Why does James Klett plant nearly 40,000 pansies, petunias, violets and more in May?
For the same reason Frank Stonaker fills greenhouses with blueberry bushes and strawberry plants dangling from hanging baskets: Both guys grow stuff not so much for food or aesthetics, but for science. Klett and Stonaker, both horticulture professors at Colorado State University, are plant testers.
So is Ann Caffey, a sheep rancher near Walsenburg.
“I have six different flowers, three different beans, two tomatoes, four carrots, two cucumbers, two cabbages, a corn, a cauliflower, kohlrabi, green onions, peas, and 10 different kinds of lettuce and potatoes,” she says. “It’s amazing how much you can fit in a small garden.”
Caffey maintains her test garden for Organic Gardening magazine.
Test gardens are the places around the country where plants, especially new varieties, get evaluated before they hit the marketplace. Many are run by universities. Plant nurseries, too, often maintain test gardens — Harlequin’s Gardens in Boulder and Welby Gardens in Denver are just two in the metro area with test gardens.
A lot of test gardens are geared toward farmers with the sort of acreage that demands single-propeller planes for getting around, but plenty, too, are nurtured for the benefit of backyards the size of a swimming pool.
Plants aren’t like, say, electric toothbrushes. Mechanical engineers don’t design them, machines don’t build them, and consumer groups don’t run them through trials to ensure their safety and to see how well they work. And thousands of new types of electric toothbrushes aren’t introduced to the world every year.
But seed companies, for example, do hatch thousands of new varieties of vegetables, herbs, flowers and more annually. And many of them depend on the independence and the rigor of test gardens to find out how their creations perform on the Colorado prairie or the rocky hills of New England, the Arizona desert, the rain- saturated Pacific Northwest or the subtropics of southern Florida.
“We hate to have people fail,” says Klett, who runs the largest flower test garden in the state — and one of the five largest in the United States — a nearly 3-acre patch of park in Fort Collins threaded with flower-filled gardens. “The main purpose of this is the evaluation of annual flowers, to see how well they perform in Colorado, in our high light intensity and low humidity.”
Seed companies from around the country send Klett thousands of seeds and cuttings of flowers. He grows the plants in greenhouses until they are ready to transplant into the test gardens in May. And then, for the length of the growing season, he and a team of others pay close attention to the vividness of the colors, to the number of blossoms, the height of the plants, the weather. They take a lot of notes, and prepare an annual report detailing how each variety performed. In August, they hold a contest in which judges pick the healthiest and most vibrant of each type of flower.
All of the test-garden work, Klett says, helps seed manufacturers decide what to push in Colorado. Nurseries, too, use the flower evaluations to figure out what to stock.
Stonaker’s work, on the other hand, gives small farmers in the region better ideas about what types of lettuces, beets or even artichokes do well in Colorado’s tricky climate.
His department recently launched a program in organic gardening, attracting nearly 20 students, most of whom want to start their own small farms after graduation. As farmers markets grow in popularity and restaurants, gourmet grocery stores and consumers increasingly rely upon local farmers for produce, Stonaker says, small family farms are making a comeback.
But little of the vegetable testing, he says, is geared toward organic gardening. So he’s been running trials on a wide variety of organic vegetables, about 300 cultivars a year. For a while, he and his students were testing about 150 varieties of lettuce alone. Among the things they’re testing now: yacon, an Andean tuber, and blueberries.
“Small farmers, especially in the organic arena, haven’t had much objective information,” he says. “So that’s why I came back to graduate school,” to use science to find ways to help.
“There is a huge number of farmers who want to do things organically,” he says.
The farm as test garden
Ann Caffey doesn’t have a Ph.D or a retinue of graduate students, but she does have 150 acres of land in southern Colorado. She has 80 sheep. She has chickens, turkeys, dogs, cats and guinea pigs. And she, along with others around the country, has a test garden for Organic Gardening.
“We have a lot of different input about what works where,” she says. “Some things didn’t work well for me at all. The eggplant didn’t do anything for me last year, but everybody else loved it.”
Caffey, a longtime subscriber to Organic Gardening, said the magazine published a note a few years ago asking readers if they would be willing to maintain a test garden. Caffey didn’t hesitate. She and her husband had worked in horticulture for more than 30 years in Denver, and with the ranch, they had plenty of land where Caffey is happy to try her hand at different vegetables, including Asian greens like tatsoi.
What works in her garden this summer will be reported next January in the magazine.
Everything is done organically at her ranch, so instead of using pesticides to rid her plants of bugs, she handpicks them or leaves the work to a dozen free- range chickens roaming the yard.
“I’m the original earth muffin,” she says.
Douglas Brown: 303-954-1395 or djbrown@denverpost.com
Tried and true
Some test gardeners’ results are recorded in a more formal manner than others, but most growers are happy to make recommendations.
Ann Caffey
Caffey prizes plants that are hard to kill for her Zone 4 organic garden in Huerfano County, where all water must be hauled (she doesn’t have a well or a ditch to draw from.) Her five best include:
Crimson red rhubarb. It’s easy to find and easy to grow.
Red valerian (Centranthus rubra). You can’t kill it, but it’s not invasive.
Agastache, above. There are lots of types, but any “garden variety” will do.
American plum (Prunus Americana). This grows wild in Colorado.
“Coral Canyon” Twinspur, below. She grows this in beds that are caged to keep the sheep out.
Frank Stonaker
Stonaker collects data through the Specialty Crops Program; results are posted at specialtycrops . In addition to easy-to-understand info about ideal growing conditions for many of the plants, you’ll also find notes about quality and yields of crops intended for Colorado State University’s Community Supported Agriculture program, as well as details on perennial fruits, such as grapes, raspberries and blackberries.
Jim Klett
Klett’s findings are all public information. He keeps results — and pictures — at .lostate . His growing conditions are less challenging than Caffey’s because his manicured gardens, at the corner of Remington and East Lake streets just east of South College Avenue in Fort Collins, are serviced by an extensive irrigation system. Whether you grow in containers or in beds, Klett’s got you covered. Five faves from 2007:
Cleome “Spirit Appleblossom,” from Proven Winners. Delicate white and pink flowers, above, bloom all summer. Good for sunny locations.
Dahlia “Mystic Illusion,” from Proven Winners. Bright yellow flowers, left, against the dark purple foliage. May grow to 30 inches tall. Performs well in full sun and partial shade.
Begonia (hiemalis type) “Solenia Dusty Rose,” from Ecke Geraniums. Prolific rose-colored flowers, abundant through September. Dark green foliage.
Dianthus “Supra Red,” left, from Hem Genetics. Unique petal form and taller than ordinary dianthus.
Impatiens (double), “Fiesta Sparkler Hot Pink” from Ball FloraPlant. Large, very double flowers, below, resemble small roses.
