This transcript is AI generated; there may be mistakes.

Hey, now it's your Darwin dynamic duo.

I am Chris Fifo.

And I'm Darren Barshaw.

And we are back here at Hoffey Nursery in Union, Illinois to check in on our grass planting.

We did these about 8 weeks ago, our panicums and schizachyrium.

So we're going to see are we close to retail ready with these.

It is summertime now.

It's beginning of July.

We're hot and that's what these grasses love.

So what do we love about these grasses?

Darren, you know the grass market.

You've got ton of experience.

You are in charge of this.

Darren is making all these selections so he knows.

So, disease resistance, landscape performance where they don't split apart and lodge after heavy rain or wind like we've been having a lot of issues with this year.

Um, and early flowering and a lot of color before just fall, just throughout the season.

So, at this point, what are we really looking for?

Are we concerned about bugs?

I mean, my experience with grasses, thrips love grasses.

That's the only concern I would have would be thrips too.

I'm not seeing any here, but if you do, a preventive treatment might not be a bad idea.

Yeah, regular sprays.

Obviously, Illinois summertime, we've got open vents.

We've got lots of air flow.

And so, always monitoring.

Keep your yellow sticky cards always in your grasses.

You want to make sure you're on top of that.

But foliage looks perfectly clean here.

I don't see any leaf spots, anything like that, which is why you selected these in the first place.

So, up to the bottom and top.

Yep.

Are we retail ready?

Are we ready for the market?

Can we pop these out and plant them?

I think we are.

I'm going to start with this is Panicum Lightning Bolt and it's in a 1-gallon and we potted this.

We potted this from a number three division.

So, it's the smallest Free Spirit division we had again nine weeks ago and I think retail ready, I would say.

So that's a number three division.

That is the lowest price point into a gallon pot.

That thing's ready to go.

It is fantastic.

Throw that one back in.

Impressive, isn't it?

But then I look at lightning bolts from the mother plants from those clumps.

Those are clumps.

The pop of color and those are what did he say?

Trade three gallons is what that is.

Trade three gallon.

Look at that.

I think I think we're retail ready on the three gallons as well.

Well, we're not just retail ray.

We're landscape ready.

Landscape ready.

I mean, these can be planted out in the landscapes.

We got the size of a root ball here.

So, they're going to be good to go.

And like you said, especially with the weather we've been having, these are going to stand up tall, be happy in the landscape.

And so moving forward, I mean, I look at these and, you know, I like a no-brainer plant.

I don't like these ones that have to stand out, get special treatments in production.

Are these going to fit that program?

Definitely fit the no-brainer program.

We got to add it to the list.

I mean, look at what I got here.

Plant them and set them down.

Forget about them.

Basically, that's what I like.

That's what I like.

And grasses do like heavy feed.

You know, these are your warm seed grasses.

Personally, I like 20-10-20.

I like this ammonia with the highlight.

I like higher phosphorus level.

is really going to bring these out.

Also, phosphorus is directly related to flowering.

It's going to bring out more flowers.

And look at this.

This one, early July here, we're coming into flower already with tumble weed here.

This is panicum tumble weed.

So, this one will bloom from the bottom all the way around.

It's very unique.

So cool.

What's your favorite, Chris?

Oh, man.

Right there.

Tumble weed's got to be my favorite.

I've seen this in landscape already.

Wow.

It really does look like a tumble weed being fully covered with flowers in the fall.

My favorite as well.

This is a fantastic plant.

But lightning bolts pretty awesome, too.

Bright yellow in the fall.

It's hard to make our choices, but we are going to expand upon this grass program as Darwin moves forward.

So, a lot of good stuff yet to come.

In the meantime, I'm Chris Fifo.

I'm Darren Barshaw, and we're your Darwin Dynamic Duo.

If you got any questions, reach out to your Darwin perennials product representative or visit darwinperennials.

com.