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Arkansas Agriculture
Newsletters
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 Azaleas: Carden-Harris Nursery |
Garvan Woodland Gardens and the Cooperative Extension Service are hooking up for our annual Plant Material Conference. This year the seminar will be held at Garvan Gardens on Tuesday, September 16. We thought this venue might give the industry a reason to visit the garden if you have not seen the dramatic changes. So far the list of speakers includes Stan Brown of Blossomberry Nursery talking about crapemyrtles, Steve Dobbs of U of A-Fort Smith talking on landscape color, Bob Byers of Garvan talking on Japanese maples and design, Mary-Margaret Carden (see sidebar) of Carden-Harris Nursery talking on the Carden-Harris azaleas, and many more speakers. Details will be mailed to you in early August. Gerald Klingaman and I will be planning a landscape maintenance seminar in late fall to also be held at Garvan Gardens.
From all accounts it sounds like garden center sales in Arkansas for spring 2003 were very good. Count your blessings, since I hear that other parts of the country did not fare so well.
I am sorry to report that Dr. James Cole has resigned from the Department of Horticulture effective June 1; however, the good news is he has started his own landscaping company in Elm Springs called Exterior Living Concepts.
Sidebar
Several years ago I was traveling with Stan Brown (Blossomberry Nursery, Clarksville) and Russell Black (Westwood Gardens, Fayetteville) when I overheard them talking about the Carden-Harris azaleas. As a newcomer to the state, I was fascinated with the topic that someone had bred and selected azaleas specifically for Arkansas. Thus, a drive to Branch, Arkansas, to find out more.
The story behind the Carden-Harris azaleas dates back to the early 60s in Fort Smith. There, ‘J.C.’ (John Carroll) Carden was operating a full service nursery. J.C. had gathered seed from pink Kaempferi and evaluated the seedlings for color and performance under Arkansas conditions. In 1978 he closed the Fort Smith site and moved 40 varieties to Branch. Many of you are aware of J.C.’s introductions from the early breeding work. These include the early bloomers: ‘Margaret Red’, ‘H.&H. Pink’ and ‘Salmon Belle’; mid-season: ‘Single Purple’; and late mid-season bloomers: ‘Red Kaempferi’, ‘Frill White’, ‘4 1/2" White’ and ‘68-11’.
In 1982 J.C.’s daughter, Mary-Margaret and her husband Gerald Harris started a new nursery site in Branch called the Carden-Harris Nursery. They have continued the introduction work started by J.C. and have several of their own including ‘Shortie Pink’, ‘Shortie White’, ‘Carden’s Purple’ and ‘Marie’s Purple’. Today the nursery has 48 greenhouses and provides wholesale product to three states. The nursery specializes in azaleas and Japanese maples. Hear more about the Carden-Harris azaleas at this year’s Plant Material Conference September 16.
 Tomato: 30% rice hulls (R) or perilite (L) after 4 weeks |
 Geranium: rice hulls (L) or perilite (R) |
Growing media used by greenhouses and nurseries are typically made up of components such as peat moss, composted barks, perlite and vermiculite. These components are selected and blended together to achieve growing media with appropriate physical and chemical properties. Drainage and air-filled pore space are important properties of growing media, and perlite is one of the most common materials used to provide for drainage and air-filled pore space. However, because perlite is expensive and dusty, there exists significant interest in the development of alternatives to perlite.
Rice hulls are a low-cost waste product abundant in Arkansas. Rice hulls have a high drainage level and air-filled pore space and could be used in a similar manner as perlite. However, fresh rice hulls have typically not been used in growing media due to claims that fresh rice hulls cause nitrogen tie-up and contain a high number of weed seed.
Dr. Michael Evans in the Department of Horticulture at the University of Arkansas has demonstrated that nitrogen tie-up does not occur when parboiled fresh rice hulls are used in horticultural growing media. Further, parboiled fresh rice hulls have no viable weed seed. In his research, parboiled fresh rice hulls served as an excellent alternative to perlite. Plant growth was equal or better for plants grown in Sphagnum peat-based media containing similar amounts of perlite or parboiled fresh rice hulls. Therefore, Arkansas growers could take advantage of parboiled fresh rice hulls to lower the cost of their growing media. Dr. Evans is continuing his research on fresh rice hulls to develop additional methods to use fresh rice hull products as horticultural growing media.
To find out which bedding plants and vegetables grow best in your area, check out an All-America Selections Trial Grounds and/or Display Gardens near you. There are 32 Flower, 22 Bedding Plant, 22 Cool Season Bedding Plant, 21 Vegetable trial locations and 180 Display Gardens. The new Cool Season Bedding Plant Trial, which tests pansies, violas, dianthus and other cool tolerant annuals during fall, winter and spring, replaces the Multi-Season Trial. AAS Trial sites evaluate and score entries to determine AAS Winners. Display Gardens grow AAS Winners for the public to view, but don't evaluate and score entries. http://www.all-americaselections.org (GMPRO greEn-MAIL, for June 3, 2003)
Paul Ecke Ranch initiated a Tech Help Bulletin Board for info about Ecke annuals and poinsettias. The Bulletin Board is an extension of the company’s online technical support program that began last year. Visitors can post questions and look for answers to issues relevant to their operations. When registering, the visitor dictates the information provided. lpyle@eckeranch.com; http://www.eckeranchtechhelp.com (GMPRO greEn-MAIL, for June 3, 2003)
Bayer Environmental Science announced its ProStar 70WP fungicide is now available for control of foliar rhizoctonia and rust in ornamental plants. For years this systemic fungicide (active ingredient: flutolanil) has been approved for fairy ring, brown patch and other turf diseases. It can now be used on ornamentals in greenhouses, saran and shade houses, and on outdoor container and field-grown ornamental nursery stock.
Growers shipping plants outside the imported fire ant quarantine may soon have a new insecticide approved for treating plant materials. USDA proposed adding methoprene to its list of approved treatments for the ants. The proposal would make Extinguish from Wellmark Int’l. available to treat containerized plants and field-grown woody ornamentals within quarantine areas. (http://www.aphis.usda.gov/lpa/news/press.html)
Plant Profile
Genista tinctoria L.
Common Woadwaxen
Jon T. Lindstrom
Department of Horticulture, University of Arkansas,
Fayetteville, AR 72701, tranell@uark.edu
I received the May/June 2003 issue of the American Gardener recently and noticed therein the new AHS/USDA cold hardiness map (view at http://www.ahs.org/pdfs/USDA_Map_3.03.pdf). Fayetteville is now in Zone 7 and Little Rock in Zone 8. I ripped the map out of the magazine and quickly ran out to my test plot and to show the new map to my dying Zone 7 plants. “See, you should be growing here!” I yelled. Then I remembered that plants don’t have ears and never pay any attention to zone maps. This is an irksome situation for me since many of the plants in the Arkansas Plant Evaluation program do spectacularly well in Hope and Little Rock whereas the plots in Fayetteville look like a kindergartner did the planting and only had green side up on half of the plants. Illicium dead, Rhaphiolepis dead, Ternstroemia dead, the evergreen Itea dead: the very core of my gardening skills shaken.
If you notice a bias toward cooler-growing plants in the trial for the next couple of years, blame me, as I try to recover a smidgen of gardening self-esteem. One plant that needs a closer look is Genista tinctoria ‘Royal Gold’, the common woadwaxen. A member of the Fabaceae or Pea family, the species is a native to Europe and western Asia. It is a low shrub that in full sun barely reaches 2 feet in height. In Wilson Park in Fayetteville, plants are growing in filtered shade where they are almost three feet in height, but due to lack of light, the branches arch at the tips and the entire plant splays outward. A plant grown in full sun is much more desirable due to its compact habit and greater number of flowers. As the cultivar name indicates, the flowers are a rich dark yellow in color and open beginning in the later half of May, toward the end of the season for Virginia sweetspire. A plant in full sun should be covered with flowers and remain in bloom for 3 to 4 weeks. Occasional, scattered rebloom can be expected throughout the summer, especially if the plant is trimmed after the main flowering season. The green stems and fine-texture foliage offer interest for the rest of the growing season. Although our plant is growing quite well in full sun in a moist, well-drained loam, I will be curious to see how it handles the heat and humidity of summers deeper south in the state of Arkansas. Perhaps Genista will be like Diervilla lonicera and Rhus aromatica where the best plants from the three test locations are in Fayetteville. Then once again I will be able to boast about my garden prowess.
Genista tinctoria 'Royal Gold'
July 12-16: O F A Short Course, Columbus Convention Center., Columbus, OH. Contact O F A at 614-487-1117, http://209.235.216.182/short.html, www.ofa.org.
July 27-August 3: Perennial Plant Assoc. Symposium and Trade Show. Hyatt Regency Sacramento, CA. Contact 614-771-8431 or www.perennialplant.org.
July 30-August 2: S N A 2003 - Southern Nursery Association Researcher’s Conference and Trade Show. Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta, GA. Contact S N A, 770-953-3311; url, http://www.sna.org.
August 6: U of A Turf Field Day, Fayetteville. Contact Dr. Mike Richardson at the Horticulture Dept. at 479-575-2860.
August 15-17: The Nursery/Landscape Expo. Dallas Convention Center. Contact T N L A at 800-880-0343 or http://txnla.org/green_industry/tradeshow.html.
August 21-23: The Farwest Show. Portland, OR, Oregon Convention Center. Contact Aimee Schendel, Oregon Association of Nurserymen, 800-342-6401; e-mail, info@farwestshow.com; url, http://www.farwestshow.com.
September 11-13: The Biannual Southern Plant Conference. Charleston, SC. Contact SNA Danny Summers, 770-953-3311; e-mail, danny@mail.sna.org; url, http://www.sna.org
September 16: Arkansas Plant Material Conference., Garvan Woodland Gardens. Contact Jim Robbins at jrobbins@uaex.edu.
September 17-18: Arkansas Certified Nursery and Landscape Professional (ACNLP) review and test, Cooperative Extension Headquarters, Little Rock. Contact Anne Borg at 501-225-0029 or http://www.argia.org. Registration due by Tuesday, September 2.
October 3-4: Middle Tennessee Nursery Association (M T N A) Horticultural Trade Show. McMinnville Civic Center, McMinnville, TN. Contact Ann Halcomb, M T N A Executive Secretary, 931-668-7322; e-mail mtna@blomand.net; url, http://www.mtna.com or http://www.southeasternnursery.com/mtna.
October 5-8: IPPS Southern Region NA. San Antonio, TX. Contact Dr. David L. Morgan, 817-577-9272; e-mail, DavidLMorgan@sbcglobal.net; or url, http://www.ipps.org/Default.asp.
October 30-November 3: American Society of Landscape Architects. Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, New Orleans, LA. Contact ASLA. 202-898-2444; url http://www.asla.org.
January 4-6: Western 2004: The Big Show. Hyatt Regency Crown Center, Kansas City, MO. Contact Western Nursery and Landscape Association; Mary Piatt; 816-233-1481; e-mail: info@wnla.org; url, http://www.wnla.org/insidethewestern.htm.
January 6-7: Arkansas Turfgrass Association (ATA). Hot Springs Convention Center. Contact ATA at 501-224-4840 or http://www.arkansasturf.org.
January 23-24: Arkansas Green Industry Association (AGIA). Hot Springs Convention Center. Contact AGIA at 501-225-0029 or http://www.argia.org.
No endorsement is implied or discrimination intended for firms or references included or excluded from this list.
By: Jim Robbins, Extension Specialist -
Ornamental Horticulture
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