Seminis Home Garden Showcases Exciting Varieties During California Spring Trials

ST. LOUIS, April 11, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- In early April, hundreds of visitors made a stop at Seminis Vegetable Seeds, Inc. in Oxnard, California to see the noteworthy Seminis^® Home Garden varieties on display during California Spring Trials.

"For many years, Seminis Home Garden has marketed innovative vegetable varieties to well-known seed retailers in North America," explained Seminis Home Garden Business lead John Marchese. "This year, we were excited to showcase to California Spring Trials visitors many of our popular varieties as well as varieties that were offered to Seminis Home Garden customers for the first time during the 2012/2013 season."

The California Spring Trials is an annual event that includes many of the leading plant breeders, growers, and suppliers showcasing their plant varieties and new products to various stakeholders in the home garden industry.

"Carefully selected from thousands of commercial varieties that have shown adaptability for the home garden market, our varieties meet many important agronomic and consumer attributes home gardeners are looking for," said Marchese. "The most important attribute being easy to grow, which is a benefit that comes along with other attributes such as the disease resistance some varieties offer or compact plants for container gardening."

For example, Quirinal is a squash variety that offers intermediate* resistance to Powdery mildew, Watermelon mosaic virus and Zucchini yellow mosaic virus, common diseases affecting home gardens across the United States. Quirinal is a green and glossy hybrid zucchini for summer harvest.

An addition to Seminis Home Garden's existing line of compact tomato varieties perfect for container gardening is Debut, a hybrid which produces large and tasty tomatoes despite its compact size. Biltmore, APT410 and Heatmaster are the other outstanding hybrid tomato varieties introduced by Seminis Home Garden during 2012/2013.

Extra large and smooth, Biltmore is a reliable home garden tomato hybrid with a continuous fruit set and mid-season maturity. As a processing tomato that provides excellent quality for peeling, dicing and sauce, APT410 produces consistently throughout varied growing conditions. Heatmaster thrives in humid, tropical climates, setting fruit under higher temperatures than other varieties.

"Aside from our exciting tomato varieties, we are very pleased to offer home gardeners our Valentino bean," added Marchese. "It has a concentrated pod set and sets well in hot conditions. With 53-day maturity, it's a great fit for home gardeners almost anywhere." Two other bean varieties, Banga and Serin, were also offered by Seminis Home Garden for the first time in 2012/2013.

In the bell pepper category, Plato is an attractive, medium-dark green bell pepper hybrid. The large to extra-large, blocky, firm fruit mature to red on a medium to large robust plant.

"We also added a cucumber and cauliflower variety to our home garden portfolio in 2012/2013," said Marchese. "Jumbo is an early maturing hybrid cucumber variety that produces well in warmer temperatures and Freedom is an exceptional summer hybrid cauliflower that stands up to heat and stress while producing high quality heads."

"At Seminis Home Garden, we take pride in offering vegetable seed varieties that home gardeners across the country will grow to love," said Marchese. "This year, everyone walked away from our California Spring Trials showcase excited about Seminis varieties that are available to home gardeners through our network of dealers, catalogues and garden centers."

* Intermediate resistance is the ability of a plant variety to restrict the growth and development of the specified pest or pathogen, but may exhibit a greater range of symptoms compared to highly resistant varieties.  Intermediately resistant plant varieties will still show less severe symptoms or damage than susceptible plant varieties when grown under similar environmental conditions and/or pest or pathogen pressure.

About Seminis® Home Garden

For many years, Seminis Home Garden has marketed innovative vegetable varieties to well-known seed retailers in North America.  Our leading home garden varieties can be accessed through well-known home garden seed dealers. For more information about Seminis visit www.seminis.com.

Individual results may vary and performance may vary from location to location and from year to year. These results may not be an indicator of results you may obtain as local growing, soil and weather conditions may vary. Growers should evaluate data from multiple locations and years whenever possible.

Seminis® is a registered trademark of Seminis Vegetable Seeds, Inc. ©2013 Seminis Vegetable Seeds, Inc.

Contact: Carly Scaduto (314-694-3247)

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