Eight new plants to try in the new year | Home & Garden
URBANA — A new year provides the opportunity to try new plants in the garden. With all the plant and seed magazines coming in, it can be difficult to decide on what varieties to pick of your favorite vegetables and flowers.
Fortunately, the All American Selections is an independent non-profit organization that tests new varieties of plants and awards top performers for their superior performance. Below is some information about this year’s national award-winning varieties that might be of some assistance for your 2022 decisions.
Begonia Viking Explorer Rose on Green F1- 2022 AAS Ornamental Winner is described as being perfect for hanging baskets with its spreading and spilling branches of rose-colored flowers. With season long flower production and tolerance to heat, diseases, and wet and dry conditions, this begonia is sure to be a garden favorite.
Eggplant Icicle F1- 2022 AAS Edible Vegetable Winner is a cylindrical white eggplant improved from the traditional eggplant with fewer spines, larger fruit, and fewer seeds. This plant is additionally attractive with its resistance to insect damage and environment; it even has improved taste and texture.
YARD AND GARDEN: Sometimes gardening can be very irritating
Lettuce Bauer- 2022 AAS Edible Vegetable Winner is an easy and fast-growing option of lettuce with a darker green color that develops into a uniform compact size. It can easily be grown in-ground, containers, or window boxes.
Pepper Buffy F1- 2022 AAS Edible Vegetable Winner makes a great new option in the garden as a delicious hot pepper. This plant produces a juicy, thick walled green to red fruit on strong upright plants. If you’re a fan of some heat, check this one out!
Pepper Dragonfly F1- 2022 AAS Edible Vegetable Winner can add some color to your garden with their beautiful purple peppers. Much like the dragonflies hovering around your garden, the fruit transforms from a green pepper to purple when it is fully mature.
Petunia Bee’s Knees- 2022 AAS Ornamental Winner is an outstanding, eye-catching yellow petunia with the versatility of being mixed into a container, in a hanging basket, or as a groundcover. The Bee’s Knees petunia offers a great addition to the garden with little maintenance.
Sunflower Concert Bell F1- 2022 AAS Ornamental From Seed Winner provides a showy flower presentation with clusters of 10 to 12 flowers on each stem. These sunflowers produce beautiful golden yellow blooms that appear earlier in the season. Judges noted the plants durability and sturdiness through storms and winds which we know can be an issue with sunflowers.
Tomato Purple Zebra F1- 2022 Edible Vegetable Winner as the name suggests, is a fun new striped tomato with a dark red fruit and green stripes. These tomatoes have a sweet and acidic leaning to sweet taste. With high disease resistance, this tomato makes a great option to add to your garden in 2022.
If any of these plants are of interest, you can find more information as well as pictures at https://all-americaselections.org/product-category/year/2022/.
Good Growing Tip: Don’t wait too long to order your seed for 2022. With more people gardening within the last two years, seed availability has been low for many companies.
My Town: Clint Walker’s memories of Coles County as pulled from the archives
Cosmic Blue Comics
From the Nov. 22, 1992, Journal Gazette, this photo of Cosmic Blue Comics in Mattoon; where I spent virtually every Saturday afternoon for about two years. That small back room you see just off to the right of the Coca-Cola sign was where they kept the many, and I mean many, long-boxes of back issues. I still own my bagged copy of “Tales of the Beanworld” issue No. 1 that I found back there. Sadly, this location is now just a “greenspace”.
Mattoon Arcade
Pictured, Shelbyville’s Bob Murray from the June 2, 1982, Journal Gazette, displaying his dominance over the TRON arcade game at the “Carousel Time” arcade at the Cross County Mall, later to be the Aladdin’s Castle, soon thereafter to be not a thing anymore. I spent just about every Saturday at that arcade, perhaps with that exact same haircut. No overalls, though. I was more of an “Ocean Pacific” kind of kid.
Icenogle’s
Pictured, from the Nov. 28, 1988, Journal Gazette, Icenogle’s grocery store. Being from Cooks Mills, we didn’t often shop at Icenogle’s…but when we did, even as a kid, I knew it was the way a grocery store is supposed to be in a perfect world, and that’s not just because they had wood floors, comic books on the magazine rack, or plenty, and I mean plenty, of trading cards in wax packs.
Cooks Mills
I had long since moved away from Cooks Mills by the time this Showcase item about Adam’s Groceries ran in the June 13, 1998, Journal Gazette, but there was a time when I very well could have been one of those kids in that photo; for if it was summer, and you had a bike, and you lived in Cooks Mills, that’s where you ended up. At last report, they still had Tab in the Pepsi-branded cooler in the back. I’m seriously considering asking my money guy if I could afford to reopen this place.
Mister Music
Pictured, from the July 16, 1987, Journal Gazette, this ad for Mister Music, formerly located in the Cross County Mall. I wasn’t buying records at that age, but I would eventually, and that’s where it all went down. If you don’t think it sounds “cool” to hang out at a record store with your buddies on a Friday night, a piping-hot driver’s license fresh in your wallet, you’d be right. But it’s the best a geek like me could do. Wherever you are today, owners of Mister Music, please know that a Minutemen album I found in your cheap bin changed my life.
Sound Source Guitar Throw
Portrait of the author as a young man, about to throw a guitar through a target at that year’s Sound Source Music Guitar Throwing Contest, from the April 18, 1994, Journal Gazette. Check out my grunge-era hoodie, and yes…look carefully, those are Air Jordans you see on my feet. Addendum: despite what the cutline says, I did not win a guitar.
Pictured, clipped from the online archives at JG-TC.com, a photo from the April 18, 1994, Journal Gazette of Sound Source Music Guitar Throwing Contest winner, and current JG-TC staff writer, Clint Walker.
Vette’s
Here today, gone tomorrow, Vette’s Teen Club, from the June 20, 1991, Journal Gazette. I wasn’t “cool” enough to hang out at Vette’s back in it’s “heyday,” and by “cool enough” I mean, “not proficient enough in parking lot fights.” If only I could get a crack at it now.
FutureGen
FutureGen: The end of the beginning, and eventually, the beginning of the end, from the Dec. 19, 2007, JG-TC. I wish I had been paying more attention at the time. I probably should have been reading the newspaper.
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