Vinca , a warm weather annual, back in the 80's was suddenly hit with a disease problem in Texas. Aerial Phytophthora blight was killing them all over the state. We saw this in our plantings at the nursery. The advice from the experts at Texas A&M was to not plant vinca early when the weather was cool. Wait until late Spring or Summer to plant them. We took that advice and refused to sell vinca until late April or May. Of course, our customers who had not experienced this disease wanted vinca. They did not understand that we were trying to do the right thing by not offering them until it was the "proper time". The customers that would not wait for us to bring them in shopped elsewhere for vinca in early Spring. We lost sales but we believed we were doing the right thing for the customer.

After about 5 or 6 years of paying attention to vinca and this disease we noticed that even planting late the vinca still started dying off in June. Plant in May...die in June. We also noticed something else. Vinca planted in March didn't die until June also. Obviously, not every vinca died that was planted at either time. We concluded that if the vinca that you are going to plant might die in June then why wait to plant them in May? Plant them in March and get 4 months out of them...not 30 days or less.

We are now selling vinca varieties that are resistant to aerial Phytophthora blight. The Cora series are much less likely to die from this disease but they are not totally immune. Cora vinca can still succumb to this disease especially if overwatering or poor drainage are issues. I have found that planting vinca and applying Actino-Iron in the soil at the time of planting is an insurance policy against that disease and it makes the plants strong and beautifully dark green.

I read an email blast from Randy Lemmon, host of the popular Gardenline radio program, this morning. He was explaining a question he received from a listener. They asked him why vinca was being sold already by some nurseries. Inferring that that was a bad practice by those nurseries. Randy explained that nurseries didn't want to lose sales. That was his only explanation. I have no idea if the listener was talking about my nursery or not. Randy was partially right. I don't want to lose sales but I still stand by our decision to sell vinca in March...it is the smart thing to do!