Hillsborough/Polk County Nurseries Virtual Tour

Visit some of our local (Hillsborough and Polk County) plant producers anytime from wherever you can view the web. Here is just a sampling of some of the folks who add value to and beautify our community with the products that they grow.  You can view the interactive map and click on the links to the tour stop locations that we have.  http://tiny.cc/nursvirtour

We begin at the Extension office (tour stop A) for an overview of the tour.  Our next stops will be at Sunshine Growers, Tampa Wholesale Nursery, 3 Pines Tree Farm, Wood's Tree Farm, and Council Farms who were gracious enough to be hosts on this virtual nursery tour.  Click on the map link and the videos and enjoy your tour!



 

New CEU Core Article Now Available

The second article is now available on the Industry Sponsored Hillsborough County Extension Pesticide CEU Webpage. This is the second article of a series of free web CEU credits available to those who will need core CEUs to maintain their spray licenses.  The article is entitled "When Pesticides Fail to Work Properly. "  Just follow the link below, read the article, take and pass the short quiz, and get your CEU.  Couldn't be much simpler.  Thanks to Diamond R Fertilizer and Winfield Solutions for their sponsorship. Here is the link to the web page.  www.tiny.cc/ceus    

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

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.

Greenhouse and Nurserey Financial Program for Hard Economic Times

We all know that these economic times are the worst that many in the industry today have ever seen. And you can throw out all the old models as to what has worked in the past. The rules of the game have changed and we need to adapt in order to survive.

I have helped put together a free half day program with Lelan Parker (an extension agent in Orange County) to help bring you Financial Program for Hard Economic Times that will be on Oct. 14, 2009 at 8:00

As speakers we will have Mark Moritz from FDACS speaking about getting your money back from non-payers with the Ag Bond. Dave Palmer and myself will be speaking about using the internet for marketing. Dr. Alan Hodges will be speaking about cost anaylsis for nursery production, and Dr. Allen Wysocki will discuss marketing for your production. Both Drs. Hodges and Wysocki would be great to pick brains with in terms of economics in general or plant production or marketing specifically. Dave Palmer is also a web guru who is extremely knowledgeable about websites and optimization of your site for search engines.

It may be a good opportunity to just get some inspiration or new ideas to try to help your marketing efforts.

Here are the links for more information and the flyer: http://hillsborough.extension.ufl.edu/Ag/AgOrnProd/CalendarPubs/EconomicTimes_GreenhNursy_OCT2009.pdf


And here is the link for online registration: http://091014growers.eventbrite.com/

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!

Tree Producer Information - Part II

I mentioned previously that I had spent some time in Gainesville with Dr. Ed Gilman and discussed his latest research. He also mentioned that he was finishing up a guide to producing trees. This guide is a great manual for the novice or the professional in how to grow quality container trees for the marketplace. There are topics about good root structures and root defects. There are also chapters about pruning to get the best trunk and branch structures and grow a quality tree faster. There is no information about fertility, water or pest control. This is simply a growing guide for meeting grades and standards and both root and shoot structure. There is also a section of reference for further reading.

I've added the web link to my extension page under publications. Here is the link:

http://hillsborough.extension.ufl.edu/Ag/AgOrnProd/A-ZPublications/BMP_11[1]_emailable.pdf

Tree Producer Information-Part I

There seems to be a lot of information lately coming out to help tree growers. I will publish a two part series of articles related to the latest releases.

Safety and Tree Farms

Thankfully, I have never seen a serious accident in the ten years I spent working in or around tree farms. I have seen some actions that could have turned out badly but usually these were corrected in time before matters got complicated. The worst was the puller who thought that he had pesticide injury. He was shaking, sweating, his heart was racing, and he felt a bit dizzy. After questioning we found that he had drank three Red Bulls for breakfast and was experiencing caffeine overdose. Fortunately, we knew that we were following the rules and we had a hard time believing that he had been exposed to pesticides. It helps to have policy and procedures in place to suppress accidents before they happen and eliminate potential problems with lawsuits if something were to happen.

There are two new publications from UF/IFAS Dr. Carol J. Lehtola, Charles M. Brown, and Hilary Hartzell from the Agricultural and Biological Engineering Department that helps tree growers implement a safety plan for their operation. The two publications are "Manager's Toolkit for Creating a Safety Program for your Tree Nursery Operation” and “Safety Policies and Procedures for a Tree Nursery Operation” which is a PowerPoint presentation. These both can be found at the following website:

http://www.flagsafe.ufl.edu/csp/tree-nursery/index.html

The later is a nice presentation for using with new employees and safety meausures with different equipment.

Extension - Rooted In Science

I spent the day in Gainesville, FL at the Environmental Horticulture Tree Unit with Dr. Ed Gilman. We spent most of the day discussing the latest and greatest research from his program with trees and their maintenance. He is looking at different methods of pruning trees and the effects of wind on those trees. He is also spending a great deal of time characterising roots and different production techniques to arrive a what should be considered a "good" root structure.

Bad roots!

Along with the many contributions he has made in this area, he will have some interesting findings in the next few years as his research advances. Experiments with trees and roots takes a while to conduct. Obviously roots like any other organism flourish where they are the happiest. Unfortunately in containers, that is in a circle around the sides and bottoms of pots; mostly on the shaded side. Some of the take home messages are that if you prune about an inch to two inches from around the sides and bottom of a produced container tree, this will eliminate most of the undesirable roots from the container. If this is done at every stage for stepping up trees and if they are planted at the right depth, root pruning should provide for a superior root structure. I learned that it is the absence of turf competition that has a greater affect on how a planted tree does, than the addition of mulch. I learned that trees settle from the breakdown of potting media and the weight of the tree itself on a planted site. I also learned that if a tree is planted too deep, the roots will first start growing up to get near the surface of the soil to where conditions are optimal.

Dr. Gilman will be conducting the Great Southern Tree Conference in Dec. 3 and 4 in Gainesville, so save the dates now. I think it will have a great deal of good information for those in the production side of things.

At left: Dr. Gilman, out-standing in his field.

His website for the findings of his research is http://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/faculty/gilman.shtml with selected literature and some other link to hurricanes and trees, powerlines and trees and landscape plants.

Here is a link to more than you could ever want to know or read about trees and their maintenance. http://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/woody/masterindex.shtml#R

The IFAS Pesticide Information Office

IFAS has a great resource for growers who might need information pertaining to pesticide use and safety. The UF/IFAS Pesticide Information Office's website is a great resource to bookmark for use some day in the future. There are links on their site to topics such as pesticide laws, fact sheets, and their newsletter "Chemically Speaking." They also have links to sites where you can download MSDS sheets and chemical labels that you need for the Worker Protection Standards. If you are wondering what else you need to pass an inspection with the Worker Protection Stardard, they have the answers in a one-stop-shop. You can scroll through topic by topic to see if you meet all the requirements necessary. Also if you need CEU's in a hurry for you licence, you can download them from the UF/IFAS site and get online credit with their modules. By far, the most useful information they have are the links to the EDIS (Electronic Data Information Service) fact sheets and publications. There is a wealth of information on here and it would be well worth your time just to spend a few minutes checking it out to see what they have available. Here is the link: http://pested.ifas.ufl.edu/.