Tag: Keeping Plants Healthy

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Celebrate Earth Day Every Day

Celebrate Earth Day Every Day

There has been a flurry of information and advertisement relating to this past Earth Day. This time of year, we encourage everyone to take a step back and reflect. What have you done in the past to improve our planet? What new things can you do to better our Earth?

In reality, Earth Day is not a day that comes once a year. If we had lived in the Vince Lombardi era, we would have heard him say, “winning is not a sometime thing, it is an all the time thing.”

This principle applies to our stewardship of the planet. Just imagine if everyone thought this way about Earth Day—that it is an everyday celebration, not just an annual one.

Plant Material is Critical

In America, planting is key. Raising plants successfully is vital to creating the necessary carbon sinks that help clean the air and better our planet. To ensure this success, it is important that we plant trees, shrubs, and ground covers in the right place.

Plant Sentry™ operates beyond the scope of shipping legal plants to the place of planting. We want to ensure that planting success is achieved at the highest of levels.

Of course, this starts with purchasing compliant plants that meet all regulatory requirements. When shipped plants arrive, a large portion of their growing success depends on the tender care provided by you, the consumer. It is therefore helpful to understand the essential factors of planting.

Proper Care of Plants Reduces Pests and Diseases

A single environment can have a range of planting variables, including soil types, sun to shade ratios, wind patterns, and moisture content, provided either by you or Mother Nature herself. It is important to consider the amount of water in the area, particularly.

Homes with gutters and large roof surface areas can dump great amounts of water into the planting environment. Most people overlook this, and it can lead to accidental overwatering that increases root rot pathogens. Additionally, any undue stress on a tree increases its odds of hosting pests, pathogens, and weeds.

Trees are often planted without mulch, but mulch provides insulation for the new roots while keeping lawn mowers and weed whackers away from the collars and trunks. In fact, these two machines are the number one reason why trees never make it to old age. Damage to these tree regions increases the likelihood of secondary bacterial and fungal cankers among other pests like borers.

Finally, proper fertilization – in combination with a good biological root stimulant – can help keep plants at optimal health. This will keep unwanted weeds and invasive insect and plant species at bay.

All things considered, the care you provide your plant from day one will help ease the growing transition. Supplemental care will become a breeze each day of the plant’s life.

In retrospect, Earth Day is every day. Every day that you enjoy your plants is what makes the experience incredible. The care you give will keep them healthy for years to come. Please, take the time to enjoy your plants. Earth Day is every day, and Plant Sentry™ is here to support it.

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Plant Shipment: It’s More Than the Box

Plant Shipment: It’s More Than the Box

Plants are being shipped from state to state more frequently today than ever before. Most consumers are unaware of what’s involved to ship and deliver healthy plants without significant economic and environmental risks.

Shipping Plants Successfully is Not Easy

Some companies claim that their boxing technique is better than the competitors. Does this single step guarantee you are getting the best plant? Certainly not, industry best practices now include certified processes that ensure plants have been cared for properly and verified not to spread harmful pests, diseases, or invasive species.

The Plant Sentry™ process starts by working with state and federal officials. We ensure that every step is followed to the letter of the law, and we support growers in their compliance efforts before they ship a plant intra- or interstate. The entire inspection team places another set of eyes on each step in the critical process needed to get you a healthy plant.

How do you know this inspection has taken place? You should know immediately, as each plant article must contain a general plant inspection certificate issued by the state. In some cases, there may even be a federal shield on the outside of the box.

These established guidelines help protect our valuable resources—including agricultural commodities, urban municipalities, water, and the environment—from billions of dollars in damage each year. The utilization of state and federal inspectors is a great help in saving your hard-earned tax dollars.

Thinking Outside the Box…

It’s true that not all boxes are created equal. However, it’s not just the box that protects the plant. Growing techniques, inspections, and care along the way all play a big part in protecting plants.

Most online vendors do not have standard operating procedures to make sure the plant care is consistent and regulated. At Plant Sentry™, we employ the rigid guidelines of the American Standards for Nursery Stock and align with the Systems Approach to Nursery Certification Standards (SANC) among all other sustainability practices and the latest science generated by our best universities.

At Plant Sentry™, we work with growers to achieve successful shipping of healthy plants to your door. We listen to renowned universities, knowledgeable state and federal officials, and most importantly, we listen to you. Fine attention to detail, grower and staff empowerment, team engagement, and assistance from state and federal officials is a systems approach you will not find outside of Plant Sentry™.

Our e-commerce certification sets us apart from the rest. A healthy plant grown at its original location and shipped fresh to you is the best prospect. It is no different than picking a fresh green bean from the garden. Wouldn’t you feel more confident purchasing a plant through a certified source?

You could have the best box design in the world, but it is only one small component of a larger, critical process. Choose Plant Sentry™ certified growers and retailers to ensure your plants and the environment are considered with integrity at every stage of the plant shipping process.

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Plant Sentry™ Maximizes Your Profits

Plant Sentry™ Maximizes Your Profits

Plant Sentry™ is Very Easy to Use

Nurseries across the country are taking a serious look at Plant Sentry™. Their goal in using the tool to protect their business in the face of an ever-changing regulatory climate.

Here’s how it works. It starts with providing your botanical plant inventory and the locations you ship from and to. From there, the Plant Sentry™ team audits each plant article and identifies the state and federal regulations for pests, diseases, and invasive species for your plants and locations. Once complete, you’ll have access to your database of plants & shipping restrictions through our web portal and you’ll receive a suggested compliance list for each plant article that may need some resolution.

This includes general purpose information as to why it a plant article may not be shippable to a particular state. The information will alert you with simple reasoning: often pest, disease, or invasive plant. This analysis helps prevent the accidental shipment of the plant article in question that may pose a threat to shipment region.

Each plant article with reasoning should be submitted to your state or federal regulatory official. We’ll provide information that will help you coordinate with the appropriate officials. Then, your state and/or federal official will instruct you on what needs to be done to become compliant if a pathway exists for shipment of the plant article.

Once compliant, you will be able to add the blocked states back onto plant availability and shipment lists, enabling you to re-open that market. If there are multiple regulatory items, you must decide which ones are feasible or economical for you based on the product that the market will serve. Thus, every plant article you receive compliance for adds more markets to your list to serve.

Plant Sentry™ also offers more stringent guidance for plants that may be in question.  Hence, Plant Sentry™ provides you with vital plant regulatory information to determine whether a plant is safe to ship to an area. This is part of our unique model in which multiple methods are utilized to ensure we reach the green industry’s goal of minimizing, reducing, and eliminating the spread of pests.

This leading approach adds one more line of defense to place the right plant in the right environment. You’ll be able to maximize out on happy customers and profits while keeping your company image intact.

Additional, innovative developments to the Plant Sentry™ Approach align with our continued improvement motto. Plant Sentry™ not only helps point you in the right direction for efficiently completing processes needed for full compliance, but it also offers direction on plant inspection, assistance in locating state or federal official contact information, and guidance as to how to interact with the regulatory officials.

In addition, this approach can deliver sound educational advice to aid in making solid economic decisions based on any plant issues in question. Our team’s years of production experience, combined with our work alongside established organizations and use of predictor tools, can help determine future outcomes of plants and their potential effects on the environment, agriculture commodities, and more.

Expansions coming soon will further allow for faster processing, making it easier to get the information you need. Extra features will include alerting you to an unrecognizable container size. Altogether, it is our priority to listen to our extensive network of professional growers that includes some of the nation’s best.

The information growers provide is crucial to optimizing the tools that will help their businesses. Most importantly, our mission of continued improvement will remain highly regarded as Plant Sentry™ moves forward in advancing the green industry.