Learning Opportunity: Cut Flowers and Sustainable Substrates

Posted by Brian Sparks|October 6, 2023

American Floral Endowment’s Grow Pro Webinar Series continues this fall with two important educational discussions. On Nov. 21, Dr. Roberto Lopez of Michigan State University highlights cut flower production in the northern U.S. Are some of your cut flowers too early and others too late? Many cut flowers are daylength sensitive and providing the correct photoperiod during the plug and finishing stages can greatly impact time to harvest, stem length, and number of harvestable stems. Dr. Lopez will also show you how the light quality provided by supplemental lighting can influence time to harvest and quality of crops requiring long day lengths.

On Dec. 19, Dr. James Altland of USDA-ARS will present on “Technologies and Strategies for Sustainable Substrates in Containerized Crop Production.”

Greenhouse and nursery producers have been filling containers uniformly with peat- and pine bark-based substrates for the past 60 years. Instead of filling the entire container with the same substrate, new research is exploring ideas of layering or stratifying substrates in containers to improve plant performance, reduce agrichemical leaching, and reduce substrate costs. Substrate stratification can dramatically improve weed control, reduce fertilizer leaching, reduce fertilizer costs, reduce water stress, and improve overall plant performance. This seminar will present concepts in stratifying substrates and how this opens up a myriad of new ideas and approaches for solving production-related problems.

Learn more about each of these presentations, and register, here.