Arson To Blame In California Wildfires?

This is very upsetting if it's true. APNews reports, "Federal agents joined the search for evidence Wednesday in brush-covered Orange County hills where an arsonist is believed to have ignited one of the wildfires devastating Southern California." Read the whole story here.

Severe Drought In Georgia

Just heard from Chris Butts at Charmar Flowers in Athens, Georiga. The garden center/florist is and has been struggling with water issues, and Chris says there is talk of a complete water ban through next spring.

"After 36 years and 3 generations, our family business had to announce last week that will be closing our doors effective at the end of the year," Chris says.

ConserveWaterGeorgia.net put out these FAQs yesterday, tips and dos and don'ts for water use. Here are a few more tips from Chris on water issues:

1. Get involved NOW at your local level. Generally, each municipality has a great deal of latitude with regards to local rules for water use.
   
2. Engage these departments and begin dialogue or else they will dictate to you.
3. Become familiar with all local and state ordinances regarding water usage.Urge your state associations to establish working committees to work with legislators and reach out to other associations who have a critical stake in water use.
   
4. Develop economic impact data on city/county/ regional and state levels. Let your elected officials know that you are a player economically and establish relationships before drought happens.
5. Demand that all drought planning as well as water conservation planning include green industry representatives. Ask for a seat at the table.
   
6. The time to start….. NOW! Don’t wait for a drought to start.

ANLA's Craig Regelbrugge On NPR

I heard this the other morning and it's online now. Craig Regebrugge was interviewed for a story on H2A and labor shortages for farmers. You can hear the story here. He speaks at around 2:45 into the story.

Pretty field trials photos

Readers seem to like this so far -- we have results from a bunch of university trials, with photos, on our Web site. I still love 'Zowie Yellow Flame.' The name and the flower.

Transportation On My Mind

What's up with transportation? It's my new poll topic (please vote, top right) and I'm writing about it right now for the magazine. Is there anything new under the sun? Seems like as energy prices have gotten worse and worse, there have been lots of adjustments for growing (cooler temps, energy curtains, timing), but just more belt-tightening when it comes to transportation (tighter routes, full loads). And, of course, if you're big enough, software is a must.

There must be something more. Any tips? Comment below.

Puppies and pumps: Bad PR vs. Great PR

The media -- free publicity, good or bad -- can be make or break for businesses. The rise of the Internet makes viral marketing even more vital. If you upset one customer, it's not just that one customer who's upset anymore.

I'll start with the good PR. On the one hand, blogger Zaz LaMarr wrote here about how online shoe retailer Zappos helped her out in a time of need. Great publicity. People are falling all over each other commenting in her blog on how they'll shop at Zappos from now on.

On the bad side of PR, this Mutts and Moms organization is bending over backwards to put itself out of business. If you haven't heard the whole story, click here. In a nutshell, an animal shelter has "repossesed" a dog because it doesn't like its new living arrangement. And the company has made it clear the customer is wrong. Not such great PR. And now everyone knows about it because of the Internet. There is an online petition to send the dog back home.

The Internet has made word of mouth way more powerful than it ever was. Seth Godin, who I think is great, blogged on the topic recently.

Plants are good for the environment. Who knew?

There's no way this is promoted enough. Yahoo! News reports on a University of Washington study that poplar trees pull contaminants out of groundwater. Kudos to Sharon Doty, an assistant professor of forest resources at the University of Washington. Her study on the trees appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and it's made it to the mainstream media.

This article targets "genetically modified plants" as toxin busters. What about all the great advantages of any old plant? Who's talking about that?

Something Green To Ponder

Our sister magazine, Today's Garden Center, asked its e-newsletter readers the following question:

How important is it to you that your live goods suppliers use a sustainable production method?

Almost 60 percent said sustainable production is very important to them. A quarter of respondents said it was somewhat important. I thought these numbers might be a little lower, not sure why. I guess I saw the sustainability/eco trend being driven by box stores.

Blog Action Day

It first came onto my radar today at Beyond Sustainable Gardening. Today is Blog Action Day, the day when "bloggers around the web will unite to put a single important issue on everyone's mind." Namely, environmental issues.

Almost 16,000 bloggers agreed to blog something today about environmental awareness. Some of the participants blog every day to change the world and talk about the environment a lot. Some of them are regular old bloggers who agreed to blog on the environment today. Trend or not, the environmental movement is happening today. Retailers waiting to see what you're going to do about it.

What I Learned In This Issue Of Greenhouse Grower

We're wrapping up production of the November issue, and here's what I got out of it.

- Jennifer Polanz was right. The former managing editor of Today’s Garden Center would chastise garden centers for stocking geraniums on garden center shelves in Ohio in mid-April. But some grower somewhere was selling them that early. John Casertano of Casertano Greenhouses, our cover story subject, is fighting the A to Z retail mentality.

- William R. Carlson knows what he’s talking about when it comes to Web site design. His article highlights Stanford University’s 10 important guidelines for building excellent sites. My favorite: #5 Make it easy to contact you. “Have a ‘contact us’ section with clickable addresses.

- ANLA’s Management Clinic has a sock hop-type theme this year. Fun!

-Poinsettias and jalapenos make terrible roommates, according to Stuppy’s ad on page 45. Clever.

-Different rates are required if you’re topdressing controlled-release fertilizers versus incorporating.

That's all I'm telling ya. You'll have to pick up the November issue of Greenhouse Grower for the details.

Calling All Western Flower Thrips

Just got a press release from Biobest on its ThriPher pheromones. They "contain a sexual aggregation pheromone to attract Western Flower Thrips." It lures male and female thrips from their shelters and leaves beneficial insects alone.

And the pheromone cones pop right into your sticky card traps. The company says it attracts two to three times as many thrips to the traps, allowing earlier detection of a problem.

Who Makes Up Your Labor Force?

This is really interesting. The Ohio State University Department of Horticulture and Crop Science conducted a study of 1,548 nursery employees to characterize the labor force. You can find the whole story here, but there are a few bullet points that caught my eye:

• 70 percent of the industry's labor force is Spanish-speaking or hispanic origin and over half are from Mexico.
  
• 22 percent of workers understand English
• Workers with high English proficiency held advanced jobs
• More than 75 percent are earning between $6 and $10 per hour, while the average hourly earning of non-supervisory workers during 2007 is $17.16

The states surveyed included Ohio, Michigan, Delaware, Tennessee, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Arizona and Rhode Island. Getting this data really required a lot of trust, so thumbs up to OSU Extension specialist Hannah Mathers, who led the study. This is important information and I'm not sure anyone else has been able to gather it until this study.

Blogger Of The Week: The Blogging Nurseryman

Good Monday morning! What better way to start it off than with the Blogging Nurseryman, this week's Blogger of the Week. Trey Pitsenberger, the Blogging Nurseryman himself, keeps us up to date on his Golden Gecko Garden Center in Garden Valley, Calif., as well as the issues on his mind through his blog. Plant guarantees and citizen journalism are just a few of the topics on his mind recently.

Fall is a good time for retailers to take a look back at what's worked and what hasn't -- and it's a great time for growers to hear that stuff, too. And just look at his profile picture and you can see how much fun Trey is having!

Home Depot For Women

Home Depot is cooking up a new retail concept in Concord, Calif., and Charlotte, N.C. Almost everything sounds different about these stores compared to traditional HD stores -- orange is replaced here with a warmer color pallete, no power tools and its garden center will carry more "sophisticated products," like orchids and pottery. Read all the details here. The story has no photos, though. Anyone in Concord or Charlotte heard and/or seen more about this?

You Know What They Say About Prevention...

The phytosanitary alert for Chrysanthemum White Rust in Connecticut marks a good time to review disease control. Yoder Brothers has a nice page -- Disease Control 101 -- that includes a mum disease control chart. Scroll to the bottom of the page.

The photo is of Gentle Alberta, a January introduction from Yoder.

Blogger Of The Week: Albert's Greenhouse

Albert's Greenhouse is a blog by a serious greenhouse grower. Albert Huntington has a 96 square foot greenhouse he calls a hobby greenhouse, but he explains his setup's glazings, heating and ventilation, air circulation, nutrition and pest control here. In his blog, Albert shares thoughts on interesting, tropical varieties.

There's also some great insight on marketing and retailing from a gardener's perspective. (But somebody had the idea to produce the tree and market it, all with the knowledge that it's totally unsuited for any climate we can provide it.) We'll be reading, Albert.