Jim Stepp is the head grower at Van Wingerden International (VWI) in Mills River, North Carolina. VWI is a medium-sized wholesale greenhouse operation that mostly sells its output to big-box stores. According to Stepp, they’ve been in the horticulture business since the ‘70s, specializing in “lots of annuals and potted floral crops, as well as garden mums and poinsettias.”

Stepp appreciates the flexibility he’s found with OHP-brand fungicides.

“We mainly use Segway O and Astun,” he explains. “Astun has really good control on botrytis, and it’s broad spectrum, so we can pretty much spray it on anything, and it’s really good in the spring.”

VWI’s use of Segway is more specialized, according to Stepp.

“We’ll use Segway in the spring on things like vinca vines, and since it has really good activity on pythium, we’ll use it on some things like our poinsettia program in the fall,” he adds.

Both products, as well as the other OHP solutions that VWI uses in its greenhouses, help the company ship healthy, beautiful-looking plants to their retail partners.

“The main way those products help us increase our profits every year is to have clean crops that are shippable and that hold up [well] going to the stores, and that results in good sell-throughs at retail,” Stepp says. “We lose less plants, and the ones that make it look better at shipping.”

Stepp notes that both products are fairly easy to mix and handle, and low re-entry intervals mean his workers can return to the greenhouse sooner after applications and get back to working the plants.

Production at VWI would certainly be tougher without the two OHP solutions.

“Anytime we have less chemicals that we can put into the rotation in production, yes, I would agree that it would definitely be tougher for us to hit our production marks,” Stepp says.

Peace of mind is another ancillary benefit that Stepp and the VWI management team attribute to their relationship with OHP.

“We are confident with these products, that if we put them into the rotation, that they actually work and we won’t have resistance issues, and they will do what the people at OHP say they will do,” he says.

OHP has impressed Stepp’s team with their level of engagement with the operation, as well as the customer service they continue to provide even after the product is delivered and paid for. It’s not just dropping off some pallets at the farm gate.

“Anytime I have a question or something comes up, I know I can call them,” Stepp explains. “As a matter of fact, I was on the phone with them yesterday. I’d say they are really good at getting right back to me really quick with technical information and they’re always quick to tell me what works and what doesn’t. It’s pretty nice to have that confidence [in the products], and also that technical support in the background for when you need it.”

Photos courtesy of Central Life Sciences

Central Life Sciences is known for insect control that is environmentally cautious yet effective. Two such products with years of proven results are Enstar® AQ and Mavrik Aquaflow®. Dannis Warf, regional sales manager with Central Life Sciences, highlights some of the reasons why these products are most effective for greenhouses.

Mavrik Aquaflow is an insecticide that kills insects at their adult and larval stages. Whiteflies, aphids, thrips, root weevils, beetles, caterpillars, glassy-winged sharpshooters and mites are a few of the insects Mavrik Aquaflow can control. “And the nice thing about this particular product, [it] gives you the immediate knockdown, but also gives you a long-term residual control. It does not harm the plants. It’s mixed with water, so there’s no phytotoxicity when you apply it. It has a very flexible application rate, so it can be used for aggressive, immediate control for tough infestations. And it can also be used as a maintenance program to help [keep] rebounding insects [from] coming back. It helps with insect resistance when used in a rotation with other insecticides,” explains Warf.

Enstar AQ is a great candidate to use with Mavrik Aquaflow, as it works differently as an insect growth regulator. “It keeps the insects from developing from the egg stage to a full adult stage, interrupting its life cycle when it pupates. When you have no new adults means no new insects. The nice thing about that is, it prevents insect resistance, as well as it is a very safe product to use around plants, because it’s not phytotoxic. It has a nice re-entry time of only four hours,” Warf continues. Additionally, you can use Enstar AQ through irrigation systems or drenching systems, a drip or micro jet, or overhead irrigation.

“Everybody knows why insects are bad in a greenhouse or nursery because they cause damage to the plant and will affect their growth. If you’re using products like Mavrik and Enstar in your regular treatment program as a preventative or even corrective program, you will mitigate those losses exponentially. You’ll have better-looking plants, and therefore better profits. The other nice benefits of both products are that they are not restricted-use products, which means you do not have to have [a] special certification or license to apply them,” says Warf of these products’ benefits. Since these products do not require certification from the state, you can also save time, money and labor. These U.S.-manufactured products also come in easy-to-use and easy-to-measure quart and gallon sizes.

Furthermore, these products can be used in a variety of contexts. Enstar AQ is primarily an indoor product, but Mavrik Aquaflow can be used in residential settings, non-commercial and commercial buildings, industrial offices, institutional buildings and even private homes. Enstar AQ works for interior landscapes, lath houses, shade houses and atriums. The very low lethal dose of Enstar AQ makes it “one of those products that should be part of every rotational product to control insects, because there’s no resistance. Enstar AQ can be mixed with any other product that’s out there, whether it’s our product or anybody else’s. It gives you the peace of mind knowing that you’re not developing new broods of insects that are going to be harder to control,” says Warf. Enstar AQ is also great to use when shipping plants, as it kills unsightly fungus gnats. “People don’t like insects flying around their plants when they’re unpacking them. It creates a negative consumer image and therefore hurts your profits,” Warf adds.

Central Life Sciences is also there for support as you use their products, whether it’s over the phone or by coming out into the field. “The last thing we want to do is for somebody to use the product incorrectly, whether it be not enough of it or too much of it. If you don’t use enough, you’re not going to gain control. If you use too much, it could cause some damage, or it could cost you a lot of money, and we don’t want that to happen either,” says Warf.

With five growing locations comprising 3.6 million square feet of greenhouse space dispersed throughout the Mountain West region, Olson’s Greenhouse knows all too well that profit is often a product of efficiency and finding economies of scale.

Automation plays a significant role in that aspect of horticulture. Labor is expensive, so any processes that can be automated can direct dollars right back to the operation’s bottom line. And when you’re as big as Olson’s is, it can mean big savings.

“Adding automation to our facility has allowed us to remain a leader in the industry and be able to keep up with added demand from our customers,” says Nate Barker, director of purchasing at Olson’s.

Barker and his team are leveraging 16, 32 and 36 gripper TTA PackPlanter transplanter machines to increase throughput volumes in its potting up efforts. The machines can handle transplanting anywhere between 10,000 and 50,000 plugs per hour.

“By using PackPlanters, we are able to complete the volume of product needed to meet our customers’ needs that we would not be able to find enough manual labor to complete,” Barker says.

A now two-decade customer of TTA, Olson’s has found that the technology – and its ease of use – has improved dramatically over the decades.

“As transplanter technology has advanced, TTA has made it much easier for our employees to operate and program the machine,” Barker explains. “And when there is maintenance necessary, the grippers are easy to change, minimizing downtime.”

Of course, the aforementioned improvements of operator ease-of-use have been crucial in keeping plants moving through the production cycles in Olson’s greenhouses. And the manufacturer has made it easier to make adjustments on the fly, with little to no downtime while the machine updates.

“The user interface is easy to navigate and allows you to make changes quickly to dial in the performance of the transplanter and increase efficiency,” Barker says.

Being a multi-state operation, Olson’s also appreciates the level of customer responsiveness it gets from TTA. Management can’t be in all five states where Olson’s operates greenhouses at once, so being able to remotely troubleshoot and manage through issues with the machines is incredibly important.

“We have been using TTA transplanters for over 20 years now and we know that they have provided us with the best transplanters on the market backed up by excellent customer service,” Barker says.

Sandra Richter, founder and owner of Sandy’s Back Porch Gardens in Belleville, Illinois, says her business is “here for the consumer,” as opposed to serving landscapers. Over the past years, that has meant expanding production space to add more annuals, hanging baskets and tropicals to their line. 

The annuals category specifically, Richter says, has been a massive growth market for the business over the last few years and throughout the pandemic. In 2019, she says she started working with Proven Winners after seeing a video featuring one of their displays. After an initial conversation, the business moved to becoming a Proven Winners Destination Garden Center.

“We’re plant people at a garden center,” Richter explains. “And sometimes merchandising is difficult for plant people … because they might be good at taking care of the plant, but aren’t always good at visual merchandising.”

As a Proven Winners Destination garden center, Sandy’s Back Porch Gardens receives displays, as well as merchandising and plant selection guidance . Over the winter, Richter said she worked directly with Jessica DeGraaf from Proven Winners to nail down what they would feature on the displays. DeGraaf shared what worked with other garden centers so that Sandy’s Back Porch could apply those strategies to their own store. The program also included digital advertising that helped bring in customers when COVID hit.

“This really helped us nail down what we’d be displaying as far as merchandising,” Richter says. “You knew what product you needed to have in. You knew what every season you’d be switching over. It gave you a year-long look at how we are going to change the garden center and rotate product instead of just doing it on a whim.”

She adds that Proven Winners’ top-10 list of annuals also helped her business decide what to grow and how much to grow. The breeder’s Supertunia, for example, came recommended and Sandy’s has been showcasing them at the front of their greenhouse since partnering with Proven Winners. Supertunia varieties are vigorous growers that are heat tolerant and do not require deadheading. Richter says the Supertunia simply outperform any normal petunia they sell at Sandy’s Back Porch.

“We never had the tools to be able to plan like this,” Richter says. “And Proven Winners gave us the tools to be able to do that, and grow.”