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.

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.

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?

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?