In the 21st century, Horticulture has not been an easy career or business to succeed in. Many, if not most, professionals are in the industry more for their love of growing plants than for the money. Long hours are the norm during peak production periods, and the work can be exhausting and stressful at times. There are definitely rewards, but it is passion for plants that fuels the industry. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: December 2012
More Butterfly Garden Pictures
Gallery
This gallery contains 13 photos.
I’m a big proponent of butterfly gardening, and my sister asked to see more butterfly photos, so here is a set of pictures of butterflies from the last couple years. Plant geek that I am, I don’t just try to … Continue reading
2014 New Variety Time!
2014? But 2012 isn’t even over…
While home gardeners ponder their seed orders for 2013 (I’ve been reviewing the new Johnny’s and SSE catalogs, and was happy to pick up the High Mowing catalog at the EXPO trade show), the wholesale horticulture world is getting presentations on new varieties being introduced for the 2014 season. The industry gets advance notice to evaluate and trial varieties before they reach the market and to get programs finalized and catalogs printed in time for the 2014 sales season. Continue reading
Great Lakes EXPO
My talk on Seed Plug Production was well attended, though as usual, there was plenty of space in the first couple rows. Thanks to everyone who attended, I hope you found the talk worthwhile. I’ll be walking the trade show again tomorrow, and hitting some educational sessions, before heading home.
After the talk, one of the attendees asked about Dr. Norm C. Deno’s Seed Germination: Theory and Practice, which I recommended. It’s out of print, and I personally bought it and both supplements from Dr. Deno while it was available. These excellent references are now available for download at the USDA National Agricultural library. The original book is available here (12 meg .pdf), supplement 1 is available here (5 meg .pdf), and supplement 2 here (5 meg .pdf). Dr. Deno published these works after retiring as a Chemistry professor, and his hobbyist research added significantly toward understanding seed dormancy.
Site Redesign and Email Oops
I’ve got a link to this site now up at the original, old-school Perennial Guru site, so the new site is officially fully launched. I’m going to leave the old design up as is for a bit. Nostalgia.
In getting things transitioned, I discovered that I’d really messed up when initially setting up email for the Perennial Guru site, long ago. If you ever mailed me at an @perennialguru address… well, I didn’t get the email. I wasn’t ignoring you. Apologies. I thought those addresses were set up to be channeled into my main mail account, but they were not.
You can reach me at: pyleman (at) buffalodreaming (dot) com.