Seven Steps To Reducing Whiteflies

Here's what the Ad Hoc Whitefly Taskforce says:

1. Scout. Inspect your crops at least weekly.

2. Exclude or isolate. If at all possible, try to exclude whiteflies from your growing facility with screening material, and if possible, isolate the facility so that workers have to enter through an anteroom.

3. Practice good sanitation.

4. Inspect incoming shipments and isolate if necessary. All of the major propagators are cooperating in this program, so you should not be receiving undue numbers of whiteflies. Because zero tolerance is not the goal for anyone, you may see a whitefly or two when your shipments arrive. That’s normal, and means that your propagator (or rooting station) is probably following good management practices.

5. Watch your neighbors' fields.

6. Study and implement the "Management Program For Whiteflies On Propagated Ornamentals" recommended by the Task Force. It’s available here.

7. If you have control problems, contact your propagator, your local extension agent or university expert. Follow our “Whitefly Management Program,” and get your whiteflies biotyped.

Behind The Headline At Hines

There's some interesting commentary going on over at The Blogging Nurseryman related to the Hines delisting. You guys know what's going on with stories like these better than we do sometimes.

No-Match, No Problems?

We're looking at a no-match letter showdown.

Homeland Security's "no-match" regulation will take effect Sept. 14. Employees will be notified if an employees name and Social Security number don't match on government records. The department says it will send out 15,000 letters each week. I've seen reports that as many as 140,000 letters will be sent.

What's new about this regulation? It clarifies the employer's obligation. Here's what the Social Security Administration says:

DHS has advised us that the information provided in the employer no-match letter could expose the employer to potential liability under the immigration law. To provide employers with guidance on how to respond to employer no-match letters consistent with employers' obligations under U.S. immigration laws, SSA's release of Tax Year 2006 employer no-match letters will be accompanied by a letter from DHS.

Here's more FAQs on no-match letters direct from the SSA.

Immigration Law Blog is also a nice place to check into for opinions on this whole thing. Here's what she said about no-match letters.

Research - Where Do You Go?

We've just about wrapped up production of our mid-September issue on Young Plants. Here's the cover, by the way. I think it's awesome, by our artist Patrick Brickman.

So in this issue, we include a seven-page live inputs directory. We keep mulling around the idea of putting this type of company and product search online, but it hasn't quite happened yet. Do you still use printed directories when searching for a product or provider, or do you just use Google? Or something else?

We recently conducted a survey of growers asking about Web usage. Maybe some of you even received it. Anyway, the results say that growers use the Internet for product searches. Should our directory be online?

Grow While You Type -- Desktop Greenhouse

I hope all you growers don't consider me competing with you if I get one of these.

It's a USB Greenhouse...that is, it plugs into your computer. I smell a new market segment.

Now With Anonymous Comment Goodness

It just came to my attention that anonymous comments on the blog were turned off. It's fixed now, so you can comment on whatever you like and no one will ever know it was you. No Google account needed. Chat away!

May I Suggest 'Pretty In Pink'?

Dark Angel dahlia series from GroLink really caught my eye when I saw a page proof of them for the September issue of Today's Garden Center. Look at how gorgeous.

I was even more impressed when I was gathering photos to post here and I noticed their names. 'Pretty Woman,' 'Pulp Fiction,' 'Taxi Driver' and 'Star Wars' (guess which is which). That is awesome!

I'm a crazy movie buff and I think it's too bad these names probably won't make it all the way to the consumer. Can you imagine? I think it would generate a lot of buzz.

Does all that creativity go to waste if the consumer never hears it? Maybe it's good enough that they get growers' attention. Too bad, though.

Laurie Scullin Cracks Me Up

His blog post called "Fire All The Boys" has been posted for a while now. Laurie cracks me up in general, but I think this column is hilarious, and true. He's already gotten feedback on it and we look forward to even more once the September issue starts hitting readers' mailboxes. You'll find an extended version and more of Laurie's thoughts there.

This debate came up for about a minute at the grower town hall at OFA Short Course, but the conversation didn't really go anywhere. I think there's no doubt anymore that a woman's point of view is needed for marketing, I guess the argument is how well growers and retailers are responding to this need.

Hurricane Dean May Hit Southern Texas

My local news Web site tells me evacuations have begun in some parts of southern Texas.

Pre-hurricane considerations for nurseries were put together by researchers at NC State University, and you can find them here. Keep scrolling till you find the short-term recommendations.

Cocaine Is Bad, But So Is Glyphosate, It Seems

This blog is pretty new, but it still surprises me this is the first time I've written on organics and sustainability. We are right in the middle of the Growing Green series in Greenhouse Grower now, having covered pots, media, a little talk on Florverde and a story in the September issue from Ray Cloyd on PGRs interfering with biological controls.

For the October issue, I'm talking to some biologicals providers, as well as some organic fertilizer and pesticide suppliers, on how much they cost compared to traditional, what they're made of, what their efficacies are and what differences you'd notice using them.

They can't possibly cost as much as this -- U.S.-funded aerial spraying of suspected coca plantations in Colombia near the Ecuador border has severely damaged the DNA of local residents, a new study has found.

Surviving Consolidation Through Contracting

What's the future of the big box merchandiser? It has so much to do with the future of the greenhouse grower.

Are more small-sized growers contract growing than I think? Exactly 50 percent of respondents to our Top 100 Growers Survey said they use contract growers. So there must be quite a few of them out there. Will we keep seeing a decline in the number of medium- to small-sized growers or will contracting pick up? And where do big and small growers meet to get their businesses to work together.

At OFA Short Course, I heard a little about Maumee Valley Growers, an association "committed to sustaining and growing the greenhouse industry in northwest Ohio." Here's their logo.





They've got an energy purchasing program. So are small growers in as much trouble as everyone says they are?

You Can Prevent Black Thumb Syndrome

Check this out. Even the editors at This Old House magazine need gardening help. There are a ton of gardening blogs out there. How much do you want to bet a lot of them are talking about how to be more successful gardeners?

Sherwood Greenhouses has a long list of gardening Web sites where people are talking about plants. Snappy is looking for black flowers. Do you have any suggestions?

These Web sites are a great way to connect with gardeners directly and help them out. It's a grassroots effort for sure, but if you tell one person, and they tell one person, and they each tell one person...

Whose Job Is It?

We talk about marketing a lot in Greenhouse Grower. It's one of the five major areas we try to cover every month.

I visited two major garden centers in the Cleveland area last weekend, and I'm sorry to say, they're not using much if any of your point of purchase materials. Not the signage and displays I see you all selling. For the most part, it's tags or nothing at all. Maybe a little bit of benchtape.

And advertising? As they say, fuggetaboutit. One doesn't advertise at all (that I've seen, anyway) and the other has just started getting into promoting itself. And that's great. But are they promoting you?

So what are you going to do about it? Are tags our saving grace? You, yeah, you. I know you have something to say. Click 'Comment' under this post and tell me what you think. It can even be anonymous.

Tears For Beauty

I stopped over at Takao Nursery's blog yesterday ... they have a YouTube clip from a reality talent show where this guy brings the audience to tears with his beautiful opera performance. It is great, and Danny emailed me asking, "Can you imagine if our industry could evoke that kind of emotions with our plants?"

What a great question. I mean, the product itself does evoke those kinds of emotions sometimes (weddings, botanical gardens), but the average consumer just isn't feeling it. Why is that?

Holtkamp In Forbes

Holtkamp Greenhouses in Nashville is profiled on Forbes.com. U of Florida's Terril Nell is quoted on innovation in the industry, but the article overall focuses on African violets.

Did you know, "The greenhouse partnered with NASA to send 20,000 violet seeds to an unmanned space laboratory, where they were exposed to microgravity and other elements of space." See the article here.

Photo credit: NASA National Space Science Data Center

OXO and AHS -- The Partnership

OXO is helping out horticulture. The company, which offers cool products for gardeners, like the pictured Good Grips Outdoor Pour & Store Watering Can, Good Grips Garden Scissors and Good Grips Gel-E Trowel, is a sponsor of AHS' Educational Programs. Nice!

The Amazing World Of Plants, part of AHS' Garden School, will take place October 4 and 5, hosted by Yew Dell Gardens. For more information on this event, visit www.ahs.org.

And if you want to know more about OXO kitchen products, ask me. I think I own every single utensil.

Success With Succulents

I love these RetroSucculents from EuroAmerican -- low maintenance for the consumer. And the way they're packaged in these photos is nice. I've heard from some growers they're not sure what to do with succulents -- what sizes to grow them or how to package them. This is pretty nice.

Going Organic Isn't Hard

That's what some consumer media is saying. Organics are a snap, at least for growing vegetables. So consumers will think if they can't successfully go organic, they aren't good gardeners. And yes, the article was written by a kid in high school, but it was picked up by the Lexington Minuteman, a community newspaper.

Merchandising At Retail

Congratulations to Overdevest Nurseries/Garden Splendor. The company was honored at the PANTS show for its creative and low-cost way to display its plant products. The booth can be replicated and recreated to merchandise its products at the garden center retail level, both indoors and outdoors.

Are you doing retail merchandising? What works? What doesn't? Are you getting help? I'm hearing more people have control over displays, but that might also be a burden.

North Carolina's Doing Good

The 2006 value of North Carolina's floriculture industry is up 9.5 percent compared to 2005, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.

On The International Front

Delilah's working on a story about all that's happened at Syngenta over the last few years, rounding out its product span. There's a lot going on in floriculture all around the world. Here's a short roundup from papers around the world.

Small scale farmers in Central Kenya are making inroads into floriculture industry, encouraged by the arrival of flower varieties that do not require greenhouses.
Arabicum, crocosmia, mobydick (milkweed), tuberose and gladiolus are grown in open fields using rain water.

The University of Queensland Centre For Native Floriculture's Open Day gives commercial native flower growers an inside view of the latest research being conducted by the CNF on native plants - including plant breeding, plant production and postproduction issues.
The event includes a tour of the new state-of-the-art greenhouse at the University of Queensland.