Spring-Season Debrief

Let’s put a bow on spring ... Actually, we’re encouraging you to do a bit of reflection before tying said bow.

PROBLEM: We’re past Mother’s Day, and now the focus is on shipping finished material and retail sales. It’s critical to get plants out the door ASAP, but this time of year it’s equally important to take time to reflect upon challenges from the spring growing season. Before mum production really takes off, be deliberate and carve out time to recap and reflect upon your spring crop challenges.

NICK’S TIP: It’s easy to get caught up in the retail raucous, move on and miss out on important opportunities to improve for next spring. If we had a nickel for every time a grower told us, “I know this happened last year, but I can’t remember why …” We’d have a LOT of nickels!

With everything that can go wrong in the greenhouse, analysis paralysis makes it difficult to decide which crop-related challenges to address first. Rome wasn’t built in a day, as the saying goes, so take a step back and look at the issues you encountered at a higher level to set your priorities. Here’s our approach:

1. Make a list of five to ten crops that you struggled with this spring.

• Rank them in order of which had the biggest impact on your bottom dollars—things like crop failure, issues that increased cost of production, or poor sell-through.
• The bigger the impact on your bottom dollar, the higher it should be ranked.

2. Take items that can, beyond a shadow of a doubt, be attributed to suppliers (ex. dead plants on arrival, late shipment of inputs, disease/pests shipped to you) and move them to a separate list.

• Type up a quick email to your sales rep(s) and let them know you’d like to discuss how to address similar issues next year.
• Get it off your desk—and your chest—while the info is still fresh. Circle back to it the next time you and your rep(s) sit down to discuss booking future orders.

3. For the remaining crops, do a detailed breakdown for each based on all the knowns and unknowns. The goal is to identify one or two changes (max) that can be made next year to improve crop quality or prevent failure.

Start With Crop Records

This part of the process is “garbage in, garbage out,” and it starts with good recordkeeping. If you do not keep records in-season, it will be very difficult to identify the root cause of crop issues and improve your success in subsequent seasons. Remember: you do not have to write an essay to summarize how you have grown each crop.

• Place a clipboard with blank pieces of paper or make a simple template on your computer and print it out to capture key info on each crop throughout the season. If you need to construct this retroactively, do it now while the info is still relatively fresh in your mind.
• Record info like greenhouse or bench designator (so you know where the crop was placed), soil used, date crops were planted, and general cultural and environmental info like greenhouse temp setpoints, fertilizer (N-P-K and ppm N), irrigation/fertigation frequency, and dates that other inputs were applied to the crop. It’s best to write in pencil or industrial ink (non-water-soluble) in case your notes get wet.
• These records can live in the greenhouse and be collected at the end of the season for review, or you can keep a binder (or spreadsheet on a tablet, if you’re fancy) that you carry around with you each day as you’re managing the greenhouse.

Crop-Specific Breakdown

For each crop on your list, identify the most likely cause(s) that led to crop failure or poor quality. Start with the 5 factors of plant growth (5FPG) and then include pest and pathogen pressure.

Light, water, mineral nutrients, temperature and gas exchange are the 5FPG. Plants require all of these in appropriate amounts to grow and develop properly. When one (or more) of these factors is out of optimum range for what the plant needs, issues will occur.

Here are a few examples of how each of the 5FPG can influence crop quality and issues.

• Light—Affects how much plants can photosynthesize. Directly impacts things like total growth/plant size and number of flowers.
• Water—Drives the physical force behind cell expansion (turgor). Affects plants’ ability to take up and move nutrients like calcium (Ca) and boron (B).
• Mineral nutrients—Provide the physical building blocks for plant growth.
• Temperature—Controls the rate at which things occur, such as leaf unfolding rate, speed of flower development, and plant-water relations (uptake of water by roots and transpiration).
• Gas exchange—Ability to absorb cardon dioxide affected how much plants can photosynthesize, and oxygen absorption in the rootzone affects respiration (plant’s ability to turn stored sugars into usable energy for growth).
• Identify one or two (max) of the factors that you can exert the most direct control over. Be sure to include factors like water, mineral nutrients and temperature when examining pest- and disease-related concerns.

If you’re not sure which factors most likely caused the problem, that’s okay! Compile your crop culture notes and reach out to your favorite diagnostician (you can reach the Ball Seed Technical Services Team HERE). And don’t be shy—even if you are fairly certain of what caused the problem, it can be helpful to have another perspective on the issue!

Identify the Over-arching Trend(s)

You’ll often find that the same cultural or environmental factors cause issues across multiple crops in a given season. In this way, this process of digging into the 5FPG for each crop can help you “see the forest for the trees” and identify problems at a higher level, rather than on an overwhelming crop-by-crop basis.

• However, remember that two or more of these factors can affect the same crop issue.
• For example, plants can become leggy and overgrown due to low light (shade avoidance response), excess turgor (due to overwatering), high DIF (difference between day and night temp), and excessive fertilizer applications (particularly too much phosphorus).
• The common threads across your list of crop challenges are what you should focus on.

Make Action Plans for Each Crop

It can be tempting to change many things at once to solve a problem. New growing media, different fertilizer, water quality adjustments and a new heating system may sound good in concept, but resist the urge. Focus on those one or two underlying factors that most likely caused issues. If you change too many things at once and a new issue arises, it can be even harder to pinpoint the cause. Oftentimes in this situation, growers default to “going back to what they did before” and have to endure another season of the same issue before solving anything.

Make a plan to shore up your (and your growing team’s) knowledge in each identified area. Outline specific steps you and/or your team will take to ensure everyone is on the same page, adjust crop culture, and optimize each respective factor of plant growth the next time these crops are on the bench.

For example, if overwatering is a key factor across crop issues that you identify:

• Schedule time during the slow season to go over irrigation and moisture management training with your team.
• Look for local university extension programs on the topic, attend trade shows with educational programming, and seek out online training resources (like the Tech On Demand YouTube playlist on watering).
• Set measurable action thresholds for when to water. There are quick and easy ways to do this with strategies like Water By Weight (more info HERE).
Establish a benchmark for success. Metrics like % planted vs % shipped/sold are easy to track. Quantifying total gallons of water applied to a crop, by comparison, is not.

There are always new challenges in the greenhouse, and the best way to confront them is now while they are fresh in your mind. Prioritize what will have the biggest economic impact, keep good notes, make conservative adjustments, and use quantifiable metrics to ensure success. And, as always, don’t hesitate to reach out to your favorite technical specialist for help if you need guidance!