Clearing The Air

Now if we can just get the word out that there's a better way to care for them.

Also, water-laden saucers kept under the plants must be drained and cleaned regularly, lest microbes generate there; and plants must be kept healthy to avoid moldy leaves and the generation of gnats. Also, avoid overwatering because standing water is also (be) a great place for microbes to breed.

The Best Kept Secret Of Inside Plant Care (continued)

Knowledgeable professionals sub-irrigate, misinformed amateurs poke, pour and drain.

This may sound contentious but there is substantial evidence on the web to support the statement.

Here’s just the beginning of what our research has uncovered. Initial Tropical Plants is the largest interior plantscaping company in the world. It is the American subsidiary of Rentokil Initial.

Here is what Rentokil has to say about subirrigation on their Plants-In-Buildings website. The author is Kenneth Freeman, International Technical Manager.

Rentokil Initial R&D trials conducted over several years have shown that subterranean irrigation has some real benefits. These trials have consistently demonstrated that sub-irrigated plants require less water, grow more vigorously and retain their condition for longer.

He goes on to list these benefits.

• Most systems allow an increased interval between watering, sometimes to as much as four to six weeks.

• Subterranean irrigation allows the use of a wider range of decorative top-dressings that would otherwise be washed into the soil by top watering.

More to come…

The Best Kept Secret Of Inside Plant Care (continued)

We learned a good lesson today. Forgive us for reporting results of just one search engine even if it’s Google. We recently switched to the NetCaptor tabbed browser and really like it. We would never go back to IE. However, NetCaptor does not support the Yahoo toolbar that we had installed in IE. It does support the Google toolbar and we got lazy and stopped routinely doing Yahoo searches.

However, yesterday’s Google search results were so bad that we decided to use the same search string of “natural spring” OR cwi OR “planter technology” in a Yahoo search. What an amazing difference in results we discovered. We discovered a few wholesale suppliers and interior plantscaper websites that feature information about Planter Technology. We will link them in a forthcoming post.

Though the search results were significantly better they still reveal that the CWI and Natural Spring sub-irrigation systems are secrets well kept from the retail houseplant market.

The Best Kept Secret Of Inside Plant Care

We are painfully aware that sub-irrigation is widely used in the interior plantscaping industry and not in the retail houseplant market.

We are also aware of the most popular sub-irrigation system. We know because our company in Los Angeles was the first interior plantscaping company to use Natural Spring planters from Planter Technology. Now a 25-year-old company, Planter Technology’s primary product is the Controlled Watering Insert known widely in the business as the CWI.

We first met Allen Secrest, founder of Planter Technology at a Pacific Horticulture Trade show in 1979. We have a vivid memory of finding his small display booth overwhelmed by a sea of yellow agricultural machinery. There was no one there other than Allen.

Because we had been researching sub-irrigation planters, we quickly recognized the merits of his product. We bought his entire booth display inventory and were soon his first and largest user.

Fast-forward to today. We’re about to do a series of posts on sub-irrigation and decided to search on Planter Technology, CWI and Natural Spring. We were shocked to find the results. There were only 6 hits out of the 662 that pertained to our search string. The rest were other results for the acronym CWI and the words natural spring.

None of these 6 hits were links to user or product information other than Planter Technology's website. There was no information about this superb product other than a post from the Interiorscape magazine forum.

It is here that there is a rich vein of information about the CWI hidden away from the retail houseplant market. A search on CWI will produce a long list of posts on the subject. Try it and you'll find a lot to read.

Recognize that this is but a sampling of the industry with many posts by technologically unsophisticated small companies. Employees of the large companies such as Initial Tropical Plants (Rentokil) seldom post on public forums.

We wonder how a layperson, a houseplant caretaker, would ever find this best kept secret of inside plant care.

To be continued…

A Green Fish Story

Okay, it doesn't have anything to do with inside plants but we couldn't resist posting this.

Get green if you're not already.

Green Glossary

Here’s a follow up to yesterday’s post about green business. We believe that new business will find you if you speak to the market in the market's terms rather than yours.

This PDF file green glossary is from the International Facilities Management Association (IFMA). Here’s a less complete HTML version at Antron-Invista.

We believe it’s better to communicate you’re familiar with the term ALCA – Abridged Life Cycle Assessment than that you’re a member.

Know every meaning and nuance of the word sustainable, sound green and be green.

What Color Green Are You?

Have you noticed the dual meaning of “green business”? Not so fast if you think it’s only about crops, plants and horticulture. The “environmental” movement has clearly co-opted the term. We monitored news articles on “green business” for a month. Seventy seven percent of them were about environmental green rather than horticultural green.

We believe for those who grasp the true meaning of green in present day society, the definition change is a gain not a loss.

Read this Metropolis Magazine article about Mayor Daley’s Green Crusade and it will all make more sense.

Notice the lead photo of Chicago’s City Hall, the country’s first rooftop garden on a municipal building. There are green roofs sprouting all over the country. We also noted this paragraph about the mayor. What’s this about clean air? That sounds familiar.

I like to say he’s a janitor with a vision,” says Barry Burton, a zoo horticulturalist from Detroit who came to Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development in 1998 (he is now assistant to the mayor for landscaping initiatives). “It starts with him noticing the trees are all gone and having them replanted. Suddenly life springs up, and there are cafés and people where there were none before. Then it becomes, let’s not just make it attractive but a healthier place. Trees reduce the heat-island effect and clean the air. Landscaping is labor intensive, so we provide a lot of jobs. That has turned into a model of economic development based on green technologies, attracting renewable-energy companies, and creating a sustainable landscaping industry.

If you’re an interior plantscape contractor, are you part of the sustainable landscaping industry and competing for this green business?

Our question whether you’re in business or at home is are you practicing “green plant care”. Uh, what’s that? It means using technology that conserves and follows sustainable principles. Sub-irrigation does just that. Poke and pour top watering doesn’t.

Plants stay healthier and live longer with sub-irrigation. Water usage is reduced to just the amount the plants consume. There’s no wasteful run-off. The soil surface stays dry at all times, reducing exposure to toxic molds and annoying fungus gnats.

Old fashioned poke and pour top watering is the antithesis of sustainable plant care. The use of digital foot-candle light meters, soil probes and sub-irrigation technology clearly identifies those practicing modern 21st century inside plant care.

We who fit the definition of both the old and new green businesses can be "green squared". Shrewd inside plant marketers practice green squared principles and sell their benefits to customers and prospects.

Shrewd houseplant caretakers also practice the green squared principles and share their benefits with friends and relatives.

Here A Blog, There A Blog, Everywhere A Weblog

Here’s a comprehensive article on blogs from Time Magazine. Follow the links in the article and you’ll learn a lot about the blogosphere.

Debbie Weil posted it on her blog. We might not have found it if we hadn’t just installed an RSS reader and a notice of the post crawled onto our screen. We think her new blog design (skin) is cool. Well done Debbie.

More Commentary About PHS & Rentokil

Stock prices can sometimes be more difficult to understand than why there are yellow leaves under your Ficus tree.

A Feel-good Story From Across The Pond

We noted the comments about orchids in the USDA Floriculture & Nursery Crops Yearbook Summary.

Orchids are the clear leader in sales growth among potted flowering plants over the past decade. Potted orchid sales reached $121 million in 2003, second only to poinsettias, which had $257 million in sales.

Then we found a different slant on the orchid story in today’s news. This from the U.K. is about the lady’s slipper orchid a fascinating story of plant rescue. The English Nature website summarizes the Cypripedium story.

Long ago, we collected ferns in the Dominican Republic and El Yunque rain forest in Puerto Rico. These areas were also abundantly populated with orchids and bromeliads. We hope they're still there. A little older and wiser, we now collect with a digital camera.

USDA Summary Report Available

The USDA Floriculture & Nursery Crops Yearbook – Summary has been released.

The full report, available in several weeks, contains detailed data important to the floriculture and inside plants industry. We will analyize and report on it when released.

Cool Greenhouse Window

We just received a Costco.com newsletter and searched their site for “houseplant” information. We didn’t find any consumer support info but we did find this cool looking greenhouse window. No, we don’t have one, but it looks like a good product at a very competitive price.

If anyone has one of these, please let us know your experience with it.

We are well aware of this display-shelving bargain since we have four of these chrome finish units. This is one of the best plant display bargains we know of. We noted that this online unit has 4 shelves. The local in-store model has 6 shelves for the same price. Perhaps this is to reduce the shipping cost.

As you can see in our office plant lab photo, we install 4 foot fluorescent shop lights both vertically and horizontally. We make hanging hardware from wire coat hangers. Check out what comparable size “light stands” cost on the web. Sheesh!

Covered Patio, Balcony & Deck Plant Care

There has been significant publicity lately about container “gardening”, most of it generated by the National Gardening Association. Their research shows the number of people maintaining plants in containers has more than doubled. They claim there are now 26 million participating households.

A portion of our test lab plants grow in containers on our deck. We maintain all of them using measured sub-irrigation (MSI) on a bi-weekly schedule.

All plants are growing in Supersoil Potting Soil and fertilized by constant feed with Dyna-Gro Tropical Foliage Formula and Blooming Formula.

We currently maintain a number of bamboo species, succulents, Ficus benjamina, Amaryllis, Hibiscus, Tecomaria, Zamia and several species of Plumeria. We have also successfully grown tomatoes and herbs.

The plant care techniques that we use for these deck plants are the same as for our inside plants. The only difference is the deck plants get more light and that of course is beneficial.

In recognition of the number of people maintaining plants on covered balconies and decks, we will cover this topic as an inside plants topic in the future. They are houseplants by our definition.

We’re A Couple Of Swells

telegraph.co.uk

Okay, so they don’t look like Fred and Judy but keep an eye on these guys. We like their sense of humor and sense of the business they're in. Have you ever heard of PHS Group plc? We hadn't either until recently.

If PHS was a U.S. company, their Greenleaf interior plantscaping division would be one of the top three companies at almost $23 million in annual sales. Presently they operate in the U.K. only.

We noted their ongoing initiative to further improve efficiency throught the use of new plant care technology to preserve existing plants longer and reduce
replacement costs.

This is from a Henry E. Teitelbaum, Dow Jones Newswires story.

"Cohen also said PHS is "keeping a close eye" on any disposals that Rentokil Initial PLC (RTO.LN) might make as a result of a strategic review that Rentokil is undertaking following a profit warning at the company last month."

Stay tuned. Film at eleven!

Big Box Consumer Support

We recently received a Lowe’s Garden Club Newsletter on the subject of “Container Gardening”. It linked to their website. Clicking on the Plants icon brought us to a menu of articles, many of them pertinent to houseplants.

We won’t editorialize about the content but we have no hesitation in giving Lowe’s an “A” for their effort. We’ll offer an opinion about the content quality in another post.

Finding these articles piqued our interest to see what the other big box merchandisers offer about houseplant care. Here are our findings. They make Lowe's look good.

We searched from the Wal-Mart home page and found no information other than houseplant books for sale. We then clicked on the “Site Directory” link at the bottom and found our way to the “Garden and Patio” page. Aha, here was a link to the Garden Learning Center where we found this message.

"Looking for the Garden Learning Center?"

"You've come to the right place, but we'd like to re-direct you to the Garden Center at your local Wal-Mart store. There, you'll find all the tools you need to tend to your garden for less. Plus, friendly Wal-Mart sales associates will be available to answer any questions you may have, as well."

Yeah, right! We’re off to Home Depot.

A site search on houseplants produced links to products and a non-relevant article about fertilizers. A Google site search on “houseplants” finally turned up an article on repotting in the Media Relations department. The article is obviously meant for the media rather than customers. A sidebar message reads:

“For tips on caring for houseplants, talk to the experts at your local lawn and garden center.”

Uh huh! Right! We’re out of here and off to Target and K-Mart.

We found no consumer help about houseplants at either stop. We won’t bore you with the fruitless search details.

A Better Way To Check Soil Moisture

Testing soil moisture by probing with a finger is tricky for many to learn. The results are often innacurate. Do your plants and fingers a favor and use a soil probe.

The 12” durable plastic probe will work well for pot sizes up to 10”. I use the 16” aluminum probe for larger floor plants.

The most important zone of an inside plant soil system is down at the bottom rather than the top. This is where the highest concentration of roots is located. It is beyond the range of fingers.

Push the probe down to the bottom of the plant pot. Twist the probe and pull it back out of the soil. There will be small plugs of soil in the notches. Pinch the bottom plug. If it feels moist and the soil particles stick together, do not water.

It’s time to water when the soil particles do not stick together. If the soil was allowed to dry too much it will not form plugs and will be light in color. If the soil is very dry, the probe will come out empty of soil particles.

The probe will not harm the root system. If you inadvertently hook the probe on a root, merely twist the probe to unhook before removing it.

Probing also has the beneficial effect of aerating the soil each time you use it. A novice can learn to use a soil probe and judge soil moisture with great accuracy. A green thumb is not required. It takes longer to explain it than use it.

Fungus Gnats No More

We’re seeing a rash of questions and complaints about fungus gnats in houseplant forums. The list of remedies is a mile long and most of them treat the symptom rather than the real cause. Yellow sticky traps are one of the most popular suggestions. Adult flies are not the real problem however. Their unseen larvae are the real problem and the cause is moist soil.

Fungus gnats are all too often a byproduct of imprecise poke and pour top watering. Gnats are an inherent risk of using this primitive method. It is very easy to over water and create an ideal habitat for their larvae to reproduce. A moist top layer of soil is very common using drench and drain watering. Fungus gnat larvae find this an ideal habitat.

A simple solution is to switch to measured sub-irrigation. With this method, the top layer of soil is always dry. Remove their habitat and you remove the possibility of fungus gnats, it’s as simple as that.

This is but one of the many benefits of sub-irrigation. Professional plant maintainers know about them. Why has this information been hidden from houseplant care advice all over the web? We will post much more about the benefits of measured sub-irrigation and the faults of top watering in the near future.

Before then, if you want to eradicate fungus gnats forever, switch to measured sub-irrigation now.

Off We Go To England - Virtually

We traveled over the web to England to check out this news item. It led us to the Chelsea Flower Show and then to the Sheffield Winter Garden project.

This virtual trip won't take you as long as flying over, but allocate some time here. There's an amazing array of photos, panormas and videos. See if you can find Michael Palin in one of the photos.

Plants Are Plants

These are some thoughts after yesterdays post on air layering. Some attribute anthropomorphic characteristics to plants. Feel free to give your plants names and gender if it pleases you. It is, however, a disservice to plants if you attempt to care for them as animals.

Many houseplants die from compulsive over-attentiveness that one might lavish on an animal pet. Plants are plants, not animals. For the pruning squeamish, proper pruning is not analogous to removing a body part. Your plants, if they had emotions, would love you for doing it.

Bring It Down To Size By Air Layering

Here's a tutorial from Austin 8 News about how to propagate a plant by air layering. It looks like he's demonstrating on a Ficus elastica 'Decora' (common name Rubber Tree or Plant). They even included a video. Kudos to Austin 8 for including it.

You might try this with a lanky Schefflera Arboricola (common names Dwarf Hawaiian Schefflera, Hawaiian Umbrella Tree, Dwarf Umbrella Plant, Arboricola Tree,) or an overgrown Ficus benjamina (common name Weeping Fig).

There's a double benefit here. You get a new plant. Better yet, your overgrown dorky looking plant benefits from the pruning. Many are reluctant to prune for fear of hurting the plant. However, one of the most beneficial things you can do for inside plants is pruning them. You do trim your nails and cut your hair don't you?

So, You Want Some Neotech?

We found this story while searching for something else.
BBC News

We could use some more young Rebekka’s in the inside plants business. We wish her the best of luck but have some doubts whether she and Stewart Plastics can meet Wal-Mart’s price points. So, what’s it worth to have your plants talk back to you, or do they already?

Good Plant News From Richmond

Here's a nice piece of publicity about the benefits of inside plants with a reference to source information at Plants At Work (PAW).

Rentokil Initial

Speculation continues about Rentokil's future.

Self-watering Is Not Self

Sub-irrigation (capillary watering) is inappropriately called “self-watering” in the retail market. Yes, there are self-watering pet dishes. They work because animals have a brain. Plants do not. Knowledgeable horticulturists don't use the term.

Plants have no intelligence to know when to start and stop drinking. Water fed continuously will saturate the soil, shut off oxygen and drown the plant. Most of these self-watering planters have little or no instructions. If they do, we've found them to be inaccurate or misleading.

User logic leads to keeping the reservoir full. It appears to be common sense to do so. “Oh, the reservoir is empty I had better fill it.” Constant water supply is one of the fastest ways to kill inside plants under low light conditions.

We'll post a summary of all the so-called “self-watering” planters including instructions. Many of them are poorly designed. They require a good understanding of capillary sub-irrigation to make them work properly.

Intro To The Greenscaper Consumer Lab

I've been conducting consumer research in my Greenscaper Consumer Lab since 1997. The environment is real world residential rather than a greenhouse. This section of the lab in my office creates a pleasant view.

All of the almost 400 plants are watered using measured sub-irrigation (MSI). Each is also weighed at this time. They are currently on a twice a month plant care schedule and are thriving.

The Aglaonema Amelia in the foreground is almost 6 years old. It uses about 2 oz. of water per day. Natural light from the west is less than 30 foot-candles average for a full day length.

The Pothos across the top are almost 6 years old. They use about 7 tenths of an oz. of water per day. Natural light is less than 20 foot-candles average for a full day.

Our testing confirms what many professional interior plant maintainers have long known. Sub-irrigation is far superior to top watering inside plants. Unfortunately, this information is little publicized in houseplant books or on the Internet.

We will report more about our findings in future posts.

Small Scaper, Big Voice

He often refers to himself as small scaper but he's one of the most knowledgeable inside plants people on the web. He is Rutgers Ornamental Horticulture graduate Clem Cirelli, Jr. of Summit Plants and Flowers, Inc., Springfield, NJ. Clem contributes regularly to the Interiorscape magazine forum. Find him there with a “Cirelli” search. You’ll be looking at a long list of posts that make a small book on inside plants. Start a blog Clem!

Plants in Buildings

One of the best corporate web sites we’ve found on the subject of inside plants is Plants-in-Buildings by Rentokil Initial. It is well worth the time to explore this site whether you’re an interior plantscaper, facilities manager, architect, interior designer, educator, grower or houseplant keeper. Check out the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) training course.

Site co-author Kenneth Freeman is International Technical Manager for Rentokil Initial PLC. You can get to know him better by doing a “Freeman” search on the Interiorscape forum. He is obviously a knowledgeable inside plants professional.

There Are Few Secrets On The Web

Did you know that interior plantscaping consultant Linnaea Newman is getting married in September? Congratulations Linnaea and Greg. Here's wishing you lots of Lucky Bambooey!

Bye, Bye Sir Clive

The departure of renowned Sir Clive Thompson from Rentokil Initial has had the U.K. business press buzzing. What affect will this all have on Initial Tropical Plants, their U.S. subsidiary? Further, what affect, if any, will this have on the U.S. interior plantscaping business? We haven’t read a word about Initial Tropical Plants since the news broke.

Did you know that Initial Tropical Plants is the largest interior plantscaping company in the U.S...in the world? Industry sources estimate that its annual sales are about equal to its next 15 competitors. Even the mighty Wal-Mart juggernaut doesn’t dominate its top 20 list as strongly.

Rentokil Initial bought the Leider family owned Tropical Plant Rentals business back in the late '80s with the result that the Brits own a major segment of our interior plantscaping industry. After the sale, Rentokil initiated a buyout program that was just too tempting for many of the pioneer companies of the ‘70s to resist. We can hardly blame them for taking the money and running but the inside plants business lost a lot of valuable entrepreneurial talent.

Let us know if you have any news about this subject. Post your comments below or post a message e-mail Bob Thanks!