Green Fuse Botanicals Dishes on Day Length Neutral Perennials
September 22, 2020 
The 2020 Medal of Excellence Editor’s Choice Award Winner: Hydrangea Game Changer Series from Green Fuse Botanicals.
This is the first of four Q&A features honoring winners of Greenhouse Grower’s Medal of Excellence Awards. This installment features Jim Devereux, VP of Green Fuse Botanicals. Special thanks to Title Sponsor WestRock for its support of this program.
What advantages do day length neutral perennials that don’t require cooling offer to growers looking to hit critical sales windows?
Devereux: For many years, growers have been accustomed to annuals that will flower regardless of day length hours, known as day length neutral. This has been a standard for most annuals as the selling season begins in various weeks throughout North America. For example, commercial growers may use the same vegetative petunia in week 14 that they would week 20 and simply base the finish date on time from unrooted cutting without needing to worry about hours of light. This methodology has only recently been introduced within zone hardy perennial selections.
We at Green Fuse Botanicals were the first to develop day length neutrality in a complete collection of true perennial offerings known as our First Light program. This attribute, in conjunction with zero vernalization requirements, provides a grower solution for crop timing and on-time deliveries. Let us look at an example of one of the most popular perennial genera, Leucanthemum (Shasta Daisy). Traditional varieties would require unrooted cuttings to be stuck or seed sowing in the summer months. They would then be grown to maturity and allowed to go dormant in the fall to obtain the number of cooling hours required (vernalization). After this period, they must either be forced in early spring with heating as well as lit to 16-hour days to initiate flowers, or they may be held until the days become long enough to naturally initiate blooms, usually in the first part of June for much of North America.
With a First Light Leucanthemum, a grower may stick the unrooted cuttings 10 to 12 weeks before the desired ship window, much the same as they would a petunia. The leucanthemum will initiate flowers with maturity instead of long days and vernalization. The elimination of nearly 20 weeks of production time and zero overwintering losses equate to not only cost of goods savings, but tremendous labor savings. The staggering of the unrooted cutting also allows fresh, on-time finishing without the maintenance labor. Our new Medal of Excellence Editor’s Choice winner Hydrangea Game Changer takes this philosophy to the extreme and delivers first-ever day length neutrality and zero vernalization on a Zone 5 hardy hydrangea. This saves more than three to four times the input cost. In flower finishing, it is available from an unrooted cutting in as little as thirteen weeks.
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