup is Dave Wilson Nursery's Tom Spellman explaining Backyard Fruit Tree Basics. Viewers have raved about that episode, calling it absolutely the best single video for growing backyard fruit trees. Check it out before you plant. The Backyard Fruit Tree Basics video. It's on YouTube. Find a link to it after going to the Home Garden tab at DaveWilson.com. Click on the Getting Started link and you're on your way to your best fruit garden ever. Your harvest to better health begins at DaveWilson.com.

FALL PLANTS FOR WINTER AND SPRING BLOOM, Pt. 2

Farmer Fred

[20:45]Let's get back to our conversation with Diane Blazek of the All-America Selections and National Garden Bureau about the best plants to be adding to your garden this autumn. Another popular plant for fall and winter color are primroses. And primroses, I think, are a neat, small little plant that looks good right at the front of a border.

Diane Blazek

[21:08] You know what? I got them confused. Just trying to give a visual here. When I was first in the industry, I got them confused with African violets. I think they look a lot like an African violet, except they're outdoor and they're perennial. And like you say, they pop up in the spring. Their colors are so wide ranging, I think more so than many flowers that we have out there. But they come in those jewel tones. So that's a very vibrant color in the spring.

Farmer Fred

[21:37]Yeah, primroses don't require much care either, do they?

Diane Blazek

[21:40]No, they're pretty much just like, leave me alone. I'm happy.

Farmer Fred

[21:43]Yes, exactly. And you'll find plenty of them at area nurseries. How easy are they to grow from seed?

Diane Blazek

[21:50]Now, to be honest, I've never tried it. I know that they are available from seed. So I assume that following the right instructions, you can do it.

Farmer Fred

[22:00]According to one seed company, Eden Brothers, Primrose Seeds should be started indoors during the winter and transplant those seedlings outdoors in late spring after the last frost has passed, or whenever your last frost has passed. To plant them, put them in full sun and average medium moisture with well-drained soil. It can tolerate gravel or sandy soil, as well as drought and it likesshade. If for a wildflower garden, a naturalized area or meadows, it makes a lot of sense to plant primrose.

Diane Blazek

[22:29]Sounds like they're just as easy to grow as a tomato plant. So give it a try.

Farmer Fred

[22:34]And the better part of that, primroses aren't savaged by tomato worms.

Diane Blazek

[22:39]Exactly. Yeah.

Farmer Fred

[22:41]All right. One common annual that you're going to see en masse at area nurseries and the big box stores are violas or pansies or Johnny Jump Ups. And they're all related. They're all basically under the botanical name Viola, aren't they?

Diane Blazek

[22:57]Right. Right. Yes, they are. And it's really, it kind of comes down to the flower size. And I think the order that you named it, Pansy is the largest, Viola has the medium size, and Johnny Jump Ups are the smaller flowers. But no matter what, again, they thrive in the cooler temperatures. They might start to fade, or they definitely will start to fade in heat. So they're just a wonderful plant that you can plant in fall, winter, and spring, you know, depending on your area. and vast number of colors, vast colorations. You know, they may have that splotch or the eye, and some of them now are having just totally different patterns on their leaves. So there's a huge variety of different colors and types available.

Farmer Fred

[23:45]I've always been fond of Johnny Jump Ups because as their name implies, they do bloom quickly and grow quickly and again, make that a nice border in a fall garden.

Diane Blazek

[23:56]Oh, they do. Yes. Yeah. And like you say, they just jump up, pop up when you're least expecting them.

Diane Blazek

[24:02]And again, it's like, oh, wow, cool. I've got some color in my yard.

Farmer Fred

[24:05]Even though this next plant does have a bloom, I really like it for the variation in the leaf color, and that's hellebores.

Diane Blazek

[24:13]Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Those are very interesting plants. They kind of seem like a plant that were popular, faded a little bit in popularity, and now they are all over and there's a lot of new breeding work coming. You know, here's one thing that I've always thought was interesting is their flower heads nod. They look like they might be going to sleep. They face down. I have seen people put little mirrors in their garden so that you can see the face of the flower, which is cool. But the new breeding is having those flower heads be less droopy so that you can see them without the aid of a mirror in your garden.

Farmer Fred

[24:56]Exactly. And they do have outstanding blooms. It's not just a foliage plant. It's the blooms of these that are eye catching. And there's a lot of different colors, too.

Diane Blazek

[25:06]Oh, yeah. Again, this is another one that really has a wide color range. You know, some deep burgundy with almost black foliage. And then they have white contrasting with green, white contrasting with dark foliage. Yeah, a lot of varieties.

Farmer Fred

[25:20]Hellebores, do they grow well in cold areas as well?

Diane Blazek

[25:24]Yes, they do. Again, they're one of those first perennials that'll pop up and bloom in the spring.

Farmer Fred

[25:29]And I would think they do want regular water.

Diane Blazek

[25:32]Yes. And, you know, another thing to talk about, because it tells you like the bloom time is a common name in some areas, is Lenten Rose. Right. Yeah. So that means that they'll bloom during Lent, which would be prior to Easter. So, again, that tells you how early they are.

Farmer Fred

[25:48]And again, so you're talking about March, April for a very colorful show. And what's nice about the fall planting of hellebores, it allows enough time for the roots to grow before if in the case of the colder climates before the ground freezes.

Diane Blazek

[26:05]Yes. Yeah. Another one where you plant it, let it do its thing underground and then just sit back and watch for the blooms in the spring.

Farmer Fred

[26:12]Now, this next plant we're talking about is considered an edible ornamental, although it's not as tasty as the green variety. And I'm talking about ornamental kale.

Diane Blazek

[26:21]Yeah, that's interesting. So if you want kale to eat, plant a green, edible kale. If you want an ornamental, look for an ornamental kale. However, there are a few varieties out there now that taste as good as they look. Now, the one that we have that's an AAS winner is definitely bred for the ornamental purposes. And what was interesting about this one, it is more of a flowering head. It's not like these big Italian-type kales that grow real tall. It's more in a compact head, and it blooms from the interior out. This one that we have is called Glamour Red. So it has a white interior with a pinkish red exterior foliage, but it has very waxy leaves. And the waxier the leaves means the more cold it will put up with. I mean, you could probably let it be out in the snow. The colder temperatures will make it an even more vivid color. So again, this is something you can use it in fall or spring. Traditionally, it feels like our industry promotes it more in the fall, but it would also be a good spring plant.

Farmer Fred

[27:40]I always like to describe it as cabbage going to a Grateful Dead concert with the colors it has, especially like you mentioned the glamour red with that that nice target of pinkish red in the middle surrounded by the green. And you plant those in mass and they're beautiful.

Diane Blazek

[27:56]Yes, they really are. I've seen them in borders. I've seen them, you know, in containers making a tree, outside of a shopping mall or something. Yeah, they're really amazing. I think they're underused. I don't think people use them as much as we should because they're so beautiful and they're longstanding. It's not like, you know, they'll bloom once and be done. I mean, you can get weeks and weeks, maybe even a couple of months out of them.

Farmer Fred

[28:22]It's another All-America Selections winner and it's ornamental kale. And again, the variety is glamour red.

Farmer Fred

[28:29]Diane Blazek is the executive director of the All-America Selections and the National Garden Bureau. If people want to see pictures of the plants we've been talking about, what are some good websites to go to?

Diane Blazek

[28:40]So for All-America Selections, it would be aaswinners.com. And there's some of these things that we were talking about that are also on the National Garden Bureau website. So that is ngb.org.

Farmer Fred

[28:51]Diane, we've got a lot of great color to get planting. Thanks for your time today.

Diane Blazek

[28:55]Well, thank you very much. And you're right. I'm going to go out and plant right now.

Farmer Fred

[29:03]Garden Basics with Farmer Fred Comes out every Friday. It's brought to you by SmartPots and Dave Wilson Nursery. Garden Basics, it's available wherever podcasts are handed out. For more information about the podcast, as well as an accurate transcript, visit our website, GardenBasics.net. And there you can find out about our newsletter, Beyond the Garden Basics. And thank you so much for listening and your support.