All America 2010
New Varieties To Grow

All America Selections is an organization that has been testing new varieties of annual flowers and vegetables for more than75 years. When I see each years new awards I almost always put them on my must have list. Some of the best new plants such as Sugar Snap Peas were introduced as All America winners. Click on the logo to go to their web page.


All America 2010 awards include 8 annual flowers and two new vegetable varieties.

All America had a significant change in personnel this year and a somewhat mixed up introduction of their awarded varieties. Some were introduced in Sept. Oct as usual and then there was another release of additional varieties in January. This makes finding these new varieties a bit tricky. The later announcement missed the printed seed catalogues but some of them have appeared on the web sites of the seed sellers. You will have to look a bit to find them all and I have not acquired the two new vegetables but hope to find them yet. Hopefully All America will get their house in order for next year’s introductions because they really are the best indicator of which new varieties are worth trying.

Wonderful Zinnias! A new series of compact Zinnias, Zahara, has three All America 2010 winners, Double Cherry, a rich cherry pink; Double Fire, an intense orange red and Starlight Rose, a semi double with white petals featuring a brilliant rose coloured centre. They all grow a nice compact 30 -35 cm and have 6 cm blooms. I have seen these in the trials and they are wonderful.


Compact Echinacea! Pow Wow Wildberry grows up to 60 cm tall and has a profusion of blooms all season. It is a short lived perennial and will bloom the first year if the seed is sown by late January.





Gaillardia Mesa Yellow! is the first F1 Gaillardia from seed and it does not get tall, loose and floppy. It will trail over the edge of a container if planted close to the edge. Bright sunshine yellow flowers reach 7 - 8 cm across plants that reach about 45 cm in height and will bloom the first year if seeded by the end of January.

Three More! All America 2010 awards were given to a deep orange African Marigold, Moonsong Deep Orange; a double pink snapdragon or Antirrhinum as the Assistant Gardener with her British roots likes to call them. Twinny Peach flowers all season on 30 cm tall plants. Endurio Sky Blue Martien, is a tough Viola that will produce lots of 2 cm flowers, once in the fall and again in the spring, if started mid summer.




Wonderful Pepper! Cajun Belle's incredible taste that is an excellent combination of heat and sweet with compact size and productivity garnered it an All America 2010 award. A small 5 - 7cm bell type pepper that starts green and then passes through scarlet to deep red. It is quite prolific, producing an abundance of fruit through the season. I’ll have to try this one as I only have 7 or 8 varieties of Peppers to grow this season.

Watermelon Wonder!'Shiny Boy' has a sweet tropical flavour and crisp texture. A red fleshed melon with dark seeds; this globe-shaped melon weighed about 9 kilos, some larger. It’s vigorous vines could be grown vertically to save space in smaller gardens. A 9 kilo melon may need some support if you are growing these vertically. I really am not a watermelon fan but I should probably try these to see how they do vertically and to feed to the grandchildren.


The All America web site has much fuller descriptions and a seed source guide to help you find these new delights.


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