June 2011

Did Anybody See “It” This Year? By Tim Hodson

For the past couple of months I have been looking all over the place and I can't seem to find it anywhere. There was even talk that we might need to put out a Missing Persons Report, because nobody could find it _Ñ I'm talking about Spring 2011.

No matter where you were in the country, the "spring" weather was incredibly absent this year. In fact, I think it was the most non-springlike spring that I can ever remember.

Mother Nature can be very fickle. She had the entire industry on edge as everyone waited, literally, to see which way the wind would blow and how it might affect their sales.

For the most part, the reports that I received from growers and garden centers was that the weather on Easter weekend was not good at all but Mother's Day weekend was very good. Except for some areas in the South, pretty much every other weekend in April and May, it was cold or rainy or both! I know that in Chicagoland, we had several days in May where we had 30-degree temperature swings. Consumers don't like to go out in that kind of weather and it's pretty tough to grow and sell plants in those kinds of conditions.

Unfortunately, this issue of GPN was due to the printer right before the Memorial Day weekend, so, as I write this, I don't have a feel for the entire month of May. But for many parts of the country, spring might not be starting until this month! And according to the calendar, summer is supposed to arrive later this month.

How was your April and May? How did the crazy weather impact your production? What did it do to your sales this year? Drop me a line at thodson@sgcmail.com and let me know.

Trends from the Trials

Don't miss our report on some of the latest trends that Jasmina and I saw at California Spring Trials earlier this year on page 14. Next month we will be highlighting the new varieties that made their debut during Floriculture's Fashion Week.

And if your smartphone is QR-code enabled, scan the code on the (left) to see additional online coverage of our Spring Trials adventure. You can also access the information the "traditional" way by going to www.CaliforniaSpringTrials.com.