You gardeners out there will have some exciting new flowers to plant this year according to the Star Gazette:

Purchasing decisions often include selecting between “tried and true” and “new and improved” items. Where do gardeners get their information when it comes to plant seed varieties? Numerous universities provide suggestions based on research and trials. Seed variety developers report on their introductions. Another helpful source is All America Selections.

The organization’s members are firms engaged in seed variety improvement. AAS judges evaluate these varieties at test gardens throughout North America and AAS promotes superior selections with their “Winner” designation.

Recently added to the flower and vegetable categories are bedding flower and cool-season flower categories. For the year 2006 look for these award-winning, new bedding varieties from AAS:

# Dianthus “Supra Purple” bloomed early and exhibited exceptional garden performance in winning an AAS Bedding Plant Award. This interspecific cross results in hybrid vigor for improved heat tolerance and prolific bloom. The 1.5-inch single purple flowers are lacy, with highly fringed petal edges. In full sun, “Supra Purple” reaches 12 inches tall with an upright bouquet habit spreading 10 inches. The flowers may be cut for fresh arrangements or enjoyed in the garden during the long flowering period. From sowing seed to bloom, plan on about 10 to 12 weeks.

# Nicotiana “Perfume Deep Purple” is another bedding award winner. The name speaks to its delicate evening fragrance and color that charm the senses.

Fragrance is an often-overlooked characteristic in many breeding programs. Gardeners benefit greatly when nicotiana and Dianthus receive breeding attention for their aroma. The single, 2-inch star-shaped flowers of the variety are produced in abundance. Plants may reach 20 inches and spread 15 to 18 inches in a full sun garden location. The variety readily adapts to containers, or a semi-shade garden planting. Easy to grow and undemanding, “Perfume Deep Purple” seed and plants will be available this spring in seed racks, catalogs and at garden retailers.

# Diascia “Diamonte Coral Rose” is a cool-season bedding award winner for 2006. It is the first hybrid diascia. Superior traits include early flowering, branching habit, flower production and length of bloom. “Diamonte Coral Rose” flowers within 60 to 70 days of sowing. The 8- to 10-inch height and 18-inch spreading habit is perfect for mixed containers where a cascading plant is desirable. It also displays well as a low edging plant in a sunny garden. The 1-inch rosy coral blooms are produced in spikes on all sides of the plant. The frost-tolerant plants can be literally covered with blooms.

# Viola “Skippy XL Red-Gold” (Viola cornuta) is the second cool-season bedding plant winner. It is the first of the species to win AAS recognition.

Its improved qualities include flower size and colors and free blooming habit. The 1.5-inch, round flower is large enough to resemble a pansy, but it is a viola (the presence of whiskers are a viola’s distinguishing attribute).

The genetic artists created a stunning canvas of colors. They are ruby red, with violet red shading below the golden yellow face that contains penciling or whiskers. AAS judges noticed the strong, dense plant exhibited heat tolerance as well as winter hardiness with protection. These two traits result in improved freedom of bloom and length of the flowering season. When mature, the plants will spread 8 inches and remain dwarf, about 6 inches tall.

Protection from winter desiccation is the primary key to wintering over pansies and violas. Cold temperatures and wet feet are not as fatal as drying wintry winds. Cover plants with either a light layer of mulch or fabric row cover and they will return, continuing their growth in the spring.

A combination of new and familiar flowers is likely the best choice. Rely on personal experience for most of what you plant, but try one or two new varieties based on a reliable recommendation. The new one may quickly become a favorite. Thanks to AAS for providing background descriptions.

We truly admire the entrepreneurial and hard-working ethos of the flower sellers in this story from the Santa Cruz Sentinel:

Esther Mena went from selling nopales, or cactus, in Guadalajara, Mexico, to selling cut flowers in Watsonville.

She came here four years ago, and every day she tries to make ends meet by pushing her cart full of carnations and roses through the streets of Watsonville, and occasionally across the river and into Pajaro.

In a good week, she can bring in as much as $150.

On a bad week, she barely totals $80.

“Holidays are the best,” the 53-year-old Mena says in Spanish. She was feeling upbeat from the profits reeled in during Thanksgiving, when her flowers helped anchor many a turkey feast.

“But I’ve got to say that nothing beats Valentine’s Day. Oh, that every day were Valentine’s Day. But that kind of goes without saying, I guess,” she says.

While Mena hasn’t perfected peddling into a full-fledged art, there are some tricks she’s mastered. A sure sale, she says, is spotting a well-dressed, nervous-looking guy in a bar with what looks like either a first date or a short-term girlfriend.

“After all,” she says, “we all know that girls can’t resist flowers.”

Mena is just one of a bunch of flower vendors who operate around the city, an indicator that the cut flowers industry is a staple here — even if it saw better days before South American flowers started flooding the market — especially Colombian roses.

Mena and the dozens of others who peddle flowers buy from the larger growers — such as California Pajarosa and Pajaro Valley Greenhouses for less than retail prices, and resell at a profit. Their small-scale entrepreneurial spirit is common in their culture.

“More power to them,” says Peggy Dillon of the California Cut Flower Commission in Watsonville.

“We’ve been trying to promote flowers as a part of everyday life, and these vendors help us,” Dillon says. “So every time you see them, you’re reminded that the flower industry is huge here, and there are some people who sometimes tend to forget that.”

But the profit margins for the flower peddlers are small, and in no way cover monthly rent, which can range between $600 and $900.

“This is just something I do on the side,” says Jesus “Chuey” Villarreal, who’s been selling flowers for nearly a decade after moving from Vera Cruz, Mexico, in search of a better life.

His main job is picking strawberries, but when the harvest ends and the winter season descends, he turns to peddling flowers.

He says it’s the easiest job in the world, compared to the backbreaking grind of picking berries.

Eugene Tsuji, owner of 2G Roses on San Juan Road in Pajaro, says the flower peddlers show up like clockwork Friday afternoon.

“There’s one guy,” says Tsuji, “who rides up in a bike and just loads himself up. It’s kind of funny, because you see him riding off in the distance and you wonder how he’s able to juggle it all on just two wheels.”

In Mexico, where the majority of the peddlers are from, it’s not uncommon to make a business on the move: there’s the ice cream vendor who pushes his cart through the streets during the hotter months; there’s the taco vendor who invests in a truck and drives from field to field, feeding the farmworkers; and there’s the flower peddler.

Even if no one is getting rich, “You do what you’ve got to do to survive here,” says Marcos Rodriguez.

Rodriguez says he started peddling flowers last spring, after coming to Watsonville two years ago from the city of Guanajuato in Central Mexico, where he sold shoes.

“In Mexico,” he says, “I can’t make in a week what I sometimes can make here in a day.”

Tokyo: A giant white radish that won the hearts of a Japanese town by valiantly growing through the urban asphalt was in intensive care at a town hall in western Japan on Thursday after being slashed by an unknown assailant.

The “daikon” radish, shaped like a giant carrot, first made the news months ago when it was noticed poking up through asphalt along a roadside in the town of Aioi, population 33,289.

This week local residents, who had nicknamed the vegetable “Gutsy Radish”, were shocked - and in some cases moved to tears - when they found it had been decapitated.

TV talk shows seized on the attempted murder of the popular vegetable and a day later, the top half of the radish was found near the site where it had been growing.

A town official said on Thursday the top of the severed radish had been placed in water to try to keep it alive and possibly get it to flower.

Asked why the radish - more often found on Japanese dinner tables as a garnish, pickle or in “oden” stew - had so many fans, town spokesman Jiro Matsuo said: “People discouraged by tough times were cheered by its tenacity and strong will to live.”