PART 1 GROW IT RIGHT Want satisfying yields and beautiful blooms? Strive for the best possible growing conditions in your garden and yard. It''s as simple as that. While you can''t control everything (like rainfall, frost, and drought), you can take advantage of your site''s positive features and plan gardens that will thrive in adverse conditions. Gardens aren''t effortless, though, so take the time to improve your soil with amendments and compost, gauge your garden''s water requirements, learn about pestproofing and safe pest controls, and, above all, keep an eye on the garden so you can recognize and react when changes occur. When you''re paying good money for quality seeds and transplants, you''ll want to give them a great start when you bring them home. CHAPTER 1 BE INFORMED BEFORE YOU BUY The local garden center or your favorite mail-order catalog can be a bewildering place. Internet shopping for seeds and live plants is even more complicated. How do you choose among so many vegetable varieties that promise to be the tastiest, the earliest, the highest yielding, the most disease resistant, the most nutritious, or the biggest? Can ornamentals really deliver on their promises for long-lasting bloom, drought tolerance, or intoxicating fragrance when they''re described in terms that make them sound all alike? And can you trust plants labeled an All-America Selections winner, a Proven Winner, a Perennial Plant of the Year, and other designations? I wrote this book to help you understand that variety selection is one of the most important factors for garden success.

Top-performing varieties will make gardening easier because they will deliver a benefit we value, such as extra-earliness (for example, ''Cherry Belle'' radish--20 days to maturity), tenderness (such as ''Bright Lights'' chard), or heavy yields (''Better Boy'' tomato) and, in the case of flowers, longer-lasting floral displays (such as ''Wave'' petunias). BE INSPIRED, NOT CONFUSED Garden catalogs start to arrive in December and January, with colorful photographs and descriptions that are meant to entice us into buying seeds or plants on good faith. The same kind of enticement happens at Easter, when garden centers load up with seed racks and tray tables heavy with healthy-looking transplants begging to be taken home. Often we are influenced to buy a particular petunia because it is already in flower, or we choose a six-pack of tomatoes on the strength of an attractive plant tag, or perhaps an herb labeled "tarragon" reminds us to enlarge our herb garden. But when you transplant all this promise to the garden, you discover that the first heavy rainfall destroys the petunia display because it isn''t rain resistant, and the tomatoes are a variety that needs a long growing season, and the "tarragon" turns out to be the tasteless Russian variety and not the more desirable French. What most of us need is guidance so that when we leaf through a catalog or wander the garden center aisles, we can make intelligent decisions. That''s the goal of this book. Here you will learn about vegetable varieties that can perform the way you want, or flower varieties that produce long-lasting displays under adverse conditions, or lawn grasses that suit your region.

You will also learn about varieties to avoid, for various reasons, even though these are the varieties you''ll find in a seed rack or on a garden center table--because they are cheap to produce or look good in a six-pack, or simply because they have an appealing name or look enticing in a photograph. Gardening is one of life''s most pleasurable activities, but only when we see results that justify the time and expense spent on planting and nurturing our gardens. This book aims to help you experience the most enjoyable garden possible, full of beauty from seasonlong flower displays or, in the case of edibles, from higher yields, earliness, tastier flavors, and other desirable factors. In other words, I want to help you distinguish between plant hope and plant hype. New Names and Old Favorites Seed packet descriptions and transplant labels can be confusing. Different companies often feature photos and descriptions of what appear to be identical varieties, but the names are different. And where is the explanation for paying extra for a plant labeled as "all-female" in the case of cucumbers and summer squash, or a "triploid hybrid" in the case of marigolds and watermelons, or "day neutral" in the case of strawberries? Is the cost really justified or not? In most cases it is, and I will explain precisely why (or, in some cases, why not). I''ll explain why two identical varieties can be sold under different names, like ''Greenbud'' broccoli and ''De Cicco'' broccoli or ''Rainbow'' chard and ''Five Color'' chard, in the case of vegetables.

The heirloom tomato ''Big Rainbow'' is the same as ''Striped German'' because a mail-order marketing company decided that ''Big Rainbow'' was a better-selling name than ''Striped German''. The same is true of many flowers, where two different companies will sometimes call the same plant by different names: For example, I can''t see a difference between the heirloom French marigold ''Harlequin'' that dates back to 1870 and the more recently introduced ''Mr. Majestic'', or the heirloom morning glory ''Grandpa Ott''s'' and the more recent ''Star of Yalta''. Also, it''s useful to know that the market for live plants and seeds is always changing. A small army of plant breeders from mostly the United States, Japan, Holland, Germany, Israel, and the United Kingdom is constantly working to improve garden varieties of flowers and vegetables. As one breeder introduces a worthy new variety, another breeder may immediately try to improve it. Throughout this book, I often name the breeder responsible for a particular variety, like Johnny''s, Pan American, Sakata, Syngenta, and Takii. Most of these names are not familiar to the public, since these breeders distribute their varieties through other companies better known to the public, such as Burpee Seeds, Harris Seeds, Park Seed, Stokes, and others.

These are all reputable companies, but be aware that even a well-established company can change ownership and start to take shortcuts. Another remarkable aspect of the seed and plant industry is the small army of amateur gardeners and farmers that''s responsible for saving heirloom vegetables and ornamentals from being lost to cultivation by saving seed and sharing it through seed-saving exchanges. Many times, these are plants that grew in your parents'' or grandparents'' yards and have been dropped from commerce for many reasons, such as a succession of crop failures that made seed production too costly, or the introduction of an early (though not necessarily more flavorful) variety. Luckily, some gardeners valued a disappearing variety so highly that they saved their own seed and passed it along from one generation to the next. ''Brandywine'' tomato, ''Lazy Wife'' pole snap beans, and ''Dr. Martin''s'' limas beans are good examples. The best plant varieties become popular by word-of-mouth recommendation. Who can argue against the popularity of Vidalia onions, for example, except that true Vidalias can be grown in only two counties of Georgia, and many onions sold as Vidalia may actually be ''Granax'' or ''Walla Walla Sweet'', which are more widely adapted for home gardeners? Among perennial flower varieties that became popular from word-of-mouth recommendation are ''Barnhaven'' primroses, ''Siloam'' hybrid daylilies, and Saunders tree peonies.

Some varieties have become favorites among home gardeners through heavy advertising. ''Wave'' petunias became popular after an aggressive publicity campaign, and ''Profusion'' zinnias became a hit after they were seen in the California Pack Trials, an annual show-and-tell event run by leading plant breeders. Hibiscus ''Southern Belle'', ''Bright Lights'' chard, and ''Sugar Snap'' peas enjoyed overnight success as a result of awards from All-America Selections, the national seed trials. Generally speaking, home gardeners take a lot of convincing to try a new vegetable variety, because a familiar name conveys trust. But the person who is cautious about trying a new vegetable will readily try a new flower variety. Disappointment with the performance of a new flower, it seems, is less traumatic than disappointment with a new vegetable or fruit. SUBSTANTIATION FOR "THE BEST" A recent poll revealed that many inexperienced home gardeners rely on garden center personnel for advice in choosing varieties. While many garden centers do employ a trained horticulturist to advise customers, in the busy season, the centers are staffed with seasonal help, who may or may not be qualified to offer advice.

One of the best places for nursery owners and garden center buyers to evaluate annuals and perennials is the California Pack Trials (also known as the California Spring Trials), an event that takes place the first week of April along the Pacific coast of California. More than 40 plant breeders have production facilities here and put on a display of their products for evaluation by garden center buyers in particular. The California Pack Trials started in 1966 when Glenn Goldsmith, founder of the plant breeding firm of Goldsmith Seeds (now a part of Syngenta Flowers), began a tradition of showing his customers comparisons between his breeding lines and those of his competitors. He displayed these in "packs"--the traditional six-pack plastic pots used by most garden centers and nurseries to sell live plants to the general public--and also in other popular transplant sizes, even gallon containers and hanging baskets. Soon,.