Have I gotten your attention? With fluctuations in energy prices and input prices increasing, it’s vital for growers to understand where they can have better control of their costs to impact the bottom line. That’s why we are offering a FREE webinar Thursday, May 5 (that's like now!) at 1 p.m. Eastern/Noon Central called “Control Your Growing Environment, Control Your Costs.”

Environmental controls expert Dirk Sprangers from Argus Controls, along with Shawn Cooney, a CEA lettuce and hemp grower and co-founder of the Sustainable Cannabis Coalition, will discuss how automating your growing environment can lead to a more profitable and sustainable operation.

You will learn:

• If you have the right equipment installed
• The potential ROI for various investments in energy efficiency
• Environmental control system capabilities for managing your equipment
• Control tips for energy conservation
• How to leverage “smart” irrigation and fertigation
• Innovations coming from “plant-centric” controls suppliers
• And much more!

Sign up today at www.growertalks.com/webinars/ and join your host Chris Beytes, editor of GrowerTalks/Green Profit and Acres Online, for this informative event, sponsored by Argus Controls.

Why do we do surveys? To help the industry better understand what crops are popular, what information you need the most, and to see what kind of expansion is happening. Our job is to get that info out there, your job is to take the 5-minute survey and let us know how last year went. Of course, all the information is aggregated, so no one will know who took it—in other words, it's anonymous.

If you leave your email address, though, you will be entered into a raffle to win a copy of the new 19th Edition Ball Redbook Vol. 1, which has a chapter on CEA equipment and structures. You can even request the autograph of the man who wrote the chapter and edited the book, Bossman Chris Beytes.

Take the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/CFR5BSH

I will close the survey at the end of the day Friday, so don’t delay! Thanks to everyone so far who has taken it.

Are you interested in strawberry production? Do you want to know more about Bowery Farming and its operating system? Interesting in learning more about high tunnel production?

You can find stories on all of these topics and much more in the newest edition of the Inside Grower magazine, a quarterly supplement to GrowerTalks. Our digital edition posts the first of the month, and you can CLICK HERE to read through the issue. You’ll be receiving your print edition, of course, with your May issue of GrowerTalks/Green Profit.

In what is perhaps the grooviest product tie-in I’ve seen yet in the CEA space, Gotham Greens has teamed up with the Grateful Dead to offer for a limited time "Grateful Greens," a gourmet medley lettuce that “celebrates community, sustainability and the joy of eating plants.” It’s not just a name, though—for each package sold, trees will be planted in partnership with Forest Nation.

The partnership called for some greenhouse art, as seen below, and you can CLICK HERE to see more of it.

CLICK HERE to read more about the partnership.

This year, the Ohio Controlled Environment Agriculture Center at The Ohio State University will be hosting its first one-day CEA conference. The event, called “Advancement of Microbial Technologies for Controlled Environment Agriculture,” will feature a number of speakers on topics like biofungicides, biopesticides and exploring the CEA microbiome.

The event takes place Wednesday, July 20, which is perfect timing with Cultivate’22. If you’re coming in for Cultivate, plan on tacking on a day to your trip to spend at OSU. You’ll also be able to tour the new CEA research facility that’s in progress that I told you about in the last Inside Grower.

The bulk of the event will take place at the Kunz-Brundige Franklin County Extension Building in Columbus. If you can’t make it in person, there’s also a Zoom online option.

CLICK HERE for details, including the tentative lineup, and to register.

Of course you always monitor your crops and the environments in your greenhouses, but now Spectrum Technologies has a mobile option to watch them even more closely. Their new WatchDog Wireless Plant Growth Station is a single portable station that can be moved around to wherever you need it.

You can receive real-time, crop-specific environmental data, like temperature, relative humidity and PAR light, all sent to your smart phone. The portable station has an integrated solar power system as well as powerful Wi-Fi or cellular radios to make communication simple. It also comes with five additional sensor ports to enable you to measure soil moisture, EC and temperature, or additional PAR light sensors to measure conditions at different crop heights.

CLICK HERE to learn more.