in Your Greenhouse Business
By Brian D. Sparks, Senior Editor, Greenhouse Grower
Matt Foertmeyer of Foertmeyer & Sons Greenhouse in Ohio and Roger McGaughey of Pioneer Gardens in Connecticut have two things in common. In addition to being past finalists for Greenhouse Grower’s Head Grower of the Year award, they are firm believers in the value of using biocontrols. In a recent conversation, the two of them offer advice on how you can get the most out of your biologicals program.
“I think most people who are successful with biocontrols recognize that it's not a one-size-fits-all approach for everybody in the industry,” Foertmeyer says. “You have to figure out a strategy that fits the crops you grow, the way you grow your crops, and the timing of your crop.”
Scouting is of paramount importance, McGaughey says. It’s more than just checking yellow sticky cards; it’s also recognizing the different pests you find, and the damage they can cause.
“There's a ton of information out there on how to use biocontrols correctly,” Foertmeyer says. “What we've done is create integrated pest management (IPM) guides that we can use as training materials for everybody that's involved in pest management and scouting so they can get a real understanding of the overarching strategy that we have at Foertmeyer & Sons.”
“Scouting is a labor-intensive process, but you have to be willing to bite the bullet and accept it,” McGaughey says. “If you’re doing it right, it’s going to take a lot of time, but you’re going to see the benefits.”
“We have a grower that runs our IPM program, and she has a team that reports to her,” Foertmeyer says. “I give her the responsibility of training, and she finds individuals that she thinks have a great attention to detail and are more likely to be successful as scouters.”
“We developed spreadsheets of all our zones and benches that we can use as a recording tool to go back four or five years to see any problems we had back then,” McGaughey says. “That way, we can trace the likelihood of pests back to everything from timing to temperature.”
The IPM manager at Foertmeyer & Sons starts training her team one pest at a time to help build a foundation of knowledge. Once the team is comfortable with recognizing one pest, she moves on to another.
“Using biocontrols effectively starts with being proactive by definition,” McGaughey says. “You don’t want to be behind the eight-ball, or your program is going to fail. The minute you feel like you’re reacting to something, you’re doing it wrong.”
“You definitely want to advertise your use of biocontrols to your customer base,” Foertmeyer says. “We also use it as a recruiting tool. A lot of our potential job candidates say they don’t want to be around pesticides, so we use our beneficials program to our advantage.”
“Do whatever you can to help your team learn as much as possible,” he says. “It’s important that people understand what they’re looking for, both the good bugs and the bad bugs, so you can see the results.”
Just as there’s a lot of expertise in the field of biocontrols from people who have been doing research for years, it’s also easy to find information that is inaccurate, and may even get you the opposite result of what you were expecting.
“Find the right information from experts you trust and use it, and ignore the rest,” McGaughey says.
Matt Foertmeyer and Roger McGaughey each agreed on much of the management advice offered here, but there were two themes that especially stood out. The first is to lean on the experts.
“There are [great industry consultants and other experts] who are not only knowledgeable, but are free and open with their time,” Foertmeyer says. “You can learn things from them that you never expected to learn.”
Because biocontrols is still an emerging field, the best practices from five years ago are probably outdated.
The second rule of thumb is to constantly expand your knowledge base.
“Attend webinars, go to meetings, and read trade magazines,” McGaughey says. “Then use that information to get your message across to the people on your team who may not see it.”
“You have to be constantly improving on it,” Foertmeyer says.
