I am not sure whether attendance exceeded expectations but it is always a learning experience for me. With the SNA Southern Plant Conference coming up soon (see below), I found it fascinating to see the increased coordinated marketing programs obvious on the floor.

I think it would be hard for someone to come away from the show not being aware and excited about the new Razzle Dazzle series of dwarf crapemyrtles.

We have watched these new gems of the trade evolve in the development program by Michael Dirr at the Center for Applied Nursery Research. There were many opinions and long discussions in deciding the winners for this introduction. The new Double Knock Out rose was also well represented in many booths and was creating a buzz.

PDSI had a nice, low growing/flowing 'Calisto' Rapheolepis that is reportedly disease resistant. It looked great in the new plants booth and on the floor display.

I saw a well-named Green Flame Holly at Tom Dodd's Nursery booth. It was a glossy green flamed-shape leaf and a nice coarse textured holly that deserves use in the landscape. It is one you would stop and notice.

On a side note, I was visiting Panhandle Nursery in north Florida a few weeks ago and spotted among the holly rows of 'Mary Nell', one of the Bruner women hollies, and 'Nellie R. Stevens,' a holly with glossy neat foliage with a natural cone shape that was very attractive. It is named 'East Bay' and was one of Tom Dodd's early seedling selections from a latifolia holly at Auburn that has spawned many winners over the years. Everyone compares a holly's value in the landscape to the standard 'Nellie R. Stevens'. East Bay got my vote. I got one for my yard and one for the University to keep an eye on it and get to know it better.

If you have not seen Ralph Rushing's Patti Faye deodar cedar, you are missing a treat (Rushing Nursery, Semmes, AL).

The blue color reminds you of a blue spruce. However, it looks much softer and more elegant on a deodar cedar. It should be a great one for the South. Hydrangeas were everywhere. 'Endless Summer' continues its day on the Hit Parade and it deserves its rave reviews and attention. However, in trials in Cullman, AL, it was great but the foliage was only so-so. There is improvement that can be made, and be assured our industry is feverishly breeding and selecting for the next great plant to be on every gardener's and landscaper's want list. I have enjoyed 'Big Daddy', 'Ayesha', 'Taube' (who would buy that name), 'Fuji Waterfall' (serrata) and many others. Hydrangeas are for collecting!

I have never seen so much emphasis on Hydrangea paniculata. 'Limelight' was scattered among many booths and I have enjoyed 'Chantilly Lace' not only for the great plant but for the nostalgia of the name.

The search for a dwarf loropetalum is over with two releases taking center stage and I am really excited about these. Retailers have been selling dwarf/smaller loropetalums for years and disappointing gardeners placing them under a 3 foot window. Speaking of loropetalum, I have enjoyed the tree form selections grown by Plantation nursery and others. Like southern waxmyrtle and some ligustrums, this plant displays well as a small tree. Carex's were never at a southern show a few years ago but they were sprinkled among the more aggressive/progressive plant-nut nurseries. They are a great addition to the landscaper's pallet. I would comment on all the new herbaceous jewels being introduced but I will leave that for Dr. Kessler.

I also noted that the bar continues to rise on expectation for quality plant material. Woody ornamental nurseries are slowly closing the gap between greenhouse producers of floral crops and expectations from buyers of Christmas trees. Ugly trees in root-bound containers are OUT!

I hope you can make it to the Southern Plant Conference. It is a great way to stay on the cutting edge of our industry and see the incredible work that is being done in backyard breeding nurseries, corporations and university plant development programs. You will come away bedazzled, overwhelmed and excited. In two years, it will reappear in Mobile.

It is a short week and a half until the next newsletter is due. It will be laden with good take-home research results from the SNA Research Conference.

Five more energetic, ambitious, brave souls took the Alabama Certified Landscape Professional Exam at SNA.

It is the future. The vision is, as our industry grows and the need to distinguish between those who are knowledgeable professionals in the business, that there will be increased pressure to become certified and easily recognized for your skills and knowledge. The Alabama Nursery and Landscape Association offers you that opportunity to get the edge on your competitors and receive the added marketing attention and help provided by your Association. The next test will be in November. Contact the ALNLA office for registration information.

I am sorry to say that Linda VanDyke is no longer the Executive Secretary of ALNLA. I have worked with her so long that I have almost forgotten that there was an ALNLA before Linda VanDyke. She resigned and is moving on to other opportunities. I enjoyed and appreciated our working relationship and her dedication and contributions to the industry. I will have to find new ways to stay organized and on task. We wish her well.

Ken
334-844-5484 Office
tiltken@auburn.edu

My interest in Japanese maples led me to Harold around 1992. Like many other passionate plant people, I found Harold through word of mouth. I was talking about plants with someone and mentioned Japanese maples and their response, which I have mimicked many times since to others, was “Do you know Harold Johnston in Elmore County?” I got a phone number and called to ask if I could drop by for a maple visit. “Come on, I’ll be here.” Nothing makes Harold happier than sharing his passion for maples. I rambled the back roads between Auburn and Montgomery near Tallassee and rounded a bend in the road off County Road 8 where I spotted his house across from a country filling station. I pulled into the driveway of an unassuming small house on about a one acre lot that was graced with 8 or 10 Japanese maples. It did not have the appearance of an avid collector. I met Harold, a retired mechanic who weighed, in his words, about 90 pounds after a good rain, on his front porch. This began what was to become a regular ritual of sitting on the porch swing and discussing the latest cultivars and the anticipation of what new scion wood was arriving soon. We then ambled around to the back of the house to see what unusual branch sports he had found and tagged or what amazing colors or twists he had found among his seedlings. We continued to tip-toe our way through the pots and admire what then was well over 400 cultivars of Japanese maples. There may have only been 8 or 10 maples in the front yard but you could not squeeze a quart pot among the 1000’s of containers in the back. He had labels on the maples he was selling for the benefit of his customers but he could spot and name all of the 400 cultivars. They were mostly in 1 to 5 gallon containers because there was not room for a major arboretum display. This is where the Auburn University relationship began.

Harold took me, an Auburn University professor, under his wing and began to teach me the art of grafting and sharing his treasures with the University. I knew the science of grafting but I was a few hundred thousand grafts behind my “Master Grafter” mentor. I later published his teachings for the nursery industry to use in the International Plant Propagators Proceedings. I related in the article that he broke many of the textbook rules of collecting and preparing his scion wood. I would follow behind him as we meandered through his collection bending the twigs to determine their readiness for grafting. If they were ready, he would pull out his razor sharp knife and using his thumb to press the cutting to the knife blade, bend and cut 20 or so prime scions by deftly bending and cutting at the same time. He would then stick them in his blue jean pocket and move to the next cultivar and repeat the same procedure. However, he would stick the scions in the same pocket. I asked him if he needed to label them and put a rubber band around the bundles. He laughed and said he knew what they were and he did. We spent some scattered days beneath the shade of a large pecan tree in Harold’s front yard practicing the craft, discussing Japanese maple future needs like an orange cultivar to match Auburn University’s colors as well as sharing some political views and other topics of nothingness. I still marvel at his efficient wielding of his knife as he prepares delicate scions of Beni Komo No Su (a fine hair-thin branched cultivar) as easily as he prepares pencil-sized scions of Bloodgood. I always went home to Auburn feeling better than when I arrived with my grafts and a few of Harold’s take-home maples (gifts) to plant out at Auburn for the students and industry professionals to see as they matured.

A close relationship evolved and Harold quietly consented to my urgings to help teach students, master gardeners and friends to experience and develop a life-long skill and hobby in the Japanese maple world. He also came at my invitation to teach grafting seminars at our Nursery Trade Show Seminars and area nursery meetings. Most nurseries with Japanese maples around the country, and other countries, know Harold well. He receives frequent shipments of new scion wood with an invoice stamped “NO CHARGE”. He reciprocates by sending and sharing his new “finds”. Over the years I know he has given away many more plants than he has sold from his nursery business, “Johnny’s Pleasure Plants”. The name of his nursery defines his passion for plants. His wife, Johnny, lovingly fusses at him often because he does too much, and he does, but confides privately that he would probably die if he did not have his maples to keep him active. It is embarrassing to have an older and a 160 pound lighter man say, “let me get those pots for you and load your truck.” I often refer to him as the Johnny Appleseed of Japanese maples. He shared one of his treasured pre-patented Beni Shien maples for us to evaluate at Auburn. It is not a maple that has reached the mass market yet but it is one of the most distinct, unusual and special plants among our collection. It is a lot like Harold, one-of-a-kind.

Through a grant from the Urban and Sustainable Forestry Program of the Georgia Forestry Commission, Oxbow is hosting the above named conference. Pests and diseases have the potential to devastate our forests (much like chestnut blight) and some of our landscape, timber and nursery crops. From hemlocks that shade and hold the soil in mountain streams and protect water quality ---- to red oaks, azaleas, camellias, viburnum, and rhododendron in our historic and contemporary landscape --- to the loblolly pines in our timber lands, we are in trouble.

CE credit is being given and the program is appropriate for nursery owners and workers, foresters, students, gardeners, landscape folks, pesticide applicators, turf and golf course folks, etc. The program features an overview of Urban Forestry, Sudden Oak Death, Pine Decline, and Hypoxylon, Letographium, spp., Asian Longhorn, Ambrosia Beetle, Emerald Ash Borer and Woolly Adelgids.

Auburn Plant Disease Report-June 2005 (J. Mullen)
June was a very busy month as is usual for June. We received 342 samples: 171 were regular summer time samples; 96 were AL State Department of Agriculture samples submitted for Sudden Oak Death (SOD) testing; 75 were soybean and kudzu samples submitted as part of a soybean rust survey.

With our usual summer diseases submitted, we saw Pythium root decay on a variety of plants, tomato spotted wilt virus on tomato, pepper, and zinnia. Cercospora leaf spot diseases were commonly seen on a variety of plants. Bacterial leaf spots were more numerous than usual on several types of plants.

Our biggest news for June is the detection and identification of soybean rust in Fairhope (Baldwin County) in a Sentinel Plot on June 29. Ed Sikora, many of you, and some summer workers have been surveying the state in an effort to detect the initial 2005 occurrences of this rust disease. The Birmingham lab and Auburn lab have been checking these samples for rust. This rust disease was first detected in the U.S. in Louisiana early last November. The first detection of this rust disease in Alabama was in Mobile, November 4 by a State Department of Agriculture Inspector. The disease was confirmed by USDA & APHIS by PCR methods on November 18. The disease is developing and spreading this summer more slowly than was anticipated with disease occurrences not being detected outside of the Fairhope area as of July 20. Rust disease was detected in a commercial field last week in the Fairhope (Baldwin County) area. On July 19, Ed told me the disease was confirmed at a location in Athens, Georgia, and at a site in eastern Mississippi not very far from Mobile.

Monthly Plant Problem Report From The Birmingham Lab (J. Jacobi)
We received 156 samples in June. Some of the diseases last month included Sphaeropsis dieback on Leyland Cypress; Ascochyta blight on dogwood; Phytophthora blight on vinca, rust on oxalis; and Valsa and Sphaeropsis Canker on Willow.

The wet weather during early June caused significant disease problems on vegetables and other plants. Phytophthora crown rot of summer squash was one of the more dramatic diseases seen during June. This disease can progress very rapidly from death of the growing point to plant collapse and death in a few days. The following web site has some excellent pictures of this disease (http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell.edu/PhotoPages/Cucurbit/Phytoph2/CucPhyFS3.htm). This web site also has the best photo gallery of vegetable diseases I have found. The gallery is grouped by host, with everything from beans to watermelon. Check it out the next time you have a vegetable disease problem (http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell.edu/PhotoPages/PhotoGallery.htm).

Several homeowners also brought in ornamental plant samples with flatid planthoppers. The white, cottony, waxy material made by the nymphs is the first thing that most people notice. People often mistake these deposits for those of mealybugs or the cottony-cushion scale. However, the planthoppers rarely cause significant damage to affected plants and no control is necessary. For more information on planthopers and how to distinguish them from more serious pests, click on the following link (http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/ent/notes/O&T/trees/note48/note48.html).