Gen Y Gardens!

I love this post from the Blogging Nurseryman today on organics and Gen Y.

"Just like the hippies of yesterday, today's young people are actively involved in and not listening to 'the establishment.' Who is the establishment. US!"

We, as an industry, make the rules. And Trey says if we keep listening to the "experts" on how to market and what products to sell, we'll be lost. A good example he mentions is the myth that young people don't garden.

When I talked to Wolfgang Engelmann, the winner of this year's Medal of Excellence for Marketing, he told me how his research shows that young people today are embracing nature in ways that generations before them didn't. So why not market to them? They want your products! Don't give up on Gen Y!

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.