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.”

Emma: From propagation to finishing, a lot of effort goes into protecting plants from pests like pathogens, insects and mites, and even weeds — but what about some of those “unseen” factors that can make or break a crop? We are talking about plant stress here, and it can come into the picture at any stage in the production cycle.

Jen: One of the things that stresses growers out is picking orders and staging them on the docks for loading, and then finding insects or eggs in the canopy. A trip to the customer in a warm truck is stressful enough, but it also helps accumulate degree days more quickly. When the truck is opened on the other end of the shipment, there’s an infestation in full swing. If the plants also became droughty during transport, that can lead to a shipment rejection or decline on the shelf. Stressed plants mean stressed growers.

Emma: Never let down your guard. You don’t want to make it to the finish line only to lose the crop in the back of an 18-wheeler somewhere between the loading dock and market shelves. Before you load up the carts and lock the hatch, give those plants one last parting gift: hit them with a shot of Intrinsic. For over a decade, BASF has been an industry pioneer with our Intrinsic® brand fungicides: Pageant® Intrinsic brand fungicide, Empress® Intrinsic brand fungicide and Orkestra® Intrinsic brand fungicide. These products, powered by the active ingredient pyraclostrobin, offer superior plant protection through a combination of broad-spectrum disease control and plant health benefits in the form of increased growth efficiency and increased tolerance to stress.

Jen: Let’s face it: the things we do shipping plants are inherently stressful. We might wrap them in paper or plastic or box them up. We might rack them up and then wrap the racks, packing them tightly into a shipping container. When we shipped trees and shrubs at the nursery I worked at, we built out the inside of the container with wooden supports to hold up the trunks and canopies so they arrived intact and pristine – each specimen was packed tightly, partly for fuel efficiency and partly to protect the cargo from the bumps of the road. That meant higher temps, little to no air movement, and lots of ethylene production.

Emma: Poor air circulation, high humidity, and tightly packed plants – man that sounds like the perfect environment for pathogens like Botrytis to run wild. Botrytis spores can be ubiquitous in production and packing areas. Any plant material or organic debris left behind on carts and equipment can serve as a source of inoculum. Senescing flowers and damaged plant material are ground zero – but under favorable conditions it doesn’t matter where it started, the pathogen can quickly proliferate and wreak havoc. Make sure foliage is dry before packing to limit leaf wetness. Also, pay careful attention during summer shipping because temperature differentials from indoors to outside on a loading dock can be extreme and lead to condensation build up in packing materials. Apply a protective fungicide prior to shipping to prevent new infections and limit disease spread.

Jen: At least weeds have the decency to either be present or not when you pick and pack an order; they are a problem that doesn’t tend to get worse in the hours after plants leave the nursery. When it comes to insects and shipping stress, one thing that can help during the cool months is an oil application prior to shipping. Ultra-Pure Oil horticultural insecticide, miticide and fungicide from BASF controls all life stages of insects and mites including eggs, controls powdery mildew, and shines leaves to removes water spots or spray residues. During the summer months, you could instead choose to make a systemic or insect growth regulator (IGR) application to protect plants after they leave the nursery. We know that two pests in particular can overwhelm plants under a stress setback like prolonged drought or heat stress: spider mites and whiteflies. If you’re shipping a common host of either of these pests, applying a product to control them at their destination can protect plant quality at the customer’s dock. You can’t always control how fast they open the boxes or water thirsty plants, but you can keep pests from adding to the credit sheet in the meantime.

Emma: Unfortunately, once those plants leave the greenhouse or nursery, we have little control over how they are treated. Not only do we have to worry about temperature extremes – leaving the plants sitting on a freezing loading dock can quickly result in irreversible damage – but once they hit market shelves, they can get a little neglected (i.e., missed watering). Intrinsic brand fungicides provide proven plant health benefits in the form of better crop resilience to external stresses like heat, cold and drought stress. Apply Pageant Intrinsic brand fungicide prior to shipping so plants are better able to withstand stress on the road.

That’s it for this edition of Roots to Road with BASF!

Conducted at BASF Research Triangle Park, Turf and Ornamental Plant Health Program, 2009-2010. Heritage® is a registered trademark of Syngenta Group Company.