IPPS 2011 Annual Meeting, Valdosta, GA! Part Two

So I did this in two parts, mainly because I needed a break from all the writing, hehe!  But also because anyone reading it probably would need a break too!  The second day of the conference was all talks, a little different than the traditional IPPS conference since the places to tour were all far away it was best to do tours all day then talks all day.  The one talk that really stuck out to me was Dr. John Ruter's on Tea-oil Camellia: A New Edible Oil Crop for the U.S.  I never knew this could be an edible crop!  It was interesting that the crop could produce that much oil.  After a long day of talks it was time to unwind for the Banquet and Plant Auction.  The food was good...I see a trend here...and the auction went well.  The next day brought on more tours...yippee!  First up was Monrovia Nursery.  I was excited to see this one since they usually do a great job, plus they are customers of ours, maybe I would see some babies all grown up!  I did not see any of my babies and the one thing that really stuck out was how empty they were.  Because of the economy they had really scaled back with lots of empty beds around the nursery.  As we were touring we got to see their super secret trimming machine in action. 

Top Secret Machine..get too close and get shot!  j/k!

I really want one of these for liners, I know they make them but they are pretty pricy!  This machine used to be secret but now it is not so much since they got a patent on it.  The other thing I noticed was the way nurseries loaded trucks in this area, I am in the liner business so maybe I am out of the loop but it seems most nurseries in the Texas market use rolling racks.

Plants ready to ship.

Then they had different ways to load trucks with a pallet style rack that could be loaded into a soft side trailer.  Much easier in loading and unloading as long as the customer had the equipment to unload the order. 

Nice and neat, ready for delivery

Lastly we got to see the water recycling at this location which is very well thought out.  It has many holding ponds so that each step the water becomes cleaner with the use of gravity to settle thing and water plants to use excess nitrogen.

Clean water here

After the tour we grabbed a boxed lunch and got on the buses to head to Clinton Nurseries. 

Wagons ready to roll!

This is where Kay Phelps works so it was nice to see.  First off we got to see their pruning machine in action...again I need something like this for liners! 

Pruning machine at work!

The thing I noticed here was that they had really nice blocks of Juniper.  Being alot of the nurseries are really close together we were able to just stay on the wagon to skip over to May Nursery.

Police escort from Clinton Nurseries to May Nursery

  This was another nursery I looked forward to seeing since they are a customer of ours.  Babies....Where are y'all?  May Nursery was really nice and had a really good looking drainage system. 

May Nursery Watering Hole

Oh the things you drool about when the system you have in non existent!  Richard, send me some of those pipes!!!  May Nursery had a nice mix of product, I especially enjoyed the fields of Nandinas!

My babies all grown up!

After our tour at May we headed off to Hackney, hey guess what another customer...exciting! We got the grand tour from George, well my wagon did.

George Hackney gives us the grand tour

Wow, that is ALOT of Knockout roses.

I'm gonna Knock you out...

Now I know there are some Nandinas there! George assured me they were and looked good, we just did not drive by them on the tour...well I'll be darned!

Robot Wars!!!

The coolest thing we saw was the robot that spaced plants...I for sure need one of these, it needs to plant, trim, spray, water and most importantly do all of that and leave me alone! yes!  After another great tour it was off to Tallahassee Nursery, wee, that is like spelling Mississippi, did I get it right?  What a great looking retail nursery, a person could lose themselves there!

I don't like birds but I really like this birdhouse!

  We had dinner here, fried seafood, yum!  After dinner was the ice cream social and question box.  I was suprised the question box did not get too heated in discussion, perhaps everyone was in an ice cream haze and ready for night night time. 

Ted pouting because he didn't get enough ice cream, haha!

Luckily we had bus drivers to get us home!