PSI PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE… Each year is an attempt to figure out the future choices to be made by consumers of our plant products and which items the growers want to grow and offer. This challenge is a constant conflagration between optimism for new items and reality of how new items are accepted by growers, generally at a more deliberative pace. It is the constant tension of production versus sales/marketing. We can look to the past to adjust our production numbers to meet expected future demand, but how does this determine the choices now regarding new items? The 2024/25 season brings along a large group of new Calibrachoa offerings from Westhoff – as in 21 new offerings with a few renamed to fit in the Caliloco series. These are exciting new colors and styles that will broaden the PSI and Westhoff Calibrachoa offerings. PSI continues to build on the relationship with Plant Haven International with the introduction of some additional breeding from Penhow, the breeder of the Nemesia Escentials, by adding a number of Diascias. These are of two types: Little Dragon is the more traditional spreading/trailing type with tremendous number of bright flowers and the Towers of Flowers are more upright with large flowers. Other additions include a new Cosmos Cherry Chocolate, a few new herbs with Thyme Summerdreams Orange, Rose, Spicy from Volmary, Lobularia Compact series from Danziger and Lobularia Lucia series from Volmary, Salvia Tanami series from Westhoff and then there are plenty of additions to existing series already produced by PSI. Some big changes, as you may have noticed on the catalog cover, is the change of the Portulaca from Colorblast to SeaGlass. Some are new varieties within that series but most are the same with just a name change. Similarly, the scientific botanists/geneticists have continued to “review” the genus names we have used for many years and have encouraged us to update our listings by moving Setcreasea and Rhoeo into the Tradescantia genus. You will see that change reflected in this season’s program. By looking at past, present, and future, PSI has concluded that the Petunia URC produced has not been to the expected consistent standard demanded by our customers. So, for the 2024/25 season, the Petunia offerings have been significantly reduced as the production farm in Mexico works to implement a program that will deliver consistent quality URC with no or few flower buds. As great as all the new breeding programs are, the petunias are bred to be more day-neutral which is great for selling at retail but challenging to produce a quality URC when all the plant wishes to do is produce flowers. We apologize for the reduction in Petunia offerings for the coming season but want our future programs to be better and sometimes that means reductions in the present program.
As always, thankful for everyone’s support and wish all a great season ahead.
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