Over the last 20 years, the plant tag has gone from a way for the grower to label the product in a way for the consumer to gather information on the product of purchasing. It’s about consumer information, why the consumer should buy that product, care and pricing at the point of purchase.

Rick Vulgamott, national director of sales for the horticulture division of WestRock, says tags and labels excel in their role as a silent salesperson. “One way to help make sure the customer feels a little more comfortable about buying the product is to support their buying decision with features and ‘why buys’ right there at eye level on the plant,” he says.

Bob Lovejoy, president of Hip Labels, shares a story from a recent meeting with the manager of a South Carolina garden center that purchases tags from his company.

“She said, ‘Bob, when we’re busy; 90% of the customers in here don’t get to see somebody face to face. And the plants with tags sell much better, much easier. If there’s no tag on it, people just walk away from it. They don’t know what to do with it.’ So at least in that one situation, the retailer realizes how much value a tag adds to the sales process.”

Lovejoy says that branded tags are playing a huge role in the tags and labels industry — much more than they were 10 years ago. And the reason that’s changed is the consumers themselves are more receptive to branding. Millennials that “finally got up the guts to go to a garden center” are not as price-driven as earlier generations.

“They’re not going to buy a plant for a dollar or two,” he says. “They’re going to buy the plant that looks the best. It has the best instructions and that bodes very well for the branded products.”

In addition to its standard hang tags and stake tags, Hip Labels makes custom pot wraps that are popular with branded plants.

The essential info

What should be on a tag? There are a few things that can help that plant sell itself. Instead of simple care requirements, you want to give the consumer reasons to buy that plant. If it attracts butterflies, or it’s drought-tolerant or deer-resistant, put that on the tag.

Vulgamott says at WestRock, they’ve moved away from information about what not to do. Opt for information that entices the consumer to make a purchase, not warnings that will make them think caring for this plant will be too challenging, which end up driving them to spend their money on something else.

Icons are easily-recognizable images used to present care information: for example, full sun, or shade. They can also be used to detail how much water a plant needs or what its size and shape will be at maturity. WestRock uses icons on almost every tag or label they produce, Vulgamott says.

“It’s our version of a plant emoji,” he says. “People recognize emojis; they therefore recognize icons. Space is limited on a tag or label. So we really have to concisely put the appropriate information on there that the consumer feels comfortable with and will see quickly.”

Tags and labels are just one part of WestRock’s business. The company manufactures POP, along with corrugated packaging, which includes shippers, displays and adhesives all in-house. The point-of-purchase material provides helpful info that sells more plants.

The new gardeners who purchased plants online during the COVID-19 pandemic will need help keeping their purchase alive, and that’s where the tag comes in.

“Our customers are shipping plants to people who can’t spell plant,” he says. “They have no idea what they’re buying. They want to have to have it in their apartment or condo, just because it’s cool.”

Lovejoy says these online purchases should be accompanied by not only an informational tag, but growers and retailers should use it as an opportunity to talk about the company plant was purchased from and why you should buy your next plant from them, too.

Innovations in automation

The printing and application of tags and labels is all on the grower’s shoulders. Typically, a retailer will direct the grower to use a label or tags in conjunction with labels. It used to be common to use a tag to convey information to the consumer and a blank white adhesive label with black print to communicate the UPC and price point. They were separate items applied separately.

As labor became a bigger issue, growers needed to find a way to minimize the number of touches to the plant. At the same time, retailers wanted all the information on one component.

“Everybody’s having labor problems and labor costs are just getting out of hand,” says Tony Cook, CEO of Label Gator, a company that manufacturers print and apply label applicators specialized for the horticulture industry.

Cook says he’s seen facilities with 50 people applying labels by hand. When it comes to tagging, it’s not abnormal to see eight or nine people per production line handling tagging to keep up with run rates of the other equipment.

The biggest complaint he hears from growers is a lack of labor to tag plants during the production process. And handling the inventory in the tag room is quite a job itself.

“Those (tags) don’t just get to the line themselves,” Cook says. “So they create a make-work program where people are running around trying to get the right tags to the right line.”

There’s also the minimum order question. Many growers have pallets and pallets of boxes of different tags that they can’t use.

“Every grower has at least a 30% obsolescence rate in tags because they have to buy a minimum of a thousand of everything,” Cook says. “They throw away so many tags at the end of the year.”

Lovejoy agrees and says the trends he’s seeing are that growers want to make more frequent orders with smaller amounts. It has forced his company to examine its production methods.

“Shorter runs, quicker turnaround is the way the world is going,” he says. “Not just with tags and labels, but in general, but it’s certainly spilling over into our world.”

Big-box retailers are trimming SKUs, but Lovejoy believes garden centers are adding more in a bid to differentiate themselves. He also says people are getting smart when it comes to inventory. Printer trade practices have allowed for shipping plus or minus 10% on an order. That means if a grower ordered 1,000 tags for a particular plant, the printer could (and usually would) send 1,100. When you multiply that by 400 SKUs, you begin to see how this becomes a logistical problem.

“Over time, inventory gets to be a real issue for growers,” “I have seen tag rooms with hundreds of thousands of dollars of excess inventory that wasn’t ordered, and growers just keep it because they paid for it,” he says. “But when you go towards smaller orders and more frequent orders, you can get away from that type of ordering and just order what you need.”

Labels are growing in popularity due in part to these labor issues and several companies manufacture machines that can automate the application process. Some growers opt for machines that can print and apply labels in-line to containers. Some prefer to print separately, in a room away from the containers and growing media lines.

WestRock manufactures a line of applicators called RockLine. Label options include partially-printed, fully-printed or print-on-demand labels.

“We know the challenges they have with just-in-time inventory and last-minute requests,” Vulgamott says. “And so we just try to give them the flexibility to execute properly. We can put together the best system in the world, but if we don’t make it easy for the grower to execute, it’s worthless.”

Tony Cook, CEO of Label Gator, has noticed a shift from growers using apply-only machines to those that print and apply. The flexibility of on-demand variable-printing is a great help to growers that sell many different varieties.

“The tag is more than double the price of the label and it can’t be automated,” he says. “So it’s very labor intensive and it’s static information printed on the tag. You have to have an inventory of every single SKU that you sell. But with the label, you may be able to use one label for hundreds of different SKU numbers and variable-print the data on demand as you’re applying the label automatically.”

Cook says another reason businesses are moving away from tags and toward labels is in part because of the recent advances in label printing techniques. From a hot stamp to a cold foil metallic to embossing and tactile coatings that have raised bumps you can feel.

Tags hold a lot of information but can be expensive and require a lot of labor. To fit more info on a label, Label Gator developed expanded content labels that have a hinge on one side and peel open.

And for growers whose retailers still want a tag but with the other advantages of a label, Label Gator created the Lagit, a label with a built-in, peel-off tag. The Lagit can be printed on a Label Gator machine or ordered from the company.

Not every grower will want to invest in a machine to automate this process, and there are other options. Lovejoy says one of the biggest growth areas of his business is digital printing and production. Also, for the last 18 months, Hip Labels has been testing alternative materials for tags and labels, paper-based and non-petroleum-based plastics options. Lovejoy expects this work to play a key role in the company’s future, and believes younger more environmentally-conscious consumers will respond well to the new materials.

The author is managing editor of sister publication Garden Center magazine.

At MSU, Lukasko is evaluating fungicides that can combat gray mold. She says growers must be aware that gray mold can affect that wide variety of crops because assuming it won’t spread from plant to plant is a disaster waiting to happen. Typically, she says that Botrytis only affects plant material that is above ground, such as leaves, petals and sometimes stems. Usually, large brown or tan leaf spots are the most obvious sign of gray mold.

“Botrytis is ubiquitous. Botrytis is everywhere,” Lukasko says. “It’s just a matter of if you have the correct environment that can cause disease. It’s airborne. It can come in on infected plants, possibly from outside the greenhouse. It stays there for a long time because it infects a wide variety of ornamental crops.” This can even be true when growers go from petunias then geraniums and so on if the petunias were infected and not handled properly.

“The cycle can just continue over and over,” she says.

An ongoing fight

Lukasko says that it’s not any one factor that makes Botrytis hard to contain for growers. The combination of every risk factor, she says, makes it something that requires a real plan and focus. It’s a constant effort to scout for it and maintain the proper environmental conditions to prevent it, along with spraying fungicides, she says.

“For a lot of crops, Botrytis can infect at multiple stages. That could be during propagation, during the middle of a crop’s growing cycle and especially at the end. Botrytis favors weak tissue, so that can be, for example, flower petals.”

There are fungicide options for gray mold, Lukasko says. In her research, the only spot-specific fungicide they’ve found that has been 99% resistant is thiophanate-methyl.

“In my current research, that’s the only product I’ve seen have that has a high level of resistance,” she says. “That’s something I would then never recommend to growers for treatment of Botrytis.” Lukasko also notes that once a plant is dead because of gray mold, it needs to be properly disposed of as quickly as possible to prevent any more spread.

Major risk factors

The biggest factors for gray mold, Lukasko says, are a combination of high relative humidity and free moisture. She says that those are “100% necessary” for infection to take place.

Some growers, she says, apply calcium to crops to strengthen the plants. That practice, though, isn’t widely used and has only been studied at Clemson University. More research is needed to verify how effective that is. Lukasko, in fact, is doing research on calcium to better understand its efficacy in preventing gray mold.

“Botrytis favors slightly cooler temperatures and it likes to hide under the overstory of the plants,” she says. “You’re going to see more Botrytis when you have shadier, cooler conditions.” This is true regardless of where a greenhouse is located, Lukasko says.

When plants start growing, Lukasko says it becomes especially important to monitor high relative humidity.

“That can mean using fans to circulate air in the greenhouse,” she says. “That means it’s important to space out plants and avoid dead plant material scattered around the greenhouse. Clean up well and avoid any free-standing water around the greenhouse — anything that’s going to increase humidity needs to be addressed.”

Cleaning is important because dead plant material is a common place for gray mold to find a home and spread around to other plants. Every greenhouse is different in terms of size, type of structure and more. The same applies for temperature and how often fans need to be run.

“As often as you can, but it also depends on the conditions of the greenhouse,” she says. “If your greenhouse is warmer and less humid, then maybe you don’t need to clean as much as someone with a cooler, shaded greenhouse.”

Managing risk as plants get larger

As plants grow, Lukasko says it becomes more and more important to maintain proper spacing between plants. It’s not so much about putting a certain distance between each plant, but more about eliminating contact between plants because that’s where the spread could happen.

“That’s also going to lower humidity because the most humid place on a plant is under the leaves,” she says. “So, if you have the leaves overlapping, you’re creating an environment with high relative humidity.”

“It’s also good, in terms of Botrytis, to keep the top of the soil as dry as possible because oftentimes, that’s where Botrytis starts and it proliferates and it spreads throughout the greenhouse from locations like that,” Lukasko adds. “When you’re scouting, that’s why it’s important to pull back the plants and check the top of the soil.”

And even when plants are fully grown and ready to ship, they are at risk. Gray mold can be a truly on-going concern for growers if they are not careful.

“Any time you are moving plants around in the greenhouse — whether that’s during propagation or when you’re shipping — think of Botrytis as similar to dust,” Lukasko says. “If you’re moving around a plant that’s covered in dust, you’re going to spread the dust around. If you’re moving around a plant with Botrytis, you’re going to spread those spores around. If you’re moving around a lot of plants in the greenhouse, you have to be aware that you might be spreading around a lot of Botrytis spores.”

When Suncrest Nurseries’ founder, Stan Iverson, tragically passed in 2014, the future of the operation was uncertain. With long-time horticulture director Nevin Smith preparing for retirement around the same time, Suncrest faced major leadership changes.

To navigate the transition smoothly, the board brought in a business consultant named Christine Jennifer. Jennifer’s family was uniquely aware of the business, as her family owns some shares of the nursery. She was also a former customer who had purchased plants from Suncrest while running a small landscaping business while she was in between consulting gigs. Using her business acumen and horticulture background to take a fresh look at the operation, Jennifer quickly identified opportunities for Suncrest to reorganize, diversify, expand and evolve into the next era of leadership.

Suncrest soon invited Jennifer to step in as interim president to lead the company’s transformation, making the position permanent by fall of 2014. Since then, Jennifer has navigated several significant shifts to position Suncrest for continued growth.

“It’s been exciting to look at how we can manage our resources and organize this company in a way that’s as efficient as possible,” she says, “so we can change and flex with the times.”

Taking control of inventory

Suncrest started in 1989 when Iverson purchased the remnants of a 100-year-old nursery near the foothills of the Pajaro Valley. He continued the growing tradition there as he doubled the size of the nursery to offer more than 3,000 varieties. Suncrest became widely known for its vast plant diversity, spanning a broad selection of California natives, flowering shrubs, perennials, vines, grasses, bamboos and ferns.

Analyzing this massive inventory was a daunting challenge that Jennifer had to conquer. Early on, she spent time shadowing employees in various roles to understand different aspects of the operation — which spans nearly 100 acres across several parcels, including 70 acres of irrigated outdoor production space and about 5 acres of greenhouses and covered structures.

“There’s a lot of effort, time and costs that go into growing plants. A single plant might get touched by 13 different employees before it leaves,” Jennifer says. “I did a lot of analysis to understand what it truly costs to grow the plants we grow, to make sure we’re protecting our margins.”

To make sense of all the data surrounding Suncrest’s production, Jennifer implemented new inventory management software to track labor, sales, materials, turnaround times and more. The software provides “better control of our inventory,” she says, because “we have more data with which to make better decisions.”

Although it took a couple years to catalog every plant in the new database, the process helped Suncrest assess which plants sold consistently and which ones just depleted precious greenhouse resources. Based on this comprehensive data, Suncrest downsized its inventory from 3,500 varieties to about 800, based on factors like “cost, time to grow and likelihood of sale,” Jennifer says. Meanwhile, she increased the prices of certain varieties to keep profit margins in check.

“It’s a lot of work to analyze this data,” she says, “but we have to keep up with the increase in labor and material costs, and look at actually improving our margins so we can have the longevity and stability to maintain the business.”

Planning production more precisely

During her inventory analysis, Jennifer realized just how long certain plant material sat around before selling — if it sold at all. She knew there had to be a better way to improve turnaround time, minimize waste, and maximize limited resources.

“We were doing a lot of speculative production based on historical knowledge and faith in our customers, but that’s not a precise plan,” she says. “One of the ways to improve turnaround is to grow with more precision, which means growing what you know for sure you’re going to sell. So, our sales approach has changed to focus more on making orders rather than taking orders.”

That need for more sales certainty sparked the idea to launch a contract grow program that allows customers to pre-order specific varieties that are produced precisely to their specifications and schedules. A 50% deposit secures the customer’s order and helps Suncrest plan.

“It’s a concierge service where you get what you want, when you want it,” Jennifer says. “The contract grow program allows us to do more planned production with less guesswork, which is intrinsically more efficient because there’s less risk and less waste.”

The program creates a partnership between Suncrest and its customers, making production planning a collaborative process. If customers want to buy plants that have been cut from Suncrest’s inventory, they can simply request a custom contract grow arrangement to get the plant back in production.

Suncrest has landed contracts to grow plants for museums, stadiums and wineries along the West Coast — including some “quirky and wild varieties” custom grown for Star Wars Land at Disneyland Resort.

Since launching two years ago, the contract grow program has grown to comprise over 12% of Suncrest’s annual revenue, with more potential ahead.

Diversifying the customer base

As Suncrest’s sales approach evolved from “taking orders” to “making orders,” Jennifer found opportunities to diversify the nursery’s customer base — which had been primarily wholesale since the business started.

“Up until five years ago, 90% of our business came from wholesale brokers,” Jennifer says. “Now, about 65 to 70% of our business is retail.”

She noticed that retail buyers often pre-order plant material as they plan seasonal merchandising, whereas wholesale brokers tend to order less predictably from availability lists. “Larger retailers know more precisely what they need and when they need it,” Jennifer says. “As we moved our production planning to be less speculative and more focused on the plans of our customers, we’ve organically grown in the direction of retail.”

To support this natural trend toward retail pre-sales, Jennifer hired more outside sales reps to focus on these customers. As she evaluated new markets for retail sales potential, she saw opportunity in the Pacific Northwest, and in 2018, she hired a business development manager, James Szadek, to lead Suncrest’s expansion beyond California.

“Over the years, Suncrest had gardeners from the Pacific Northwest that would call down and inquire about plants. There were even some garden centers that would send down trucks,” says Szadek, who previously worked with Monrovia, which introduced him to plant retailers throughout the area. “We thought, with our diversified plant mix, we’d be able to add to the gardening community in the Pacific Northwest, where curious gardeners are always looking for new and different plants that are suited to that area.”

The biggest challenge selling across state lines was figuring out the shipping logistics. Instead of sending its own trucks up the coast, Suncrest uses common carriers, which consolidate freight for multiple companies to offer partial truckloads.

“You can grow beautiful plants, but then delivering them out of state in a timely fashion is a challenge, so you have to see how your product delivers and how it holds up in garden centers,” Szadek says. “Finding a good trucking company that understood our needs has helped us grow in the territory tremendously. It’s not just partnering with our customers, but with the people who help us get there.”

Building a production team

Soon after Jennifer joined Suncrest, she hired a new production manager. But after about five years, he began phasing out of his role at the nursery to run his own farm. Instead of starting a new search to fill the position, Jennifer leaned on the team she had in place.

“There are so many experts at Suncrest who have knowledge of different production areas,” she realized. “It made sense to work as a team.”

Jennifer reassigned the production manager’s job functions to eight different supervisors. Anibal Gonzales picked up labor management responsibilities, Araceli Gonzales became production coordinator overseeing plant inventory, Leonel Morales took over propagation, and Zeto Figueroa and Pancho Velasquez head up production of general inventory and the contract grow program. Szadek and sales manager, Victor Quintero, also collaborate with the team, and Suncrest’s long-time horticulture director even came out of retirement to serve as senior advisor.

“We’re constantly looking at new opportunities ... and trying to do it as ecofriendly as possible.” — Christine Jennifer

While each manager has “a core area of purview,” Jennifer explains, everyone has a voice through shared decision-making. Constant communication is the key to keeping the whole team aligned as they focus on their respective areas.

“Just because someone supervises propagation doesn’t mean they are the only voice of propagation,” Jennifer says. “They all have a voice in what we’re doing, so a lot of communication happens throughout the week to make sure we’re all on the same page.”

The production management team meets regularly in what Jennifer calls “metronome meetings” to sync up their individual aspects of the overall production. “It helps to eliminate confusion, so everybody knows what’s going in in the nursery each week,” she says. “It keeps us accountable and engaged with each other.”

One of the reasons this team approach works is because everyone on the team has been working in horticulture — and some, at Suncrest specifically — for several decades, so they’re committed to a common goal of producing quality plants. “They have a deep respect for one another and a real loyalty to the company,” she says. “If people understand the whole beyond their own purview, it organically creates a team environment.”

Inspiring a healthy community

While exploring new avenues of growth, Jennifer made a point to “clarify and reinstate Suncrest’s mission,” which is “growing life and beauty to inspire healthy community,” she says. That means continually “looking for ways to be greener, grow greener and cut back on waste.”

The nursery captures irrigation runoff for reuse, fuels its tractors with biodiesel fuel, and recycles plant material for composting. A couple years ago, Suncrest started making its own soil, with mixes tailored to promote plant health and reduce the use of additives. This greener approach gives growers more control over the soil, at a huge cost savings to the nursery.

Suncrest even has a small parcel of land that’s certified organic and biodynamic — which means that it meets the chemical-free requirements for organic certification, but takes additional steps to ensure biological diversity, soil fertility and holistic ecological health by emphasizing the use of composts and crop rotations. This parcel produces Suncrest’s Eco-Conscious Beauty line, which features quart-sized edible medicinal, habitat and native plants.

Though consumer interest in healthy edibles has been increasing for years, Jennifer says the recent pandemic underscored this demand. For several months, California only allowed nurseries to remain open for “production of edibles and essential production to maintain the value of our inventory,” she explains, which meant Suncrest had to quickly shift its focus away from ornamentals.

“We weren’t doing a lot of production (during COVID), but we did increase our production of edibles because people were interested in that,” Jennifer says. “It helped build sales during a strange time.”

After a slow March and April, Suncrest experienced its “best May on record” as the nursery responded to pent-up demand caused by COVID. Although restrictions have lifted and production has returned to normal, Suncrest plans to increase its biodynamic production to keep pace with the ongoing edibles trend.

“We’re constantly looking at new opportunities to stay current as the world’s changing,” Jennifer says, “and trying to do it as ecofriendly as possible.”

The author is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to Greenhouse Management magazine.

Identifying where to mechanize or automate is not an easy task. Most businesses have a limited amount of capital for mechanization and it is important to get maximum return.

A good starting point is to measure the amount of time that goes into the different operations that are performed. This can be done by having workers keep track of their time and output for the different tasks. However, one problem many growers encounter when attempting to do this is that there are a large number of tasks that are performed, and this can involve considerable record keeping. For example, in a study I did for the Horticultural Research Institute there were more than 70 different tasks associated with shipping plants from a nursery rewholesale yard.

One method that will help you find the best jobs to mechanize is to analyze each task for the following factors:

1. Repetitiveness. Tasks that are done over and over again are prime candidates for mechanization — for example, container filling, dibbling, transplanting, tagging and watering. For most of these there is a wide selection of equipment available for both large and small operations.

2. Backup in the flow of materials. This is an indication that parts of the system are operating at different rates. A review of the different tasks may require adding more help to a particular task or adjusting the rate that a machine is operating.

3. Labor input. Tasks with significant labor input are ones that should be considered first for mechanization. For example, considerable labor goes into moving plants several times during the growing process. Carts and conveyors are typical devices that can move larger quantities with only minimal labor.

4. Length of the job. The number of days that a particular task is performed can influence your decision on mechanization. Watering is a task that is done almost every day. It should be given high priority when looking at mechanization. Seeding, on the other hand, may be done only a few days during the year. Investing considerable capital into a precision seeder may not be justified.

5. Tasks requiring heavy physical activity. Workers tire quickly when the objects they move are over 50 pounds. Handling materials such as bales of growing mix, bags of fertilizer and larger containers or ball and burlap plants can be mechanized using forklifts, bucket loaders and other lifting devices.

6. Ergonomic activity. Tasks that require repetitive motion of fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders, neck and back can result in cumulative trauma disorder (CTD) complaints and lost work time. Besides rotating employees between jobs, the use of equipment can reduce the potential for injury.

7. Employee comfort and safety. Because of the large amount of material that is handled over long distances and on wet and rough surfaces, safety for employees should be of major concern. Equipment can be employed that will reduce the risk factor and make working conditions better.

8. Tasks requiring considerable walking. This is one area where considerable savings can be made by applying equipment. Examples include carrying plants long distances, walking to locate materials and locating restroom facilities a significant distance from work areas.

9. Excessive plant injury. Manual handling of plants can often result in plant injuries like broken stems, damaged leaves, and broken flower buds. Equipment, such as carts or conveyors, may help to reduce this loss.

10. Skilled labor doing materials handling tasks. With the large variety of materials handling equipment available today, it is possible to reduce manual handling of many materials. Skilled labor should oversee the materials handling operation and keep everything operating smoothly.

11. Time constraints. The spring season and holidays are usually rush times for growers. There is always more to do that the time allows. Mechanization can help to accomplish more during these periods.

The primary objectives of the automation and mechanization of tasks should be to reduce production costs, increase output, save time and reduce physical effort.