Tampa’s flower scene isn’t just about grabbing whatever’s wilting at the grocery store checkout. The city’s packed with family-run shops... The post Tampa Locals Swear By These Flower Delivery Wizards appeared first on Petal Republic.

This is a guest post by Avery Johnson (former OMAFA summer student and current M.Sc. student studying Thrips parvispinus) and S. Jandricic. Having difficulty identifying thrips on sticky cards and need clear photos to send to your consultant or extension agent? Don’t want to invest in a...

It’s that time of year again, when Million Bells (Calibrachoa) are being started in the greenhouse. This post will discuss common insect and disease pests, such as aphids, thrips and black root rot and viruses. Stay tuned for an upcoming post about production tips and tricks for this popular...

If scouting has been a challenge for you or your employees in the past, you’re a new IPM scout, or you feel like you could use a refresher, then this webinar is for you! This recorded webinar is applicable to garden retail centres as well as ornamental and some nursery crop producers. I cover...

With new invasive species popping up, the need for growers to more closely inspect pests and damage is at an all time high. This has led to interest in on-farm pest identification. When it comes to thrips identification, specifically, investing in a microscope is a necessary evil. But a decent...

Poinsettias are here! In the next few posts we’ll be breaking down production into into 4 key growing periods: Receipt/Propagation, Early Production, Late Production, and Finishing. This post on propagation will cover things you can do now to treat pests and diseases in your cuttings to prevent...

It’s no secret that recent outbreaks of thrips species other than western flower thrips (WFT) have made producing greenhouse crops in Ontario harder than usual. This includes species such as onion thrips, Thrips parvispinus, and chrysanthemum thrips. As control measures are different depending...

Every year at this time, growers start to think about strategies to minimizing western flower thrips on their chrysanthemum crops. This year, Thrips parvispinus is causing extra concern, given that chrysanthemum is one of its reported hosts. Although there have been no reports yet of...

OMAFA Summer Student Avery Johnson demonstrating plant washes on-farm. In this week’s “how-to” video, we’ll explore using plant washes on-farm. Plant washes are a simple but effective method to detect low levels of critical pests, such as Thrips parvispinus. Once you’ve washed out your pests...

This post was contributed to by Abigail Wiesner, Drs. Sarah Jandricic, and Chevonne Dayboll. Christmas in July? Not quite, but poinsettias are making their way into greenhouses across Ontario, and they always arrive at the hottest time of the year. Nutritional issues, environmental stress...

This post was contributed to by Abigail Wiesner and Chevonne Dayboll. As we move through production for fall and winter crops a refresher for nutrient deficiencies feels appropriate. No matter where you are in a cropping cycle, nutrition problems can be tricky to figure out. The good thing is...

“We can imagine it and we can do it,” Diane Szukovathy, Jello Mold Farm & Seattle Wholesale Growers Market Last week I told you about a series of Flower House activities taking place in Seattle with creator Lisa Waud. As I noted, Lisa has been on a West Coast tour which began on January 19th […]...

If your garden is like ours, well, rocks are in abundance. Our six-month-old garden occupies the 20-foot-by-60-foot backyard of a suburban home completed just months ago, right before we moved in on February 11th. By the time we started working on the garden, no surprise! We realized what...

Published in 2008, Stylish Sheds and Elegant Hideaways is more relevant than ever! In 2008, after a year of scouting the country for “stylish sheds” with my wonderful collaborator, Seattle photographer Bill Wright, and after months of interviewing shed owners, designers and builders, then...

Today’s special guest returns to the Slow Flowers Podcast after her 2017 appearance. Leslie Bennett is an award-winning garden creator whose Pine House Edible Gardens designs and installs beautiful, productive edible landscapes that provide bountiful harvests of organic fruits, vegetables...