Google: How to Thwart This Garden Devil

     I see a pattern developing. Trey Pitsenberger, owner of the Golden Gecko Nursery in Garden Valley, produces a blog entry on a garden topic from the retail-wholesale perspective. That inspires me to chime in on the same topic, only from a consumer standpoint. Today's (sort of) tag team rant: Google is the garden devil. Or any search engine on the Internet, for that matter. Trey opined in his blog of April 29 that it is tough dealing with certain stubborn customers who come into the store, searching for a particular plant or product, garden answer or garden technique that they have researched on the Internet and dammit, "I won't listen to what you have to say about it, cuz I read it on the Internet so it must be true."

In the example he cited, a customer wanted a particular fertilizer to feed his plum tree. The customer's Internet scouring led him to believe that the absolute best fertilizer for that tree was a 10-10-10 (10% each of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium).

Trey writes, "We don’t have fertilizer with these numbers, and I don’t know anyone in the area that does. According to this man’s research, our 16-16-16 fertilizer wouldn’t work nor would our organic 5-6-4. It has to be what the websites he visited said he needed. Yes, I tried to explain that 16-16-16 would be the same as 10-10-10, except you would apply less per instructions. He said that he had spent hours searching for the correct answer and the “real” person (me) was not about to sway his psychic investment in the virtual experts."

Sure enough, if one used the search engine Google for the phrase, "plum tree fertilizer", the first few entries look like this:

Note that the first two entries come from ehow.com, a firm that advertises itself as, "How to Do Just About Anything". The answer (and sure enough, the recommendation is 10-10-10), is provided by someone who is only identified as "an e-how contributing writer". No mention of the writer's qualifications, or where he/she is from. 

Another recommendation on that Google search also advised 10-10-10, the link from associatedcontent.com, which bills itself as "The People's Media Company". At least in that piece of advice, the author is identified: an arts, entertainment and garden writer from Georgia.

A step up in the search for the Google truth on this question is provided by the two remaining links, one from North Dakota University, the other from Rhode Island University.

The ag extension agent from North Dakota says fruit trees need no additional fertilizer, unless they are being grown in pure sand. (an aside: more and more backyard fruit tree growers are heeding this advice, maintaining only several inches of an organic mulch beneath the entire canopy of the tree as its sole source of nutrients). But in another post, the agent recommends spreading manure beneath the plum tree.

The Rhode Island Horticulture Landscape Program says this about plum tree fertilization: "Plum trees should be fertilized annually for best growth and development. Suggested fertilizer practice consists of an early spring application of 1/20 pound of actual nitrogen (8 ounces of 10-10-10) fertilizer per year for each year of tree age." Oops! There's that pesky 10-10-10 again. It seems, though, that the author chose 10-10-10 for the mathematical simplicity of explaining 1/20th (5%) of a pound of actual nitrogen. But as I do the math in my head, that total doesn't seem right.  But let's dig a little deeper into that plum advice: it didn't come from Rhode Island. Attribution is given to Ohio State University extension, dated 2000.

Trey's advice, as well as mine, is the same: do your basic research to garden questions on the Internet, and then ask a local expert, such as the employees of your nearest independently owned nursery. Why?

ALL GARDENING IS LOCAL.

Which brings us to today's rant: 

"Taming the Garden Devil that is Google", or how to search for the right garden answers online.

No matter which search engine you choose, here are some parameters when searching for garden info:

1. Be specific in your search query. 

For instance, if you did an online search of the word, "Aphids", you might see what I'm seeing right now: a Wikipedia entry, an entry from a site entitled getridofthings.com, and the University of California Integrated Pest Management info on aphid control.

 (hint: choose the UC entry. they're unbiased, informative and backed by research, not opinion. And they're local!)

if you narrowed your search query to "Aphids on Roses", you would get more exact information, but from a wider variety of sources. Of the first five that popped up on my search, only one was University-based (Oregon State). The others were commercial sites with something to sell, as well as one of the most dangerous sites for gardeners to heed: I-Village's forums.gardenweb.com, where anyone can chime in with their opinion. Yes, you might get some good answers. Some though, might be backed only by personal experience with something grandma told them. Or, since their answers are not reviewed for accuracy, they might (gulp!) make a mistake, especially when offering advice on amounts of fertilizers, pesticides or whatever to use in the garden. And you never know the real source of the information: is it someone trying to sell something that you may not need? (And frankly, that could be happening at your local nursery, as well).

So what's a gardener to do?

2. When searching online for garden answers, include your local university in the search query.

Enter the search term, "Aphids on roses UC". That'll bring up University of California-supplied answers in the first four queries. Some other examples of other universities to include in your search, depending on your location, include Oregon State University (OSU), Washington State University (WSU), Texas A&M (TAMU), Purdue and Cornell. Choose the university or college in your locale with the strongest horticulture program.

I'm not saying that colleges are pristine beacons of the truth. After all, some large, petrochemical company may have donated a sizable amount to help pay for that research. But, many University horticulture sites offer not only unbiased, well-researched information; they also make their pest control recommendations starting with the least toxic alternatives. Mechanical, physical and cultural controls are usually mentioned before pesticides. And that's where you should begin, too.

3. Make sure the online information is up to date. 

While researching garden information online, I've come across some rather dated university research, some going back to the 1960's.

 If given the option of choosing two different, seemingly reasonable, university-backed pieces of Internet advice on the same topic...choose the most recent one.

4. Make sure the information is aimed at the home gardener, not the farmer. 
A lot of Internet searches for pest and disease controls may take you to University-produced pages aimed at commercial agriculture. In many cases, the product recommendations will not be available for the backyard grower; nor are they usually necessary.

5. Finally, for California gardeners, bookmark this website:
http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/menu.homegarden.html 

This is the Integrated Pest Management site for the University of California at Davis, an excellent resource that can answer most any question about plant problems that you might be facing in your yard.

A Nursery's Biggest Competitor may be a Warehouse in Nevada...

 One of my favorite blogs is Trey Pitsenberger's "The Blogging Nurseryman".  Pitsenberger, owner of the Golden Gecko Nursery in Garden Valley, California, waxes rhapsodic on the ups and downs of owning a small nursery in an out of the way location (Garden Valley, in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California, is about halfway between Georgetown and Lotus...as if that is of any help to you who are not familiar with the area!). About an hour's drive away from Sacramento, along curving, steep roads, Golden Gecko Nursery serves a rural population whose closest shopping areas would include Placerville and Auburn.

In his blog of last week, Pitsenberger wrote about the increase in business for his nursery this spring, thanks to the renaissance of the backyard vegetable garden and his emphasis on organic fertilizers and pesticides. And the biggest favorable variable of all: the weather. Here in Northern California, it has been a fantastic spring. Not too hot, not too stormy, with mild nights, perfect for getting plants growing...and perfect for attracting customers to nurseries.

Gardeners will always want to "kick the tires" when it comes to plant selection. They want to see, touch, smell and admire any vegetable transplant, annual, perennial, shrub or tree before they buy it.
But when it comes to garden hard goods, especially pest control products and tools, more and more gardeners, especially rural gardeners, are shopping for price...and shopping online.

That's why I think it was a smart move on Pitsenberger's part to mention in his blog that his nursery's price for Sluggo Plus is the same as online retailing behomoth Amazon.com: $11.99.

Sluggo Plus is the latest advance in snail control from Monterey Chemicals. Sluggo's organic (and pet safe) active ingredient is iron phosphate, which is deadly to snails and slugs. Sluggo Plus has the added benefit of controlling earwigs due to the addition of a product derived from the naturally occurring, soil-dwelling bacterium Saccharopolyspora spinosa, commonly known as spinosad. And that, folks, is an unsolicited plug for a product that I use...because it is safe, and it works.

More nurseries should consider posting their prices for garden goods when they can meet or beat Amazon's.  And that might be easier than you think, if you dig a little deeper into their pricing structure.

Amazon has the advantage of not charging sales tax. By shipping from their Nevada warehouse and not setting up shop in California, Amazon does not legally have to charge sales tax at this time (that could change...soon, here in budget-busted California). And, although Amazon (and a few other online retailers) may offer free shipping for some of their product lines, it pays for nurseries to dig a little deeper into Amazon's garden offerings...because the hidden shipping fees that Amazon's partners might charge may be the tipping point to the favor of the small nursery.

For example, consider that $11.99 price point for Sluggo Plus that Golden Gecko and Amazon are charging. It is actually one of Amazon's vendor/partners, GreenSense, that is offering that one pound box of Sluggo Plus for $11.95 (as of 6/22/09). Go a little further into the online ordering process, and you find that there is a $5.89 charge for shipping! So, Pitsenberger is actually BEATING the Amazon price, even with the addition of California's 8.25% sales tax in El Dorado County.

Also consider the shipping delays when ordering online: three to five days before the product might ship (at the lowest rate). Shopping at a nursery, the customer gets instant gratification. Those snails and earwigs can do a lot of damage in a week while the online shopper is waiting for the Sluggo!

So often, small nurseries turn their wrath towards the big box stores. But their biggest competitor might be sitting on a desk in every gardener's home...the personal computer. But by picking out those products where they can beat their online competition on price...including shipping charges...and trumpeting those bargains in their store, nurseries can make gardeners think twice before ordering online, and bring them back into the nursery.