Apr 20, 2015

The Week that Was — Whew! By Tim Hodson

Team GPN returned to Chicagoland Friday night after a whirlwind week at 2015 California Spring Trials.

We spent the previous Saturday morning through Thursday afternoon making our way from Santa Cruz down to Oxnard to check out the latest new variety introductions and marketing concepts that the breeding companies have planned for 2016.

We logged quite a bit of windshield time and even more greenhouse time learning about new series, new colors and the latest trends and how they will influence our marketplace in the weeks, months and years to come.

As I mentioned in last Monday’s GPN Weekly, we were also present at Syngenta Flowers’ facility in Gilroy when the winners of the 2015 Goldsmith Scholarship program were announced. Congratulations again go out to Kim Shearer Lattier at Oregon State University and Jackie Wang at California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo.

In case you missed it, Jasmina Dolce, GPN’s managing editor, was blogging daily about many of the new varieties that were really getting her attention during our journey in GPN’s Culture Connection enewsletter.

Here are the links to each of those blogs:

Day 1: The Adventure Begins
Day 2: Breeding Breakthroughs in Watsonville and Salinas
Day 3: Standouts from Bulbs to Baskets
Day 4: Make Way for Begonias, New Guineas and Mixes
Day 5: Showstoppers in Ventura and Santa Paula
Day 6: The Journey Ends but the Real Fun Begins

If you do not receive GPN’s Culture Connection, click here to sign up for a free subscription.

We also posted a ton of photos in the photo gallery on www.CaliforniaSpringTrials.com. If you haven’t had a chance to look at them, here’s the direct link to the gallery.

You will be seeing extended coverage of Spring Trials in upcoming editions of Culture Connection as well as the June and July issues of GPN.

Did you make it to California Spring Trials this year? If you did, what did you think? What caught your eye?

Drop me a line at thodson@greatamericanpublish.com and let me know.

– Tim