Mar 29, 2019
The Long and Winding Road By Tim Hodson

I have returned from the 2019 California Spring Trials and I’m tired but it’s a good kind of tired.

After seven days of planes, trains and automobiles, it felt really good to finally be home.

Team GPN and L&GR had a great week traveling from Gilroy down to Santa Paula visiting all of the different trial stops to see the latest introductions from the breeding companies.

The breeders have been hard at work and have a lot of new and interesting varieties in the pipeline that will make it to the market in 2020. There are some cool colors and fancy forms and new ways to grow things that are coming your way. I am very curious to see what type of reactions growers, retailers and consumers will have to these new intros.

We were chronicling our journey each day with special editions of GPN’s Culture Connection. We tried to provide you with a snapshot of some of the new varieties that we saw during our trip.

If you missed those enewsletters, here are links to each day’s report:

We were also posting additional photos and videos on GPN’s Facebook and Instagram pages. Please follow us on social media if aren’t already doing so.

Lawn & Garden Retailer’s Abby Kleckler was also providing updates from California. Be sure to check out her reports on some of the varieties that caught her eye along with some outstanding merchandising displays and marketing programs for retailers.

Here are the links to Abby’s enewsletters.

Also, be sure to check the L&GR Instagram and Facebook pages for even more coverage.

Did you attend California Spring Trials this year? If you did, I love to hear which new introductions grabbed your attention. Drop me a line at thodson@greatmaericanpublish.com and let me know what your impression of this year’s debuts is.

— Tim