Ohio State Greenhouse Workshop Will Dig Deep Into Plant Root Zone
January 3, 2019 
The Ohio State University is offering a Greenhouse Management Workshop on Jan. 17-18 in Wooster, OH. The workshop is designed for commercial growers from Ohio and beyond.
Peter Ling, Associate Professor in Ohio State’s Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, says this year’s program is unique because it will focus exclusively on the root zone. Ling has organized the annual workshop for each of its 21 years.
Chieri Kubota, Professor in Ohio State’s Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, says root zone optimization means surrounding a plant’s roots with the best possible chemical, physical, and biological conditions — the ideal nutrients, moisture, and more. Doing so, she says, helps plants grow faster and tolerate pests and diseases better, which for a greenhouse grower can translate into lower costs, higher yields, and greater income.
The workshop will have 16 technical talks, grouped into general sessions on fundamentals and biostimulants, and concurrent sessions on container culture of ornamentals and hydroponic and soil-less culture of food crops.
Topics will also include composts, substrates, nutrition, fertigation, and beneficial microbes, to name a few.
Greenhouse, Research Tours
The event includes tours of a commercial greenhouse and of research facilities and greenhouses on the Wooster campus of Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES).
The campus, made up of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) and the Ohio State University Agricultural Technical Institute, is the location of the workshop.
More information on the event, including session topics and speakers, plus details on registration and lodging, is available at go.osu.edu/GHM19.
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