Digger magazine

Written to make you a nursery industry expert.

Metro chief calls for more infill

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Most of the Oregon nursery industry is concentrated in Clackamas, Marion, Washington, Multnomah and Yamhill counties, around the major metropolitan areas of Portland and Salem. Metro manages future planning for the most urbanized portions of three of those counties (Clackamas, Washington, Multnomah). So it was especially noteworthy for nurseries yesterday when Metro Executive Officer Mike […]

Blooming with innovation

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Blooming Nursery is turning to an inexpensive energy source – the sun – to help heat its propagation greenhouses in the winter. The Cornelius, Ore.-based grower, known for its perennials, has contracted with Ra Energy, which will install a solar energy system with 350 collection units. The system will heat some 300,000 gallons of water […]

APHIS considers regulating wood in shipping

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The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is considering proposed rule changes involving wood packaging material used in domestic commerce, such as crates, pallets and sticks. Nurseries commonly use pallets and sticks when shipping plant material, but such wood material unwittingly could transport unwanted and dangerous hitchhikers, such as the emerald ash borer and […]

Time for OktoberPest!

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If you show up in lederhosen clutching a beer stein, it means you probably didn’t read the announcement very carefully. OktoberPest is a yearly series of pest management workshops held every October at the North Willamette Research and Extension Center in Aurora, Ore, and the agenda (PDF) for 2009 is now available. The dates are […]

Practically green

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SPROut, the Sustainable Plant Research and Outreach Center, is offering a couple of upcoming all-day workshops of note. The details: Ecological Design Principles for Water Treatment – Saturday, Sept. 26Ecological design principles have been the basis for many commercially-available, plant-based engineered systems for water treatment such as Living Machines, Eco-Machines, and Lake Restorers. Applications of these […]

It’s official – Climate Friendly Nurseries Project launched

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The Oregon Association of Nurseries and the Oregon Environmental Council have created a partnership known as the Climate Friendly Nurseries Project, the two organizations announced Thursday morning at the 2009 Farwest Show in Portland, Ore. Over the next three years, the partners will work together to help nurseries to reduce energy use and emissions of […]

Pay by scam

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Increasingly, mass market retailers are paying wholesale nurseries for plants only when (and if) they are sold to the consumer. It’s called “pay by scan” (excuse the typo in the headline). The grower absorbs the cost of any plants that die or are stolen, and they also pay to keep them alive on store shelves […]

Climate Friendly Nurseries Project to be announced

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Next week, the Oregon Association of Nurseries and the Oregon Environmental Council will announce the launch of the new Climate Friendly Nurseries Project. Its purpose?: Through the CFN project, nurseries can quantify their energy and resource use and greenhouse gas emissions, and identify specific ways to reduce both. The project team will help participating nurseries […]

USDA’s new Conservation Stewardship Program up and running

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture is accepting applications for its new Conservation Stewardship Program, a voluntary program providing financial aid and technical assistance for agricultural and forestry producers that adopt or maintain certain conservation activities (PDF). The program was authorized by the 2008 Farm Bill, and enrollment will be limited to 12,769,000 acres during each […]

25,000 more H-2B visas made available

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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced last week that more than 25,000 additional H-2B guest worker visas are now available for the 2009 filing period. Petitions will be accepted immediately. The agency had announced way back in January that all 66,000 visas allocated for fiscal 2009 were already spoken for, nine months before the […]