Chili Plants Heat Up Chilly Winter Holidays

The blog is back up after some bad code shut me down.

Good job, Paul Bosland, professor of horticulture and director of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, for getting some attention from AP News. The wire service reported on chili plants' potential as a Christmas plant.

Photographed here and with the Yahoo!News story is Jeff Anderson of Sunland Nursery Co.

Photo credit: AP

What I Learned This Issue Of Greenhouse Grower

- Who our Grower Of The Year is. But I’m not telling you. You’ll have to wait till the issue hits your mailbox or the Web.

- There are young people in the industry! Gen X and Gen Y are not completely uninterested. Congratulations to Nirmal Shah and Kris and Stacy Van De Streek on their ventures, taking over Boven’s Quality Plants.

- European research has shown several Ecke poinsettia varieties to be “energy efficient.”

- A lot happened this year. Take a look back in our 2007 Year In Review.

- Our special insert, Steps Toward Sustainability, took me to school. Scientific Certification Systems, the organization behind VeriFlora certification, is conducting meetings to gage support for the Sustainable Agriculture Practice Draft National Standard for Trial Use.

- Michigan State has tips for non-chemical height control on its Web site (second story on the page)

- Earthstone’s GrowStones look like croutons, but replace strip-mined materials like perlite, vermiculite and pumice.

- Garden Bloomers Takao Nursery isn’t shying away from Gen-Y-type marketing, even in their commercial catalogs. Fun to read!

Florida Plants Of The Year - In Search Of Drought Tolerance

It's kind of a slow time of year for variety news, but a good time to talk about some drought tolerant varieties.

Of the six varieties that were named Florida Plants Of The Year by the FNGLA (see them all here), four of them are noted for their drought tolerance. Photographed here is Aloysia virgata, the almond bush, a South American variety with upright habit and finger-like clusters of almond-scented flowers. The photo is courtesy of the Leu Gardens in Orlando.

Other drought-tolerant winners include Florida natives Mimosa strigillosa, with pink, ball-shaped flowers that attract butterflies, and Sabal minor, a green to blue-green palm with long stalks of fragrant white flowers and small black fruits.

Anna Ball At Texas A&M Distinguished Lecture Series

The Web is awesome. In the last few months, I've sat in on some great Webinars and learned things I never would have otherwise.

Here's an online opportunity for you -- Anna Ball's talk from Texas A&M's Distinguished Lecture Series. You can see and hear her lecture, "Driving Forces Shaping the Future of the Floriculture Industry," here.

UPDATE: Fair warning .... this is going to take you a while to download.

IdleAire Saves Money On Trucking

I had my wisdom teeth out last week, so I had a lot of TV-watching time. I saw part of an episode of History Channel's Modern Marvels on trucking. The episode featured a cool invention called IdleAire that saves money on trucking downtime.

IdleAire is a unit that brings central heat and air, cable TV, Internet connection, electrical outlets, touch screen computer and telephone and USB ports into the cabs of trucks. It's all piped in through the passenger-side window. So when they're at a rest stop taking a break, drivers can turn off their engines, conserving fuel. The service is available at a bunch of rest stops across the U.S. (there's a map on the Web site) and the truck retrofit costs $10.