The National Horticulture Foundation has your back, ornamental foliage growers. The non-profit is showing its support by recently allocating $30,000 for a two-year research project undertaken by Dr Jianjun Chen at the University of Florida’s Mid-Florida Research and Education Center in Apopka, Florida. That research project will be investigating and hoping to mitigate edema in ornamental foliage plants.

Dr. Jianjun Chen will set to work on researching edema in ornamental foliage plants.

What exactly is edema? Also called intumescence injury, it’s a physiological disorder occurring primarily in plant leaves—and in ornamental foliage, that’s the prettiest and most obvious part of the plant. Its symptoms include abnormal, translucent, warty growth bulging out of the leaves or a water-soaked appearance with swollen areas. Some of the crops impacted by edema include important ornamental foliage plants such as Aphelandra, Begonia, Bromeliads, Dianthus, Ficus, Hibiscus, Peperomia, Philodendron and Sansevieria. Addressing edema issues is a very important way to maintain your ornamental foliage crops’ marketability.

Dr. Chen’s research will look into different environmental factors and cultural practices that affect edema. He’ll also develop methods for minimizing edema’s occurrence in crops.

I hope to report back to you folks in two years with some useful takeaways from Dr. Chen’s research. Stay tuned!

The first-ever book devoted specifically to the Western Flower Thrips is now available. Written by Dr. Raymond Cloyd, professor in the Department of Entomology at Kansas State University and a frequent Ball Publishing contributor, “Wester Flower Thrips: Insect Pest of Greenhouse Production Systems” is a comprehensive overview of this pest with chapters on its biology, damage, management and insecticide resistance.

Who’s this book for? Any greenhouse producer worldwide. It’ll help you understand and take smart steps to control this tiny beast. Each chapter gives you a comprehensive and current review of the Western Flower Thrips, helping you to integrate both practical and applied information. You’ll appreciate the latest information in management approaches—scouting, trapping and the like—as well as insecticide use, resistance and mitigation strategies and biocontrols. And it has nearly 50 helpful illustrations too.

Find your copy at APS Press.

Tropical ornamental foliage plants appear not once, but twice in the National Garden Bureau’s just-released 2025 Year Of program. The Year Of categories of which I speak and their featured species are:

2025 Year of the Bulb: Caladium

2025 Year of the Houseplant: Monstera

Consumer promotion for the 2025 Year Of plants will begin in November. But NGB is making it way easier for growers and retailers to make plans for this national marketing campaign by releasing these gorgeous hand-painted logos and creative marketing tools to you now.

To access any of the free marketing materials, just head over HERE to receive a link to download any of those tools, which includes custom, pre-written social media posts, tons of photos of these crops, posters, signs and more. Select 2025 tools are already available now; others will be uploaded through late summer and early fall.

If you’ll be at Cultivate this year, do check out NGB’s 2025 Year Of display in the Convention Center’s concourse to take a gander at all six Year Of categories.

The 33rd Annual Caladium Festival is set to take place from July 26 - 28, 2024, in Lake Placid, Florida. This tiny nook in Central Florida, known as the Caladium Capital of the World, has the perfect climate for growing these amazing ornamentals. So perfect, in fact, that Lake Placid grows more than 90% of the world’s caladium bulbs on more than 1,200 acres.

“After a challenging growing season in 2023, we are thrilled to be back with a three-day event this year,” said Jennifer Bush, Executive Director of the Greater Lake Placid Chamber of Commerce. “The Caladium Festival is the highlight of our growers’ year, and with a much better growing season this time around, we’ll have an exceptional array of caladiums for everyone to enjoy.”

There are tours of the fields with caladium pros, of course, and the event also features a car and bike show, live entertainment, an arts and floral arrangement competition, vendor booths and even a steam-powered train.

Hey, Bossman Beytes, now that you live in Central Florida, you should go! Head over to the Caladium Festival website to find out more information.