Grow Food, Not Lawns

I receive an industry magazine and found this advertisement for General Organics on the back. It's one of the first ad's I have seen where a fertilizer company is promoting the idea of food over lawns.

We sell General Organics, and I like this proactive approach. While the industry struggles to explain why it continues to sell systemic pesticides possibly linked to Bee Colony Collapse, these people have seen the future, and left all the other fertilizer companies behind.

Is that a tattoo of the Twitter bird on the lady? Check out the neighbors lawns. The ad suggests that it's "hip" to grow veggies, even if your neighbors don't. How much you want to bet these people have a "alternative" garden out back?

The caption below the couple say's, "General Organics provides your plants with complete and wholesome nutrition from start to finish. With GO you can grow your own fresh & healthy produce and your friends and family will enjoy the fruits of your labors."

Look out mainstream fertilizer companies. The magazine is from a hydroponic industry trade journal. Yup, the hydro trade is gunning for more "mainstream" garden dollars as we talked about in the past. 

Fungus threatens both ash trees and British nurseries.

According to The Guardian, "A fungus that has already affected 90% of ash trees in Denmark over the past seven years has now been detected in a handful of locations in the UK. If our government does not act urgently, warns the Woodland Trust, all Britain's estimated 80m ash trees could be lost to the fungal disease known as "ash dieback".  The Guardian say's, "Nurseries infected with the deadly fungus set to wipe out Britain's 80m ash trees have been removed from the official map of the outbreak the Guardian can reveal, after nursery owners complained that being identified might hurt their business."

While some nurseries are happy to be removed from the map others like "Judy Davey, who runs the Perrie Hale Forest Nursery near Honiton in Devon  said she had publicized the fact that an infected ash plant, bought from another UK nursery, had been discovered.  We decided to take the bull by the horns...we wanted people to know we were controlling this disease. Davey, whose nursery is in its third generation of family ownership, said the overall impact on the business "'has not been as bad as we feared'".

There is no cure for the disease.