Return from Meeting

January is a renewal time for horticulture crop growers. Seems like they all have conferences in early January. I attended the Kentucky Landscape Industries conference and the Kentucky Fruit and Vegetable Conference. Here's a very short list of a few things worth repeating from the conferences:

• Get beyond geraniums as container plants -- use tropicals, use succulents, and arrange containers in your existing garden to stage those container plants
• Don't fill a large container full of styrofoam peanuts to make the container less heavy. It may become top heavy. It's better to mix the peanuts throughout the medium. Makes sense, doesn't it?
• If you're using woody plants in containers that will be left outdoors 12 months out of the year, you must choose plants that are hardy to zone 2 or 3
• In Kentucky, don't be surprised if home-grown strawberries are available in late April instead of May. This is do-able in some regions in KY. Wow! I love that!
• KY gardeners should use intermediate-day or 'day neutral' onion varieties to have the best luck in bulb formation and maturation. Soil sulfur content determines how pungent the onion will be.

Just a few tidbits of information to share with you.

Winter may be here, but speaking of onions, I'll be planting onion seed during this upcoming week. See -- it's already time to start gardening!