Rapid Tagger: Tagging Rapidly
By admin | November 26, 2007
This automated tagging machine is one of our better pieces of equipment to help us with our efficiencies. We can transplant all of our bedding flats with only 3 people and the Rapid Tagger machine is one of the reasons.
Google Video:
Topics: Video | No Comments »
Happy Thanksgiving
By admin | November 21, 2007
I hope everyone has a Happy Thanksgiving and enjoys a great feast before Poinsettia shipping really gets going. The Friday after Turkey Day is for, many people, a day of shopping, relaxing and leftover turkey. For the last decade or so, it’s always been the first big day of Poinsettia shipping for me. Oh well, the good football games aren’t until the weekend so I won’t miss much.
Topics: Day to day | No Comments »
Ranunculus
By admin | November 20, 2007
We are planting up some Ranunculus right now to add another crop to our Pansy and other early bedding crops. I haven’t grown them in several years so it will be like growing them for the first time.
Any advice or cultural info for our readers would be much appreciated.
Topics: Ranunculus, Crops | No Comments »
Ratus Fischer: Water Management Consultant
By admin | November 18, 2007
Last week we had the opportunity to spend the better part of a day with Dr. Ratus Fischer, one of our industry’s leading Water Management Consultants. His company, Fischer EcoWorks, is based in Asheville, NC (one of my favorite cities) and is an “independent partner for water management for greenhouses and nurseries”. I have attended at least one presentation by Dr. Fischer at the OFA Short Course and I came away impressed with his knowledge and experience in his area of expertise. I have also had the good fortune to grow flowers on some of the first flood floors he designed. Being familiar with his work and comfortable with his stance on greenhouse water management and sanitation, we contacted him about consulting for us. We asked him visit our facility to provide us with a progressive plan for our water management challenges. Our meeting was extremely productive and I feel strongly that he will help us devise a plan to solve our water management and sanitation issues for the present and the future. One of the best parts of working with Dr. Fischer is that he is not trying to sell you anything or push certain products. He is simply trying to help us come up with the most cost-effective and practical solutions for our particular facility and the crops we grow. It’s refreshing, especially after a summer of sales reps making trips to our greenhouse trying to push their products. His visit was well worth our money and time and on top of that Dr. Fischer is one of the nicest people I’ve met in our industry.
Topics: Day to day | No Comments »
Poinsettia Update: 11/16/07
By admin | November 18, 2007
These are a few pictures from our poinsettia crop. They are pretty much finished and now we are anxious to see them go.
Topics: Bract Color Progression, Poinsettias, Crops | No Comments »
Urbinati Transplanter
By admin | November 18, 2007
This is my first attempt at bringing video to the Ask a Grower Blog so I hope it works. The quality isn’t great but you can see our Urbinati transplanter in action. We try to use our machine as much as possible and all our bedding flats are planted with this machine.
Google Video:
Topics: Day to day | No Comments »
Nonstop Begonia Plugs
By admin | November 14, 2007
We are producing a fair number of Nonstop Begonia liners this year and we are starting them in both 512’s and 288’s. We will bump them up into a 40cm Ellepot to sell as a bigger liner. They will be grown under HID lights during the entire crop cycle and should take off quickly after tp.
Topics: Day to day | 4 Comments »
Vegetative Annual Propagation: Osteospermum, New Guinea Impatiens and Ipomoea
By admin | November 12, 2007
Our osteo cuttings are looking good after 6 day in the prop house. No disease problems to 
speak of and they are starting to callus. We should see some roots starting in a 4-5 days. We are growing Dummen’s Summertime Osteospermum this spring and I have found that they are excellent in propagation and as finished plants.
New Guinea’s are some of the fastest rooting vegetative annuals that we propagate. These 
pictures are from cuttings we stuck 6 days ago and I expect to root in a couple of days. Overall NGI’s are pretty easy in prop however it is difficult to keep them compact with out growth regulators and I try not to apply PGR to NGI in prop. If anyone has a good recommendation for PGR on NGI, I would love to hear it.
Speaking of fast rooting. We have a few trays of Ipomoea in our prop house and they 
started rooting in 2-3 days. I have never seen them root this fast and I must rethink our crop time in the liners now. Of course I used rooting hormone on them to try to speed things up. Obviously it worked and we will continue to use it for Sweet Potato Vine.
Topics: Osteospermum, Crops, Day to day | No Comments »
Pansy Plugs
By admin | November 11, 2007
This week we will transplant our first batch of pansy plugs for our spring crop. We grew 288 plugs this year with a 6 week crop time in the plug. But I grew them cool and they will be 7 weeks old when we transplant. We have a topic started at the Ask a Grower Forum that is dedicated to pansy plug production for growers to ask questions and share info on growing pansy plugs. We struggled a little with germination on a couple of varieties but we will be fine.
We drenched the plugs with Medallion/Subdue as a preventative and we added Safari to control some pesky fungus gnat and shore fly larvae that were around.
For growth regulator, I used a 2ppm Arest spray before the cotyledons emerged to control early stretch. After we unfolded 1-2 true leaves, I used B9 sprays as our growth control. I have found that B9/Arest and B9/Cycocel tank mixes work very well for pansy plugs but since I grew these plugs cooler I didn’t need the extra control.
Topics: Pansy, Forum, Day to day | 4 Comments »
Ask a Grower Forum
By admin | November 8, 2007
I wanted to remind any new visitors to the Ask a Grower blog, that we have a Forum as well to discuss growing and greenhouse production issues. The Ask a Grower Discussion Board is off to a slow start but we’ve started to generate a bit of discussion and “Grower Guy” from Cincinnati is a regular poster with a great understanding of our profession. You should all go over to the forum and add to the discussions.
Topics: Day to day | No Comments »
