New Production Technology Field Day

Join us for a field day at Hibernia Nursery where UF/IFAS Extension will demonstrate new production technologies in irrigation, watering stations and pest control.

An irrigation control system has been developed at the University of Florida, IFAS. The irrigation control system called CIRRIG uses onsite weather and leaching fraction information to automatically adjust irrigation run times daily. You will learn how CIRRIG works and see plants grown with overhead sprinkler and micro-irrigation.

A watering station is used to irrigate plants immediately after planting. The watering station complies with new Best Management Practice guidelines for mitigating nutrients in runoff water.

Pest control at Hibernia Nursery is accomplished with the Airtec Sprayer. The efficient delivery of pesticides and precision control of pests have reduced costs.

The event will be on December 7, 2017, at 09:00 and run until 13:30 with a lunch being served.  Tickets are free but you must preregister for a spot.  Registration is limited to 40 people
and closes Nov. 30, 2017. Please register to receive lunch.  Here is the link if you would like to attend.  www.tiny.cc/Hibernia_BMP

Here is the agenda...
9:00 a.m. - Check In
9:15 a.m.  - Introductions and Overview of Technologies
10:00 a.m.  - Visit Field Sites
12:15 p.m.  - Lunch
1:00 p.m.  - Concluding Comments

The location will be at HIBERNIA NURSERY 1176 C. 478A, Webster, Florida 33597

Participants requiring special accommodations contact 352.569.6862 five days prior to event.

UF/IFAS Extension Helping You--Virtual Marketing

I will be filming short video spots for nursery producers (at your location) to group together into a virtual tour of ornamental plant producers in Hillsborough and Polk Counties.  If you would like to be added to the list of "tour stops" please contact me by email or phone (813-744-5519 ex 54147) at the Extension office.  This is a great way to advertise your business with a media form and to an audience that you may not have reached in the past.  YouTube streams 4 billion videos to users per day according to Wikipedia!  Your farm visit video may be one of them.

There's an App for That!

There is a new app for nursery and green professionals called IPMPro.  It is currently available for Ipad, Iphone, and Android.
This is what the site says about what it can do, as I still have an old flip phone and haven't looked at it.

Major pest and cultural practices reference at your finger tips!
Automatic text-like alerts for time-sensitive pest issues and cultural practices -alert date adjusted specifically for your location!
Viewable as a calendar or chronological list of action items for easy reference!
Contains images, pest lifecycle, and management options for major pests of woody plants!
Provides pesticide recommendations for major diseases and insects!
Built-in pesticide recordkeeping to make outdoor, and on-the-go recordkeeping easy!
BONUS Weed content!


Here is a webpage that gives more information if you are interested. www.impproapp.com 
You can also always call you local Extension Agent! :)

Wood Chips Remove Nitrogen From Water

Here is an interesting article I came across from the USDA Agricultural Research Service.  In the Midwest scientists are looking at using woodchips to remove excess nitrogen from water that runs off agricultural fields.  They are finding that woodchips placed in drainage tiles provide a great home for denitrifying bacteria which removed a large portion of unused nitrogen that would find its way into surface waters and eventually into the Mississippi waterway and out into the Gulf of Mexico.   There might be a use for this in those ditches that return water to your farm pond.  Here is the the rest of the article.   

http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/feb12/nitrate0212.htm

Water Saving Technology

Here is a great idea for saving water in the nursery.  The moisture click from Dynamax.  A realy convient, inexpensive method to let the plant dictate when it needs water.  This simple device plugs into your controller at one end and the other end in a planted pot.  You simply set the moisture percentage of the substrate to the level that you dicide is the dry set point where the irrigation controller needs to turn on.  The moisture probe will then sample your pot and when the plant needs water the switch will allow your program to run.  This works great for growing one size or type of plant at a particular age which is a limitation for its use.  Otherwise it seems like a great water saving technology.  Click here to watch a really short video I created to demonstrate it better.   http://tiny.cc/mclick

Important Marketing Trend - QR Codes

Have you seen strange images like this before? They’re called QR (Quick Response) codes. QR Codes like the one on the right or a Microsoft Tag, below it, are appearing In the advertising of many different types of magazines, including Greenhouse Grower and Nursery Retailer, and others. They’re also showing up on plant tags in home Depot, Lowes and many independent retail nurseries. The QR code on the tag below leads to information on miniature roses in Home Depot's 'Mobil Plant Library.'

These images are actually a type of barcode. They’re similar to the more familiar barcodes used in grocery and department stores, only more powerful. They can contain more information, open a website, or send an e-mail or text message. These barcodes can be scanned by most smartphones or even some, mobiles phones with a camera.

Why am I talking about QR codes and smartphones? Because smartphone sales have skyrocketed. At the end of 2010 there were over 63 million smartphones in use in the U.S. – roughly 25% of all mobile phone users owned one (http://bit.ly/hLNbNQ). Just recently (Feb 2011) the Associated Press reported that smartphones are now outselling PCs. It’s forecast that smartphone sales will total 75% of all mobile phone sales by 2015. (http://bit.ly/ePw2pC)

In other words, if you’re not using QR codes or planning to use them in the near future, you’re missing out on a healthy, and growing, portion of your market.

Your imagination is the only limit on how this process is used. You could add a QR code to link to special care instructions on your website, on a flyer to provide directions to an event, or even a coffee mug or T-shirt (see http://www.qrstuff.com/). Anyone with a smartphone and a barcode app will be able to quickly and easily access encoded information.

Using two of the many free online QR code generators (and Microsoft tag generators), I created the two codes above. If you happen to own a smartphone, you could scan either and within several seconds open a Google map to the Manatee Extension office.

These tags are now in wide use in Japan. They’re gaining popularity in the UK, Europe and the US. Don’t miss out on an important marketing trend.

NEW Hillsborough County Sponsored CEU Webpage

Here is what every private applicator spray licence holder has been wishing since they received their spray license. Thanks to industry sponsorship and University of Florida/IFAS and Hillsborough County Extension, finally a webpage where you can go to get Pesticide Core CEU credits anytime you want. Just click on the webpage, go to one of the articles and read it. After you're done reading, click on the button to take a short quiz. The software will grade the quiz for you and let you know your results. If you get better than a 70% passing grade you will be e-mailed one Core CEU Credit from the Extension office. It couldn't be easier unless I hand delivered a CEU credit to you without you doing anything. Since this is illegal and won’t happen, this new CEU webpage is the next easiest thing and legal. I want to thank the generous sponsorship of our first sponsor Audie Ham of Diamond R Fertilizer. If you would like to be a sponsor of this CEU webpage please let me know. This will allow CEU's to be brought to the public at no charge in a very efficient manner. Go ahead and take a look at the website and enjoy your free CEU's.

http://hillsborough.extension.ufl.edu/Ag/AgOrnProd/OnlinePesticideCEUs.html

FAWN Meeting at Extension Office

This is from Rick Lusher who will be conducting a meeting here at the extension office about using information from the Florida Automated Weather Network (FAWN) for scheduling irrigation.

On May 13, 2010, the University of Florida Florida
Automated Weather Network (FAWN) will host an irrigation school at the Hillsborough
Extension Service from 9 am until 1 pm, with lunch included. This seminar is free and is
being funded by by the Alafia River, Coastal Rivers, Hillsborough River, Manasota,
Northwest Hillsborough, Peace River, Pinellas-Anclote River, and Withlacoochee River
Basin Boards, and the Southwest Florida Water Management District.
Topics covered will include urban water use, estimating evapotranspiration (ET) rates
and how ET affects plant water supply, using ET-based irrigation controllers, using the
FAWN Urban Irrigation Scheduler, agricultural irrigation, and citrus irrigation scheduling.
FAWN is a program of the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural
Science (UF/IFAS), and provides weather data and weather-related services to a wide
variety of users in Florida.
The Hillsborough Extension Service is located at 5339 County Road 579 Seffner, FL,
33584.

Check out the FAWN site http://fawn.ifas.ufl.edu/ and look through the various FAWN Tools. These are handy when dealing with freezes and how much irrigation to run.

To register contact Rick Lusher at 352-392-0429, or rlusher@ufl.edu.

News From the Field

I figured it might be nice to relay information to the grower community from my trips out to the field to visit nurseries. Since it is hard to leave the production area and get out and about, I thought it might helpful to bring the nursery to your door.

Here are some interesting things that I found visiting with Cliff Richardson the production manager at Royal Crest Nursery located in Polk City.

One of the things they are utilizing for ease of movement of plant transport are plant racks that minimize the number of contact points of handling plants. They have eliminated a few times they pick up and set down plants. The racks are placed on the trailers, then the plants are loaded directly into the racks. When the racks are driven to the loading dock they are forked with a loader. The loader then drives right into the semi where the plants are unloaded and stacked for shipment. Each rack holds about 54 three gallon plants. They also have modified racks with high sides to accommodate trees.

Another labor savings device they are using is the hair mat for weed control. This is a weed barrier that suppresses the germination of seeds from the soil surface. Cliff said they can send one person to weed 25,000 three gallon pots in less than an hours time and eliminate and weeds before they go to seed. Thereby saving labor costs.

Save Water and Money Producing Plants

We had a great TBWG meeting at Riverview Flower Farm. Part of it is seeing the production methods of R.F.F. and the innovation that takes place there. The other part was our guest speaker Dr. Mike Dukes from UF. He spoke about Smart Water Application Technology(SWAT). Part of that is reducing water from a timed application of water and moving to a needs based application of water. Some of the technological advances to reducing this water is by using rain sensors, soil moisture sensors and evapotranspiration controllers. These devices will bypass an irrigation timer if the plants do not need the water (e.g. after a rain event). Dr. Dukes' had two years of research looking at homeowner lawns and these technologies have saved the homeowners from around 40-70% water savings.

One of our own local growers James Reed at Three Pines Tree Farm is using a soil moisture sensor for his irrigation and says even without the grant he received to put it in place, he will have the device paid for in about 14 months from savings on his pump usage. He will also be saving thousands of gallons of water from our aquifer and many pounds of fertilizer will not be wasted or leached into the ground. This technology is really helping James' operation tighten up costs and reduce waste thereby making him more competitive in the marketplace.

If you would like more information about SWAT Dr. Dukes has some information on his website http://www.irrigation.ifas.ufl.edu/

If you would like more information on saving water or getting a grant for your farm to utilize this technology send me an email or give me a call at the extension office.

Social Media Wave

You may not be up on the latest tech trend, but here is a neat video relating the implications of social media. Wether you fax, email, twitter, blog, facebook, use the internet, or a cell phone, the social media trend is here and you should at least be aware of it and how it may benefit your marketing efforts.



This was from Dr. Charlie Hall's Making Cents Blog.

You Are Reading My Post!

If you are reading this then you probably appreciate blogs and I appreciate the time you are spending on reading what I have to say. Blogs are a great way for the writer to get information to a wide audience on timely topics. It is also a way to communicate to a chosen audience. Businesses can use this approach to conveying information into a marketing method to reach customers. Blog readership has grown exponentially along with the use of the Internet. As of September 2008, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 130 million
blogs. Blog readership is estimated conservatively at 50% of those using the Internet.

If you are minimally creative and have something to say, starting a blog is extremely easy and you can be blogging within minutes of opening an account. This is is a great way to market to potential customers. A good marketing effort can help differentiate your company, or products or services from
others with similar offerings. This effort at differentiation is called branding. The creation of a
good or memorable brand can influence customers to prefer your offerings from other
companies. A good brand is a way to make your business unique or stand out from among
many competitors. A brand creates an identity that allows your customers to relate to or
identify with your product offerings. Brand awareness, developed through marketing, is an
effective tool to help generate new customers through word of mouth. One
useful marketing technique to create and reinforce brand awareness is the creation and use
of a blog.

I have published an article about blogs with Dave Palmer our District wide Tech integrator. Here is the link: http://hillsborough.extension.ufl.edu/Ag/AgOrnProd/A-ZPublications/BusinessBlogs.pdf

Check it out if you would like to know more about marketing via a blog.

If you read blogs, thank a blogger!

What the Heck is a Feed?

This kind of feed is not what you would give to your livestock. It is a way to get blog information up to date and in a timely manner.

With every technological leap there is a learning curve associated with it. Usually it requires new skills and some time to understand it. And at first it doesn't make your life any more efficient...just another hassle to deal with. The real question to ask yourself is, will this add value to my everyday life?
I hope that this Online Magazine does add value to your operation in identifying information you may or may not know about. But checking this site all the time could be a hassle. "How do I know when something useful is going to show up?", you may ask me. Well here is a way for this technological hurdle to be less painful.

Here is a great way to deal with blogs such as this and find updates when a new post is published. This link is a quick video and a great teaching tool about RSS feeds. It explains in under 3.5 minutes how feeds work and how they can make your life easier and more efficient. I found it well worth the time to watch and it was entertaining as well as informative.

http://www.videosift.com/video/What-is-this-RSS-Thing-and-How-Do-I-Use-It

Enjoy!