Every year, anxious gardeners like myself show up at our favorite greenhouses or garden centers looking for the newest color, longest lasting and splashiest annuals, as well as the new vegetable varieties to tempt our palates. Did you ever wonder about all those amazing plants and their journey to the retailer? Yes, of course there is the grower and shipper, soil, containers, fertilizer, tags, marketing, transporting and many other inputs that go into those beautiful and tasty delights. There are also untold hours of love and labor that come before every spring crop.
But before the plants are ever even considered for retail, much research is being done behind the scenes to try to generate seeds that result in improved varieties, exciting new colors and tasty new flavors. After years of research and development, these new varieties are created and/or known variety improvements are made and these “new” seeds are submitted by companies to the All-American Selections (AAS) annual seed trials.
The AAS is the “standard” for getting a new seed, flower or vegetable, to market. Seeds must do well in these trials to ever make it to the marketplace. The AAS was founded in 1932 and is the oldest independent seed testing organization in North America with a mission to “promote new garden seed varieties with superior garden performance judged in impartial trials in North America.” The never-before-sold varieties submitted by seed companies to the AAS are tested in trial and display gardens across the United States and Canada. Seed companies are given a choice of having their plants tried in the ground or in containers. Some are tried in both, which is fantastic for both traditional and nontraditional gardeners.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Michigan State University Extension
