growing and retailing green

The State Of Sustainability

A panel of growers and retailers discusses the ins and outs of making sustainability a part of doing business in 2008.

by Richard Jones, Group Editor
rljones@meistermedia.com

Sustainability – like it or not, it’s been a hot topic both in the green industry and in the public consciousness for months now. Growers and retailers have been working hard to keep up, but where do we stand as we head into the spring of 2008? We wanted to find out.

Greenhouse Grower and Today’s Garden Center hosted a panel discussion during February’s ANLA Management Clinic on The State of Sustainability. Panelists Evan Elenbaas, president of Walters Gardens, Zeeland, Mich.; John Bonner, general manager of Eagle Creek Wholesale, Mantua, Ohio; and Charlie Cole, general manager of Cole Gardens, Concord, N.H., shared some of their own experiences, tips on how other growers and retailers can take steps toward being more sustainable, and their opinions on how sustainability fits in a greenhouse or retail garden center business in 2008 and beyond.

Q: How is your business approaching sustainability today?
Elenbaas: I don’t know if sustainability is a destination or if it’s more of a journey. You tweak this and that. The motivation for us to do some things that may be viewed as sustainable hasn’t been that we wanted to be certified or that we thought we might be asked to be certified. It’s a competitive market out there. It’s a global market. Costs are rising, whether it’s fuel costs or health care. You really have to turn over every stone to see where you can save money.

Do we want to do the right thing for the environment? Absolutely. But most of what we have done is due to pressure on profit margins. Will we ever be truly sustainable? No, probably not, but there are a lot of things we can do to move in that direction.

Bonner: I’m convinced the idea of sustainability is here to stay. So, we’re trying to position ourselves to be a company that is selling sustainable products, and at the end of the day, hopefully we can do some branding and some marketing to actually convey that to the consumer.

The one thing that is important to understand is whatever we do with regard to sustainability, that it has to make economic sense for us. Our new boiler system burns wood chips and wood byproducts mixed with manure. That’s definitely a sustainable practice. But the reason we did it was because we realized, “We can save money doing this.” Sustainability was kind of an afterthought, but it’s something we can tell the public down the road. But first and foremost, it’s got to make economic sense.

Cole: Can a garden center be sustainable? Absolutely. It’s an evolving process that you can always do better and better. But I think you do need to explain to your customers what you are doing.

I asked our customers, “What do you think about sustainability? Do you even know what sustainability is?” And not one person was familiar with the word. They had it confused with being organic. Being sustainable isn’t necessarily being an organic grower or organic retailer. It’s looking at your business and paying more attention to it, where you can cut costs and cut waste.

We have capillary mats on our benches. All the excess water gets sucked up from below like a normal ebb and flow system and there’s less water going into the ground. And we put new drainage into our store, so there’s not as much runoff going into the river below. We’re also trying to do a better job with shipping, making sure we fit as much as possible in the trucks. That’s not just being sustainable, that’s being a smart business owner.

Bonner: There’s a definition of sustainability I’ve seen a lot, and it’s something to the effect of “Using what you have today to meet your own needs without affecting the ability of future generations to do the same.” Try to hit a net zero or a break even with what you’re taking out of the environment and putting back in. Really, that’s how you have to think about it. But, again, it’s got to make economic sense.

Elenbaas: And I might add that in addition to making economic sense, it has to make sense from an environmental impact standpoint, and it has to have a positive social impact. So there are three major factors when you’re looking at something from a sustainable standpoint.

Q: A lot of people feel very strongly about organic as an integral part of sustainability. Is that where you’re headed with your operations?
Cole: We try to look at sustainable options or organic options like organic fertilizers and chemicals for our retail customers. I got the idea from a West Coast garden center, but we use a sticker that says, “Earth Friendly Products By Cole Gardens.” It’s just a simple marketing message that we put on anything that’s natural. We try to make sure it’s obvious for everybody in the garden center.

Elenbaas: I don’t forsee us being an organic grower. I had someone call us a month or so ago and asked if we grew organically. I said, “Well, in an operation our size, we really can’t at this point. There are certain chemicals we have to use that we don’t really have an organic replacement for.”
We do have an alternative fuel boiler. We’re burning wood pellets to supplement our natural gas boiler. We are recycling about 100,000 pounds of cardboard a year, about 100,000 pounds of plastic pots and trays in our greenhouses. And we’re just switching over to an organic-based fertilizer.
Bonner: What we’re talking about here today, you can’t do it all. You have to say, “This is what I can do, this is what I’m going to do, and I’m going to focus on it.” We’re not prepared to make that step and we’re not going to grow organically. Sustainable is easier to do. For us it just doesn’t make sense right now. Down the road it might.

Q: How are you trying to eliminate disposables and waste in your operations?
Elenbaas: We are doing what we can, for instance in our tissue culture lab. Some labs put their material in plastic trays and then throw the tray away when they’re done. We use a lot of glass petri dishes and even Mason jars. We wash, sterilize and reuse this material.

We repair and reuse our wooden crates and cribs that we bring in from the field. If one’s broken, we repair it. In the office, all of our paper gets recycled.
Bonner: It’s not always easy, but it’s a great way you can have an impact. We don’t use corrugated cardboard, for instance. Less than one percent of what we ship is in boxes. We drop ship everything. We don’t run our trucks on diesel fuel; we run on vegetable oil. It’s the same horsepower and the same mileage. Our agreement with our fuel wholesaler is it’s a dollar cheaper than diesel all the time. It costs you $3,000 or $4,000 to convert your truck. Do the math. If you’re putting 40,000 to 50,000 miles per year on some of your primary vehicles, it makes sense real quick. It has nothing to do with the environment, it just makes good business sense. But what’s good for the environment, in this case, is good for your business.

I can also see us in the next three to five years trying to use as little plastic as possible.

Cole: At retail we waste a lot. We buy different size bags, we use trunk liners. No one has a uniform tray that everybody uses so we have a million different trays and cardboard carryouts.

There’s one thing I wanted to try and I’m not sure how it would work. Ninety percent of our customer base comes to the garden center one or two times – three times a year if we’re lucky. But maybe you’ve seen Whole Foods, for example. They have a canvas bag you can bring back every time you come and you save 10 cents every purchase. I wanted to print on our cardboard trays, “Bring this back and save 10 cents.” That cardboard tray, non-printed, costs me 33 cents, so if I can save 20 cents on every tray that comes back, I save money and I’m also limiting the amount of trash or recycling that’s going out every day.

Q: What advice do you have for smaller growers and retailers who can’t afford to consider biomass boilers or put $4,000 into their trucks to convert them to run on vegetable oil? How can they be more sustainable if they feel like they’re just trying to peddle as fast as they can to survive?
Cole: You don’t have to spend a lot of money to become sustainable. It’s just fine-tuning your business and finding where you can cut out costs.

For example, better watering practices is just an all-around good business practice to become sustainable. You aren’t going to grow a succulent next to a petunia, for example. That succulent doesn’t need as much water as the petunia. If you have non-ebb-and-flow benches, all that extra water is just draining to the floor. You’re wasting water and, in turn, could cause runoff. So you can save water by growing all of your petunias in a row and growing all of your succulents in a row. That’s one simple but good business practice to be sustainable, for example.

Elenbaas: I think that anyone could look at reducing costs, even if that’s maybe more efficient light fixtures. I know that we’re looking at ways we can trim our electric costs. About four years ago, we were considering adding onto our cold storage. Instead, we found a different way to pull orders and now we actually have our largest cooler shut down for a whole month, whereas before we would have had that cooler stocked full of plants. I think anyone in any kind of business can find ways to do things more efficiently, if you look long and hard.

Bonner: I have to say typically there’s going to need to be some capital investment to do anything, but you need to take what’s in front of you and think about it. Take what you have and do better with what you have. Any good business is going to do it that way. The ones that do it well continually reinvent themselves.

Q: As you’ve looked for ways to become more sustainable operations, what stumbles have you had along the way?
Elenbaas: We’ve made our share of mistakes, but you just keep moving forward. For example, we invested in a burner to burn corn back when it was about half the price it is now. It burned poor grade corn really well, but once we got a load of regular corn in, it just had too many starches and the combustion wasn’t as complete as it should have been. We ended up with a mass that gummed the whole system up. So we had to try other things. We experimented with rice hulls and a mixture of coal and rice hulls and we finally arrived at wood pellets that we get from a local furniture manufacturer. Things didn’t work out quite as we’d planned, so we had to make a little adjustment mid-flight.

Bonner: We experimented with TDF, tire-derived fuel. You can take recycled tires and burn them. I spent $5,000 for a permit to burn it, but after one load, we knew it wasn’t for us. For BTU values and costs, it’s the best. But it doesn’t work in our boiler. Our hot water boiler burns so hot that the TDF creates a gummed up mess. We were making glass in our boiler.
We made a mistake. It’s $5,000 out the window, but what are you going to do? You’re shooting from the hip sometimes, but you just keep trying.

Q: So what’s the future look like? Are we going to be talking about sustainability in 10 years?
Elenbaas: I would say in 10 years there will be some kind of a standard certification process. Our cost of fuels and our technology will probably be much different, and our customer base will probably be much different. Our businesses will be much different. We’ve gone through just an incredible amount of change just in the last five years at our company. But I would say there will probably be some kind of certification process. Will we all be growing organically? Probably not, but hopefully more sustainably.

Bonner: To really make a site sustainable, you take a grass field and you build something on it, but you don’t change what it gives to the environment. It’s a net zero operation. That’s where we’re going to be in 10 years. It’s where all things are going to be defined. That’s where the standards will come in.

Cole: On the retail side, there’s still some confusion now. But in 10 years I think it will be normal business practices. I think it’s already normal business practices in a lot of ways, and the definition of being sustainable just isn’t clear to a lot of people. Again, recycling is being sustainable. Five years from now there are going to be conferences and seminars on it. But it will be to further to educate you on how to better your business rather than how to be sustainable. ●

retailing green
Marketing Sustainability
Experts share their advice on effectively marketing and merchandising your earth-friendly offerings.


by Ann-Marie Conroy, Associate Editor
amconroy@meistermedia.com

So, you’re ready to commit to sustainability. You’ve got the products and you’ve got the knowledge. Now what? The sustainability movement has opened up a whole new world of opportunity for independent garden centers, as long as you know how to market it.

Placement Is Key
Getting customers to notice your earth-friendly offerings is the first step in becoming profitable with green products. Jeremy Brunner, vice president of natural plant food manufacturer and marketer The Espoma Company, says presentation is everything, and placement is critical. Espoma’s switch from paper packaging to plastic packaging created the ability for garden centers to display the product outside, closer to the plant material, which Brunner says has been a great success. “You need to get product outside,” he says. “You need to get product in as many places as possible.”

Susan Lewis, founder and president of organic pesticide company Pharm Solutions, says cross merchandising is key. Placing a bottle of Rose Pharm, for example, next to a rose bush display can increase your bottom line while keeping your customers happy, too. “The consumer is going to take home this beautiful rose in perfect health, and in three weeks it’s going to have black spot and rust,” Lewis says. She points out, though, that if you sell an earth-friendly pesticide like Rose Pharm along with each rose bush, customers will be a lot more likely to have success with the plant. “They’re going to be a much happier customer and come back and buy more roses,” she says.

Lewis also advises against displaying natural and organic products with all the chemicals. “The folks who are really organic and really earth friendly are not going down the pesticide aisle,” she says.

Greenscape Gardens in Manchester, Mo., carries not only a selection of environmentally friendly “natural garden solutions,” but also offers an array of native plants, which are all merchandised together in one area. Jennifer Schamber, Greenscape general manager, says that because native plants aren’t always the most attractive in plastic pots, Greenscape paints all the benching in the native plant area one color. The garden center chose purple because it matches the logo for Missouri’s native plant program, GrowNative! “We’ve seen a much greater interest in natives in the past two years, and we believe this will continue to be an important part of our perennials department,” she adds.

Schamber also says word of mouth is one of the best ways to create buzz around earth-friendly products. “I’ve found that customers can be the best salespeople to other customers, so if someone repeatedly buys an organic product, ask them to jot down a quick note to keep posted with that product, like ‘This one works! Great find! - Joe,’” she says. “People are very interested in sharing their knowledge with others when it comes to this subject. It gives them a sense of satisfaction in knowing that they are doing their part.”

Sell It Well
Many consumers aren’t 100 percent sure which products they need, so making sure they’re properly educated through effective signage is extremely important, says Brunner. “Certainly when it comes to the natural and environmentally friendly, you want signage and any kind of literature that can be consistent with that message and help promote the category,” he says. In addition to being attractive and grabbing consumers’ attention, product packaging needs to be informative, too. “It needs to be able to communicate the key benefits to people so they can make a decision,” Brunner says. “There’s a lot of evidence out there that shows that the majority of consumers are making these decisions at the point of sale, so packaging becomes critical in those kinds of environments.” He adds many garden centers don’t have the staff available to be everywhere and talk to everybody, so the packaging needs to be able to sell itself.

Employees play a big role in the marketing success of sustainable products, and making sure you and your staff are ahead of the curve is important. Both Brunner and Schamber agree that shopping your local competition and talking with other independents to see what they’re doing right and wrong can help you make the best decisions for your green campaign. Schamber also says it’s important for retailers to listen to customers’ opinions and take their interests into consideration. Also, make sure you’re properly labeling any locally grown plant material so customers are aware they’re supporting the local economy while being easier on the environment. “We proudly grow our perennials in pots with our name and with a large recycling symbol on the back,” says Schamber. “The interest is there, and this is the year to break free from the old routine.” ●

TV’s Joe Gardener Dishes On Sustainability

In his new book, “The Green Gardeners Guide: Simple, Significant Actions to Protect & Preserve Our Planet,” Joe Lamp’l (a.k.a. Joe Gardener), encourages gardeners to become environmental stewards. “I want to educate them on some really viable alternatives,” he says. “They need to (be shown ways to) create a more eco-friendly garden. I write about it in my book extensively, but the garden centers can be the place they go and actually see this stuff.”

So, what does Joe Gardener think garden centers should be doing to help promote sustainability and cater to the eco-friendly gardener?

“I want to hear the retailer provide an eco-friendly option or a natural option first without an apology,” he says. “Not making an apology on why they’re not selling English ivy or some common variety of honeysuckle that’s so invasive and so aggressive that it’s destroying our ecosystems and our biodiversity, and instead, provide another solution.

“I would love to see a way for garden centers to provide more safe, natural compost, because I believe compost is the single best soil amendment you can put in your garden.

“I also want to see more awareness. When consumers go in and buy mulch and soil, I want them to be aware that there’s a certification seal now from the Mulch & Soil Council that lets the consumer know that bag is safe and free from potentially harmful chemicals, such as arsenic from pressure-treated wood.
“I’d like to see them do fair trade products – have more sponsorship of local things – products that are local from sustainable sources, and maybe not so many plastic pots. There are more and more options these days for recyclable pots or pots that break down in the compost. I would like to see them eliminate that problem at the source by encouraging their suppliers to do something about it.

“More classes – more education. Certainly independent garden centers do a great job of hiring people that naturally are eco-friendly gardeners or are very conversant on that topic, but as I’m fond of saying about gardening, I don’t think we can ever know it all. We’re always learning, and we need to walk our talk in the garden center and as gardening communicators and demonstrate with things people can come and see.

“A garden center is a great place to develop that community and that destination site where people can go not only for their product, but for the information from a reliable and trusted source.”

Check your local listings for Joe’s television show, GardenSMART, on PBS, and visit his Web site at www.joegardener.com.    ●

Certifying Sustainability
The effort toward a sustainability standard is in the beginning stages.

by George Elliott

The term “stakeholders” calls to mind a scene from a vampire movie, with angry villagers about to go after the monster that has been terrorizing them. At the National Sustainable Agriculture Stakeholders Dialogue, sharpened sticks were not in evidence, but several pointed opinions were expressed in presentations and discussions.

The conference, held Feb 29 in Washington, D.C., was organized by the Leonardo Academy and Scientific Certification Systems (SCS). About 120 attendees represented a wide range of commodity groups, processors, agribusiness interests, government agencies and environmental advocacy groups.

Floriculture and nursery interests were well represented, by OFA and ANLA, as well as representatives from production and distribution companies. Joyce Latimer from Virginia Tech, Jim Barrett from the University of Florida and myself were the floriculturists among a handful of academics.

The meeting opened with a presentation by Michael Arny, president of Leonardo Academy. He explained how the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) process works, emphasizing the need for openness, due process and consensus building among diverse interests. The “Draft Standards For Trial Use” that represents the starting point was developed by SCS, based on the VeriFlora certification program for cut flowers and potted plants. SCS provided start-up funding to Leonardo Academy, a member of ANSI, to coordinate the development of a final standard. A committee responsible for drafting the final standards will be formed in April.

The morning session featured presentations on issues and concerns related to the content and framework of the standards. Presenters included James Riva, who manages compliance audits for USDA; Jason Wadsworth, sustainability specialist for Wegmans Food Markets; Jean-Mari Peltier, president of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives; Sharon “Boomer” Lauritsen, executive VP for food and agriculture of the Biotechnology Industry Organization; Bill Freese, of the Center for Food Safety; and John Foster, Sr. manager of organic integrity for Earthbound Farm.

While the idea of national standards seemed to have guarded support, critical comments dominated the discussion. The process itself was an issue; the draft standards were published prior to any stakeholder input. It remains to be seen how stakeholder input will be used to draft the final standards. Will producers, who will have to bear the cost, be adequately represented on the committee?

Organic Lite?
The relationship between “organic” and “sustainable” is an issue with several dimensions. Is “sustainability” going to be “organic lite” or “organic plus”? That is, will the standards allow practices that are not acceptable for organic production or will organic production be the goal? How far will the standards go to address issues that are not addressed by the National Organic Program, such as labor relations, food safety, packaging and energy use? Will a national standard for sustainable agriculture dilute the identity of the National Organic Program? Will consumers perceive a difference?

The most heated topic is genetic engineering. The draft standards prohibit the use of “Genetically Modified Organisms.” Many producers are unhappy with that stance, and the biotechnology industry predictably argued for technology-neutral standards. On the other hand, organic producers and environmental advocacy groups are strongly opposed and would likely have nothing to do with a standard that allowed genetically engineered crops.
Finally, potentially the biggest problem facing the committee will be drafting standards that will support measurable, verifiable, auditable assessments. At the same time, the standards have to be flexible enough to accommodate local needs and conditions. Will there be an opportunity for peer review of any certification program?

These topics and others were discussed during afternoon breakout sessions. I found my way to the table concerned with performance metrics. The discussion was candid and wide-ranging, but the need for performance metrics was mentioned repeatedly, as was the general lack of metrics in the proposed standard.

It’s way too early to say where all this will lead. The committee responsible for writing the final standard hasn’t even formed, and will have a couple of years’ work ahead of it. For floriculture, the big question will be, “How important is sustainability certification for our markets?” Obviously, it’s important for some producers or Florverde and VeriFlora wouldn’t exist. How many more producers want to be in the tent? Will the tent be big enough to accommodate them? Will it be worthwhile to pay the price of admission?

For draft standards and conference reports, visit the Leonardo Academy Web site. ●

About the author: George Elliott is an associate professor of horticulture at the University of Connecticut. You can e-mail him at george.elliott@uconn.edu.

Shades Of Green
Elzinga & Hoeksema, Marion Gardens and Ball Tagawa have responded to the green movement in differing ways.

Vision Quest

Elzinga & Hoeksema Greenhouses' revolutionary organic facilities demonstrate the future isn't too far off.

by Kevin Yanik, Assistant Editor
kmyanik@meistermedia.com

Only a handful of Midwestern growers have committed large portions of their greenhouses to the production of organics. Even fewer growers have built USDA-certified organic facilities from the ground up.

Count Mark Elzinga, president of Elzinga & Hoeksema, among the few. He recently opened a 4-acre organic greenhouse in Portage, Mich., near Kalamazoo, that will supply Meijer retail stores with a variety of branded organic vegetable and herb potted plants.

Among Elzinga’s branded products are Fresh Flavor vegetable plants, Fresh Flavor herb plants, Fresh Flavor gallon vegetable plants, Classic Flavor heirloom plants, Ethnic Flavor vegetable plants, Ethnic Flavor Herb plants, Urban Gardener patio pots, Micro greens and Herbal Home plants. More than 1.3 million organic plants will be produced in 2008.

“We’re really proud to be able to offer organic vegetables at Meijer,” Elzinga says, adding that having a 40-plus year relationship with Meijer has made this type of an investment and commitment possible.

Founded in 1962, Elzinga & Hoeksema now has more than 30 acres of greenhouse production at five facilities. Just the new facility has the organic certification, but Elzinga anticipates many new production practices will carry over to the other sites.

Working Wonders With Worm Poop
Elzinga & Hoeksema’s organic greenhouse feeds its plants with a living soil that includes vermicompost – or “worm poop” – among its ingredients. Vermicompost is brewed in two 500-gallon compost tea tanks and applied to plants through irrigation booms. The vermicompost is also a major reason why Elzinga & Hoeksema is so high on organics.

“Flowers seem to be bigger and brighter with organic,” says Roger Rosenthal, head grower at Elzinga & Hoeksema. “More organic practices can transfer over to non-organic and be better for employees, flowers and the environment.”

As alternatives to chemical inputs, the operation is using beneficial insects and growing a certain type of aphids in banker plants to keep beneficials fed. In tomato production, a brushing technique with overhead booms has kept plants compact without the use of plant growth regulators.
Other impressive features of this new-millennium greenhouse include energy-efficient equipment and renewable energy sources. The organic greenhouse has a closed-loop ground heat exchanger, a closed-loop pressurized hot water heating system, high-efficiency condensing boilers, in-floor heat, wind turbines and solar panels.

Two hundred solar panels stand outside the organic greenhouse and represent Elzinga & Hoeksema’s solar-geothermal energy system, which should provide 80 percent of the greenhouse’s heat. As a result, Elzinga & Hoeksema relies less on natural gas, and the organic greenhouse’s costs are down.

“Natural gas was $2.97 a unit when this project started,” says Elzinga, who started construction on the organic facility in June 2007. “It’s now $10 a unit. The organic facility saves 30 percent compared to a conventional greenhouse financially.”

Sustainability Is A Responsibility
Sustainability is high on Elzinga & Hoeksema’s list of things to do, too. Motion sensors for high-efficiency compact fluorescent lights, programmable thermostats and even paper recycling devices have all been installed.
“Our biggest non-organic product line is actually grown in a 100 percent recycled container,” Elzinga says. “We plan to expand our efforts by continuing to experiment with different eco-friendly plant container materials. We are committed to improving our efforts every year.”

And with thoughts like those in mind, Meijer is excited about carrying Elzinga & Hoeksema’s organic crops in more than 180 of its retail stores throughout five Midwestern states.

While Elzinga says he expects a modest return on investment in the first few years, he believes Elzinga & Hoeksema will benefit from a “responsible ROI” immediately. “Just the reduction of our carbon footprint alone to me justifies our efforts, not to mention the subsequent beneficial effects upon the earth,” Elzinga says. “Our responsibility – and the responsibility of all companies – doesn’t just lie in identifying the damage, but also in repairing and rectifying what damage we have already done.”   ●

Striving For Smaller Impact

For Ball Tagawa, sustainability is a journey, not a destination.

by Sara Tambascio, Managing Editor
satambascio@meistermedia.com

Plug and liner grower Ball Tagawa has always had the goal of moving towards having a smaller environmental impact. Its sustainability effort has always been completely internally driven, and so much has been refined over the last few years, the operation had very little transformation to complete to become certified to the VeriFlora standard.

Dave Pruitt, general manager of Ball Tagawa, chanced upon VeriFlora when Michael Keys, an auditor for VeriFlora’s certifying organization SCS, stopped in at Ball Tagawa for driving directions. When Pruitt realized who Keys was, the two sat down to talk about certification.

“When I assessed our business, I realized we weren’t that far away from being able to be certified,” Pruitt says. The biggest changes the facility had to make were restructuring a chemical storage facility and changing a few chemicals used.

Since about 25 percent of Ball Tagawa’s customers are in the cut flower industry, the part of the industry the VeriFlora certification process developed from, Pruitt figured certification would be a good business move. A few of the grower’s customers use Ball Tagawa’s certification in their own marketing programs.

Production And Social Responsibility
While Pruitt says he has nothing against organic production, he doesn’t see those kinds of processes being adopted at Ball Tagawa.

“I can’t see the true, overall advantage, or even the ability to do that. I’m not sure the end user really wants to have an organic pansy,” Pruitt says. “If we were doing a large vegetable or herb program, I would strongly consider it.”
While part of sustainability does involve production, there is also a community aspect that can’t be forgotten. Pruitt serves on the board of a local greenhouse association, participates in the America In Bloom effort and collects donations for high school and college scholarships in horticulture during a one-day open house.

Along with these community-based efforts, Ball Tagawa will continue to make existing systems more sustainable because, as Pruitt says, sustainability is all about process. “It’s more about the progression you make,” he says. “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” He recommends that other growers read through sustainability requirements like VeriFlora’s with an open mind.

“There are a lot of things in there that are really valuable,” he says. “It depends on where you’re coming from with how you run your business and how solid financially your it is. If facilities haven’t been improved and updated, they may have a lot longer to go.”    ●

Ups & Downs Of Organics

by Laura Drotleff, Managing Editor
lhdrotleff@meistermedia.com

As the industry shifts toward sustainable production and more growers look into the many different definitions of “growing green,” certified organic production is, of course, a topic of great interest and speculation. Though many growers of floriculture crops don’t feel compelled to invest the time, money or energy to become certified organic producers, as floral crops are not “consumed” as food crops are, others are committing 100 percent to this most stringent method.

Marion Gardens of East Marion, N.Y., is one example. The grower produces 70 varieties of certified organic vegetables and herbs, including several varieties this year from vegetative stock, like rosemary, spearmint, lemon thyme and African Blue Basil, says owner Walter Gaipa. Now in its second year with organic certification, Gaipa says everyone at Marion Gardens “feels it is just a better way to grow. It is better for the environment and better for the customers and better for us. There is a significant difference in the growing practices, and we have been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the products.”

The certification process to become an organic producer is a long one, Gaipa says. For Marion Gardens, the application process alone took five months initially.

“Every aspect of your operation has to be accounted for,” Gaipa says. “This includes recordkeeping of everything you put into your crop. You must keep receipts and document everything you apply to your plants. If you want to use a new product, you have to get permission first from your certifying agency.”
In addition to extensive time commitments, the financial investment of becoming and staying certified organic is much higher. The growing media Marion Gardens now uses costs 40 percent more than conventional mixes, Gaipa says, and pest control products are softer and require more monitoring. He also thinks ornamental growers would find the process much more difficult, especially when converting sections of an operation to organic practices and keeping other sections conventional.

“It is more expensive to have a split operation,” Gaipa says. “Equipment used for both must be cleaned and documented between uses. Plants must be segregated during shipping. Water lines for the certified plants must be separate from the conventional plants. We have constructed a designated greenhouse for the certified plants and no other plants can go into that house.”

This year, Marion Gardens’ entire pest control program for certified and non-certified plants will be OMRI approved, and the operation is about to do the same with its fertilizer program to become 100 percent certified organic.
“I would like to be 100 percent certified; it would actually be easier, even though it’s more expensive,” Gaipa says. “But I have to admit, it gives us a really good feeling knowing what we are doing. Being able to display the USDA Organic logo is almost like wearing a badge. Our certified plants are grown in a different color pot with a distinctive label. This year, approximately 15 percent of our plants will be certified organic. Of our 30,000 square feet of greenhouses, we designate 2,000 square feet of certified only, but the effort, due to the requirements, is double that.”
For other growers looking into organic production as an option, Gaipa says the paperwork is daunting, which could scare some people off. Sales haven’t yet increased dramatically, although the business does charge a premium for certified organic plants.

“Interestingly enough, many retailers did not mark up the plants and sold them at the same price as our conventionally grown plants,” Gaipa says. “On the other hand, our son does charge a premium at our retail operation and customers do not complain at all.”

A final word of advice from Gaipa: “Do your research ahead of time. It’s like learning another language.” ●

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• Mixing Up Organics
  Growing media is one more product category that has gone green.
  
  
• Ahead Of The Curve
  Two plant producers lead the way in promoting sustainable and organic growing practices.
  
  
• Impact Of Fungicides On Natural Enemies
  How compatible are fungicides with natural enemies?
  
  
• A Greener Pot
  Western Pulp Products' fiber pots meet consumers' green expectations.
  
  
• Healthy And Earth Friendly
  Sustainable fertilizers and pest and disease control products get plants back to their natural roots.
  
  
• Profiting Responsibly
  Florida-based Fraleigh Nursery has developed an environmentally friendly system for growing high-quality container plants.