Part of a smart weed control strategy includes chores that should be done after herbicide applications are complete.

Keep application records

Every time a chemical of any type is applied, a complete record of the application should be made. Pesticide records will be the basis for any changes that may be needed in the pest/weed control program. If the material did not work, the records could indicate why. A change in the time or rate of application, the application technique, or the chemical used may be required. If the crop was injured, well-kept records will help determine what changes must be made to prevent additional problems in the future.

The records should include:

Cultivating

Soil treated with most preemergence herbicides can be cultivated to a depth of 1.5 inches without reducing weed control. Cultivating deeper than 2 inches reduces the effectiveness of all herbicides. Soil treated with oxadiazon or any herbicide containing oxyfluorfen should not be cultivated following treatment.

Clean the sprayers

Immediately after being used, sprayers should be cleaned. Flush the system with clean water, including spraying water through all of the lines and nozzles. Rinse the sprayer with a detergent solution. Next, rinse again with clean water.

Sprayers used for applying oil-based compounds should be cleaned as follows:

• Flush the entire system with a detergent solution.
• Fill the tank and prime the spray system with a 10 percent ammonia solution (1 gallon of household ammonia in 10 gallons of water) and let it stand for 12 to 24 hours.
• Disassemble the nozzles and soak the caps, screens, etc., in the ammonia solution.
• Rinse thoroughly with water and circulate it through the sprayer.
• Test spray a few susceptible plants, such as tomatoes or peppers, at least four days before using the sprayer on crops.
• If the herbicide label includes cleaning instructions, follow them.

Sprayer and herbicide storage

After cleaning, drain the spray lines, pump, and tank. To prevent the pump from rusting and freezing, fill it with oil or some other suitable lubricant. Sprayers should be stored in a dry location. Remove nozzles, caps, screens, etc. from the sprayer, cleaned, and stored in clean cloth bags.

Store herbicides in a locked dry area. Keep herbicides in their original containers and make sure the label is not damaged or removed. Do not allow herbicides in liquid form to freeze.

About the author: Jim Sellmer is a professor of ornamental horticulture at Penn State. Read Sellmer’s entire weed control publication here: https://bit.ly/weeds_PennState.

There’s a lot of chatter in the industry right now about how to hang on to all the new pandemic gardeners who became our customers over the last two years. I’ve read a lot lately about these “new gardeners” and the sorts of things we should all be doing to keep them hooked on plants and spending on gardening products. But here’s the thing; there really isn’t anything revolutionary or “new” about most of what’s being said, or the current trends being described.

Hear me out on this one ...

From my perspective, here is what’s not new. It’s not a new trend that new gardeners get into the hobby with vegetables or houseplants as their gateway. That’s a typical and predictable path into a gardening hobby. It’s not new that more gardeners are mixing edibles into their ornamental landscapes or mixed planters. Edible landscaping and foodscaping, as well as inventive container plantings, were already a thing well before the pandemic hit. It’s not even new that new gardeners are growing more patio or balcony vegetable gardens or growing a ton of houseplants. Economic pressures have kept many would-be house buyers out of the market for quite some time now, fueling the trend of smaller urban dwellings and mobile gardens. The latest houseplant boom was seeded well before the pandemic and is also, like vegetable growing, a typical hobby gateway.

Plant parents freaking out about rare or unusual plants — like they are these days about aroids — isn’t even new. It’s just the new cycle of rare-plant mania revolves around foliage houseplants instead of tulip bulbs or orchids.

What is also not new is that new gardeners need good plant and gardening information, be it in the form of signage, tags, how-to POP, videos, classes … you name it. Engaging education has always been a part of successful customer relationship building and retention. You can refer to my columns on B2C customer marketing and education for growers in the 2016 Greenhouse Management February and May issues: bit.ly/hort-truths-action and bit.ly/hort-truths-message

It’s not even that new that many growers are now selling directly to consumers, bypassing the retail outlets. I mean, that’s how a lot of plants used to get sold in our industry until retail garden centers developed as standalone entities. While there are now many growers just getting into the game of selling direct, there are also many who started out that way but eventually shifted into wholesale-only. The demand for online houseplant sales, specifically, has driven many wholesale growers back to direct-to-consumer sales.

Even the collective pandemic-induced anxiety that drove many to start digging in their backyards isn’t new. Collective cycles of “Weltschmerz,” a German word that translates loosely to “world weariness,” can be seen to repeat themselves through human history and always seem to correspond to an increased interest in plants and the natural world. You can see these cycles reflected in trends in fine art and design decor. It’s normal — not new — for people to turn to plants and nature when we are collectively stressed out.

What I’m saying here is, while we have a lot of new customers we need to hold on to, the basic roots of their new plant passions aren’t much different than they ever have been. Ultimately, we all know what our customers need and want and why they need and want it. It’s predictable, depending on what’s going on in the world, when there is opportunity in the world of gardening business. What’s old is always new again, at some point. And so here we are, again.

Shiny and new

So, what is new with this new crop of gardeners?

Well, I’d say that first off, it’s new for us to get the volume of new gardening customers that we got in such a short time, over the course of the pandemic. While many businesses were able to achieve solid financial gains, there were substantial struggles across the board. Clearly as an industry, we weren’t fully equipped to handle the increased customer load, demand for plants, and the need for digital commerce the way we were all forced to adopt — quickly. Digital innovation in the horticulture industry simply wasn’t up to speed. Coupling those strains with pandemic strains on the supply chain, meeting consumer demand for plants or products was simply not possible for many businesses. If we can’t get the plants customers want into their hands, there is a risk of losing them if shortages or significant price inflation dampens their new enthusiasm for the hobby.

Other important distinctions between our pre-pandemic and pandemic-induced consumer base include how we are selling and delivering to them directly, how they expect us to engage with them, and how and from whom customers are getting their horticultural information. Doorstep delivery from online ordering is now expected from just about every industry, and we’ve all become dependent on digital communication in place of in-person interactions and education. This digital dynamic has also created many social media influencer hobbyists in the gardening space, many of whom are not very experienced or well-versed in accurate information or techniques.

So, what should your customer retention priorities be?

We must scale or pivot to meet plant and product demand ... but can we even achieve that under pandemic pressures? If we can’t, then how do we adjust our marketing to drive trends and demand for what we can provide? We also need deeper investment in digital innovation when it comes to both commerce and communications; to meet our customers where their wallets and minds are — online.

Finally, it’s crucial we insert our voices as knowledgeable experts into the social media spaces where our customers are finding information and inspiration. If you want to have a voice in what your novice customer learns and desires, you need to use your voice to guide them.

About the author: Leslie Halleck owns Halleck Horticultural, LLC, through which she provides horticultural consulting, business and marketing strategy, product development and branding, and content creation for green industry companies. She is a frequent contributor to GIE Media publications, including Greenhouse Management and Garden Center magazine. lesliehalleck.com

Whether you’re delivering products to your customers or relying on deliveries and inventories of those goods, supply chain disruptions and skyrocketing costs are impacting every garden center business. Regardless of where they lay in the supply chain, disruptions are taking a heavy toll on independent retailers, many of which have few resources to absorb or push back on price increases, and even less leverage to pass those higher costs to customers.

A whopping 44% of small businesses recently reported temporary shortages or other supply chain problems, according to a survey of approximately 800 companies by Vistage Worldwide Inc., a coaching and advisory organization for small businesses. Fortunately, even this far into the disruptions, planning, increased supply chain management, adding potential suppliers and increased technology can help every independent garden center retailer cope with, or even profit from, rising prices and the supply chain disarray.

Coping with a volatile supply chain

Companies develop supply chains so they can reduce their costs and remain competitive. An efficient, optimized supply chain is extremely important in the fulfillment of customer orders. However, it can also result in lower costs and a more efficient production or sales cycle when managed correctly.

Supply chain management, or SCM, is the umbrella term that covers product development, sourcing, production, procurement, logistics and more. Without SCM, an independent garden center runs the risk of losing customers and its competitive edge.

SCM isn’t just about creating an efficient process; it’s also crucial to mitigating risk and ensuring everything runs smoothly. After all, many elements make up the supply chain from manufacturing sites to warehouses to transportation, inventory management and order fulfillment. So it should come as no surprise that managing the supply chain, along with agile and efficient adoption of technologies, is creating a new way of operating.

Without an optimized SCM process in place, the chain can fall apart from the very beginning. A dynamic approach to managing supply chains exists and provides everything a garden center needs to create a more robust supply chain. Apply agile strategies toward real-time disruptions, use powerful analytics that address and resolve root causes, and find management practices that pave the way for long-term growth.

Flexibility vs. resilience

When it comes to coping with disruptions and changes, flexibility and resilience are critical traits for success with a volatile supply chain. A resilient supply chain can weather the storm if one of its suppliers has to shut down production. And a flexible supply chain can adapt to market trends and conditions in the blink of an eye.

With the rate of disruptions continuing and, in many cases, increasing, change management is required. It is important to focus specifically on dealing with disruptions and, if at all possible, avoiding them (via flexibility). This will be a largely operational hurdle involving establishing strategies for particular events or changes — often with the help of digital technology.

Just in time

While there is no single best way to create a winning supply chain strategy, a popular option among those with inventories is so-called “just-in-time” management for inventories of raw materials, supplies, goods and products. Just-in-time management cuts final producers’ costs while redistributing some of those costs to intermediate producers, who wind up either holding extra stock or finding other ways to cope with demand-side fluctuations.

The major problem of relying too heavily on just in time is glaringly evident in the industry credited with inventing it. Automakers have been crippled by a shortage of computer chips — vital car components produced mostly in Asia. Without enough chips on hand, automobile plants around the world have been forced to halt assembly lines.

Still, today’s shortages raise the question of whether some green industry firms have been too aggressively reaping savings by slashing inventory. Despite their role in the supply chain however, many key players say they don’t want to replace just in time entirely because the savings are too great.

Alternate suppliers

Relying on backup suppliers to battle shortages or shipping delays is rapidly becoming the “new norm” for many green industry firms.

Shifting suppliers allows a business to “optimize costs.” An alternate supplier allows a grower to quickly respond to supply chain disruptions, minimizing the impact on their bottom lines. Unfortunately, few are completely immune to supply chain disruption and are forced to hike prices if only to keep ahead of rising inflation.

What’s more, maintaining multiple potential suppliers, however, requires planning — and a great amount of work. Of course, every business relying on numerous suppliers has a certain amount of flexibility when supply chain breakdowns occur. That has allowed them to better shield themselves from the impacts of COVID-19 outbreaks, extreme weather events and other supply chain disruptions.

illustration © Golden Sikorka | Adobe Stock

Spot bidding

It’s no secret that supply shortages and disruptions have led to a record number of canceled contracts and the rise of “spot bidding.” When supply and capacity are strained, previously negotiated contracts and agreements may be thrown out the window, leaving little alternative to the incredibly inefficient spot bidding.

Spot bidding requires many of the same, time-consuming, repetitive steps as the original process to reach out to potential carriers or suppliers, collect data and make new award declarations.

Many businesses failed to anticipate the sheer volume of canceled contracts or the rise of spot bidding, among other economic challenges. Complicating matters today, when an outsourcing need arises, many are turning to what is familiar and ignoring the impact of new problems with old, outdated processes and technology. Since it is often conducted outside of a formal sourcing process, spot bidding often introduces bias, where the business favors certain suppliers in the interest of speed, reducing the competitive tension that might have resulted in better offers.

Understanding that in order to remain competitive and guard against disruptions, integrating new suppliers — and identifying which supply lines no longer hold value — is imperative. A grower that overlooks emerging suppliers to preserve incumbent relationships does so at the expense of innovation and resiliency.

According to many experts, a lack of a cohesive strategy and technology are the biggest hurdles to building future-ready supply chains. Fortunately, in an effort to upgrade these methods, many businesses are overhauling their old systems and attempting to streamline processes using optimization and automation technology for a more modernized supply chain.

Optimization

A fundamental way of achieving preparedness is to optimize processes wherever possible — especially in the procurement function. Optimization makes it possible to balance cost and speed objectives, give suppliers flexible bidding options and eliminate “lowest price wins” awards.

With the right solution, a business has the capability to handle everything from spot bids to large-scale RFPs, with a supplier-friendly interface that improves the operation’s direct materials, supplies or service award decisions. One such solution involves automation.

© 5m3photos | Adobe Stock

Automation

A computerized sourcing process can establish spot bidding and mini-tender events within minutes, managing and automating everything from inviting carriers and collecting bid data to generating award recommendations based on a set of criteria. A computerized system goes beyond cost savings by creating more efficiency.

By reducing time-consuming, monotonous tasks, optimization and automation technology allows your key personnel to do what they do best — focus on supplier relationships, accomplish broader goals for the operation and drive innovation.

A problem without an answer

With price hikes already common, inflation expectations are posing potential problems for some retailers. Pandemic buying and supply shortages exposed flaws in many supply chains that will continue to be exploited in the months ahead.

Although many companies learned how to cope with on-the-fly solutions, most postponed long-term investments while grappling with more immediate issues. Today, firms can utilize past lessons and move forward. For some, that will mean stockpiling more inventory and forging relationships with additional suppliers. Unfortunately, for far too many business owners and managers, the pursuit of cost savings will once again trump other considerations.

Disruptions in the supply chain aren’t going away any time soon. The bottom line is that there is no single best way to create a winning supply chain strategy. However, by leveraging optimization and automation to create a future-ready supply chain, growers can leave antiquated approaches behind and progress to modernity. The operation’s future may depend on it.

The author is a business writer based in Pennsylvania. His tax and financial features have appeared in business magazines and trade journals for more than 25 years. Reach him at MEBatt12@Earthlink.net

This article originally appeared in Garden Center magazine’s December 2021 issue. (www.gardencentermag.com) Garden Center is a sister publication to Nursery Management.

The taxonomists are at it again! Names have changed.

We all might have heard about how the common herb rosemary has changed from Rosmarinus officinalis to Salvia rosmarinus after a molecular phylogenetics study in 2004 shook up the Lamiaceae family. This study reordered many of its members as different clades and made horticulture households shake their fists in 2017 when it became clear that we’d need to relearn another name.

But alas, in all that big hubbub, another horticulture darling, Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) had its name changed to Salvia yangii. So while we re-learn these names with you, here is a list of other common plants and their name changes.

To find out the latest information around Latin binomial nomenclature, and watch botanists and taxonomists duke it out in real time over white papers, you can go to the International Plant Names Index (IPNI), a collaboration between The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, The Harvard University Herbaria, and The Australian National Herbarium, hosted by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. It is the great keeper of all taxonomic records, akin to the library of Alexandria, and with enough information to fuel your plant-themed internet rabbit hole for days.

All of this leads us to point out one issue — while the rest of the world of botany, ecology, and even some horticulture (especially public gardens) are moving on and changing the names in their white papers or on their websites — the plant producing end usually takes much more time to change the direction of the ship. It takes a lot longer for the general population to relearn something that isn't common knowledge (and they’re who we grow plants for) than it is for people in academic settings.

We do have to ask ourselves, though, about who is adhering to these name changes and why and who do these name changes serve? For those of us who grow for the average consumer, taxonomic name changes are a difficult thing to transition. Training customers to reliably use one common name and that one common name applies to one plant is difficult. (Don't get me started on all the things that are called creeping Charlie that are, in fact, not the same plant). Then teaching people the Latin binomial nomenclature so we achieve one plant = one name and can communicate clearly about what plant we're talking about between two different people is another layer. And then, now, there are more updated names? If Latin binomial nomenclature was created to limit confusion in communication about plants all over the world, then what of these quietly announced name changes that happen in the annals of record-keeping websites?

For people out there in the field, we want to start a conversation: Are you using the updated nomenclature? How long do you think it’s reasonable for a transition period from one name to the next? Who are the people you're working with — do they generally use the most up-to-date nomenclature? For the educators: Do you teach horticulture students the up-to-date nomenclature or do you teach the older names, or both? For public garden horticulturists: How do you receive the name changes and how does the public receive the new names? For growers: What names do you use? Do you list both names (new and old)? In your experience, how long does it generally take for the new name to stick? We want to hear your thoughts on navigating this ongoing situation. Write to ecoplug@northcreeknurseries.com.

Each day, the taxonomists out there will hurl new mouthfuls of Latin at us. And each day, we’ll probably groan. The constant struggle between the people who name the plants and the people who grow them.

While the genus Eupatorium and Aster got a really good shakedown recently, not all plants with the genus Aster were changed to Eurybia or Symphyotrichum, or with the genus Eupatorium to Eutrochium or Conoclinium. Which means we can't mentally just swap out the old names with the new ones — there are plants that the old genera name still applies (i.e. Eupatorium hyssopifolium still is Eupatorium, not Eutrochium). Those taxonomists, they really do like to make things tricky. See more nomenclature changes on page 32.

For more: www.northcreeknurseries.com

Chelsea Campbell is part of the marketing team at North Creek Nurseries. Editor’s note: This originally appeared in North Creek’s newsletter, The Plug and was used with permission. It’s been edited for length and clarity.