History Major

Jennifer Zurko

In the January issue, I mentioned that 2017 marks GrowerTalks’ 80th anniversary. It’s now official, as the May issue was the first to be published back in 1937. So, happy birthday to us!

As much as I like new stuff—music, technology, shoes—I’m also a bit of a history lover. History was my second-favorite subject (after English, of course) since I was in elementary school. It’s fun and interesting to see how much has changed over the years … and how much we can learn from it.

We originally thought that we’d keep it low-key for the 80th anniversary; it’s not usually thought of in the same vein as a 50th, 75th or 100th anniversary, certainly. But when it came time to plan for this issue, we thought, “Well, maybe we should do a little something…” As the oldest trade pub in horticulture, it’s not like 80 years is nothing to sneeze at.

So Beytes came up with the idea of republishing the original GrowerTalks from May 1937 in its entirety, including making our cover look like it did 80 years ago. Obviously, the magazine has changed from pocket sized to what you see now. And our photos are in color. And we talk about different crops now (I don’t think I’ve ever written about sweet peas or larkspur).

But what hasn’t changed is our informal, conversational tone and the goal to provide our readers with the latest growing information. Even from reading just this first issue of GrowerTalks, you get a glimpse of George, Vic and Sonny Ball’s personalities and their passion for plants. We hope you feel that way about Chris, Jen P., Ellen and me, as well.

I sometimes wonder if George realized what a tremendous impact it made on the industry when he started his little monthly publication. I’d like to think that he’d be proud of where we are and how we’ve tried to stay true to his vision for the past 80 years. GT