Digger magazine

Written to make you a nursery industry expert.

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Winter is coming

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This might sound like a plug for Game of Thrones — after all, the Season Eight premiere isn’t that far away! But seriously, winter isn’t just coming, as they say. It’s here. Preparations must be undertaken. From a grower’s standpoint, we are almost done getting the plants ready to survive the winter. Some growers, meanwhile, […]

The Pacheco brothers

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Four decades ago, Doug Zielinski — then a recent Oregon State University graduate, fresh off an internship at Kraemer’s Nursery  — decided to chase a dream by becoming a fourth generation farmer. Doug’s father, Ernie, had taken over the farm when he was just 15 years old, after Doug’s grandfather, Charlie, suddenly passed away. The […]

Support is critical

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My name is Mike Hiller, I work at Kraemer’s Nursery in Mt. Angel, Oregon, and I am proud to be your new OAN president. But how did I find myself in this position? Several years ago, Mike Coleman approached me to consider joining the Executive Committee of the OAN Board of Directors. I asked him […]

Common questions from the summer

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It probably goes without saying that it has been a long, hot summer and early fall. With record high temperatures and little or no rain, one might have expected customers to stay away from garden centers. However, this was not the case. Customers continued to shop for plants and also relied heavily on garden centers […]

Honoring the past and charting the future

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The Oregon nursery industry was built with the sweat of our earliest growers. Blessed with some of the best soil in the country, their hard work transformed unknown markets into opportunities. There is an old photograph that is at the OAN office, and I pass it every day. It looks to be in the mid-1930s […]

When the well runs dry

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When it comes to social media, customers expect to hear from the brands they love regularly. That means you need to post multiple times a week — maybe even every day! Maintaining a good social media page — whether on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, wherever — is often a lot of fun, but let’s be […]

No sanctuary from anger

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As the fall campaign season ramps up during September, voters will be learning more about the candidates running for various leadership positions. U.S. Congress, the Oregon Legislature, county commissioners, city councils —  they’ll all be on the ballot. Oregon also has a long history of citizen initiatives. In the past, voters have had the opportunity […]

A favorite ‘holiday’

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Growing up in a typical American household, we had all the usual holidays, such as New Year’s Day, Easter, Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. We celebrated birthdays too, just like many of the rest. But growing up in an Oregon nursery family, there was one more “holiday” — the Farwest Show. As far back as […]