Author: Paul Thomas

Losing plants to disease and insects, nutrition or neglect happens to all of us. Our goal for publishing the e-Gro series of alerts and seminars is to give you advanced awareness of issues and potential way to address them.  Still, losses happen, and in my recent greenhouse visits, I started noticing the trash cans were staring to hold plants that had to be trashed.  From January through early March, losses are traditionally very low, and unless there was a plug shipping problem, crops seem to do pretty well.  Right about now, we start seeing the first losses due to diseases and insect issues.  As the season goes on, we add losses due to missed irrigations, mishandling, and nutritional issues.  By the end of the growing seasons, we see loses due to leggy stretched or beyond market stage plants being dumped.  When I chat with growers, the usual statement is:  “well, it’s only 2% of the crop, or we kept losses to under 10% this year…” My response?  “Oh my….”

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