Good Qualities

Great unusual color and texture (5); Green is “in” (2); Good germination (2); Grew fine; Large size bloom, green is a color neutral; Caught the customers’ eyes; Great filler, “egg-y” look; I want to try it again; Grew well for a commonly problematic species; Easy to grow; nice contrast in bouquets, good stem strength; Many flowers per plant (although color was not good).

Problems

Unattractive flowers (3); Poor germination (2); Hard to know when to cut (2); The thing we disliked the most about Hulk (and we were excited to try it) was that as the yellow disk flowers bloomed, they turned a dirty brown, so unless they were picked before any disk flowers bloomed out, we didn’t really like them; For our field conditions, the green bracts that looked so big in the pictures were not very dramatic for us – I recently saw some in commercial bouquets at a store and this bract was very large, so I suspect for us to have better results we would need to grow in a hoophouse or greenhouse – we also didn’t really like all the side stems, it slows down bunching to take them off and sort, consumers really didn’t say anything about them, they didn’t stand out; Have to cut young else the white turns a dirty- drab color too soon; Fusarium destroyed quality; Rust rendered most of the crop unsaleable. All bloomed at once; The spoonshaped bracts were wonderfully textural, but personally I think the center is not very attractive – almost like a genetic aberration! customers, who are mostly women, were turned off by the name ‘Hulk,’ so we renamed it OZ (for the “O” in center and green color) Aster; they liked this name much better!; Outer green petals around the flowers were not good (brownish); Plants died early, tragic victim of fusarium. Plants around it were unaffected, which is not good for ‘Hulk’, very susceptible to disease – it was in a fumigated area; Hated it, ugly; Clustered flowers on 1 stem – no cutting qualities; Brown center not acceptable; Very dull green color – “no curbside” appeal to the customer at all; Aster rust – dry year, I think decreased production.

Comments

Great for mixes, not much customer interest; Seeded 4/4/05, planted 74 to the field, harvested from 60 plants, harvest interval 9/1 – 9/15; I did not find a whole lot about the ‘Hulk’ that would make me want to grow it again; Had great difficulty germinating; Grown asters for years in quantity without any seedling problems – these seeds and seedlings were different – more difficult to grow?; Some people liked, but most did not; Same color/contrast as ‘Envy’ zinnia as far as florist needs; The extreme heat and aster yellows prevented ‘Hulk’ from reaching its total size – there were 3 blooms on one of the plants but they had brown tips from the heat – however, there was great interest from florists in the product, some much that growers were buying the seed without waiting for our trial – the blooms are truly unusual and useful in modern design.

Trial Data

Supplier

Benary Seed
1444 Larson St.
Sycamore, IL 60178