Choosing Annuals for Churchill Downs

Choosing Annuals for Churchill Downs David Epstein: Hi, I’m David Epstein here at New England Grows and I have the all important guide. This of course tells us who’s ware on the trade show floor talks about recertification which is important to many folks here at New England Grows and also those interesting lectures. Now I’m going to go listen to John Backert who’s going to be speaking on bringing annual color into your garden and of course that’s a great way to keep thing popping throughout the season. John Backert: For seven years, I was the director of Horticulture, Churchill Downs; I think about 60,000 annuals for spring each here. We’re doing a lot of perennial stuff. We’re doing a lot of other things to kind of stretch that out a little bit and you know we found out what works. But we never stop playing around. I grow about 60 or 65 different varieties of annuals each year. David Epstein: So John, there are literally thousands of annuals out there. I’ve to ask you, give me a couple of favorites. John Backet: You know our seasons start so early that we have really, really big swings—weather swings. So we try to find things that are tough and what works for me a lot of times are already new vegetative petunias, I love those for mass plantings. David Epstein: What would you say to a landscape professional about annuals? What’s really important about them? John Backet: what’s really important about annuals is texture as much as color. When we’re doing combinations today, we have so many forwards textures, so many different tools available too. Don’t be afraid to experiment, reach out there. Grab something new, put it together and see what it looks like. So I will bring today is really directive more for the cut flower market than it is for the landscape market. So those guys want something different than I want as far as the tool goes. Well I want those things to stay dormant as long as possible, they want the shortest dormancies we can find. So what I end up using is I want really older varieties and most of these are still available. Temple of beauty is one of the latest that I can get in that orange-yellow range. It’s been a terrific tool for me. This is Kings blood guys and for me this—she’s just an old aristocrat. This is the latest red for me in Kentucky, it gives you lots of pop and man, you can see from a long distance away. You’ve got the peeler, filler, and spiller and you’ve heard that set a lot of different ways and this earn, the filler is kind of classic dark. And then the fillers in there, there's a garden maestro type fuchsia called coral and then some Coleus and then the spillers are my old standby, they’re petunias It doesn’t originally oiling mean and oiling penning. That’s just inside of a giant window from a patio that’s absolutely full of boxes. I try to echo some of those color texture and movement just outside that window. Those are 24 inch baskets. I use a slowly released fertilizer in baskets that size, we will use a full 8 ounce cup of the plant. I’ll go around the sides of that basket and I’ll make slits about every 8 inches or so and it was probably the petunias that were in those slits and I may alternate with one plant then another. And it gives great volume to the basket the minute it’s done. John Backet: Great information on annual color and that’s just one of the many seminars here every year at New England Grows.