You’re Never Too Old to Learn New Things

Jennifer Zurko

A friend recently sent me an Instagram video by a single gal about the dating app Hinge. To her, Hinge isn’t just for meeting people and finding dates or a long-term boyfriend—she’s taking full advantage of the app by using it to learn new things. She said she really wants to learn how to play tennis, golf and the guitar, so she tailors the prompts on Hinge to say, “Teach me how to play golf,” “Teach me how to play the bass guitar,” etc., so it matches her with men who know how to do all of those things.  

She’s not only meeting new people, but getting free lessons on stuff she’s always wanted to learn. 

“There are things that I want to do,” she says in the video. “I want to take lessons for free and maybe even get dinner and maybe even kiss a person. So let’s go!”  

Now, you may not agree with her tactics, but it’s definitely a different way of using a dating app. It goes beyond just letting the app pair you with a random someone and meeting for coffee/drinks/dinner with the expectation that it could either be great or completely terrible. At least if it’s the latter, she gets to check something off her bucket list and feel the sense of accomplishment of learning something new. If she also gets a boyfriend out of it, that’s gravy.

You should never stop wanting to learn new things no matter how old you are. Unless you live off the grid in a cabin in the woods, new technology, new products, new systems, new processes will have you constantly learning something you never knew before. And this applies to home and work. 

The greenhouse business has had its fair share of advancements, even if you think they come too slowly. But trust me—I look at old issues of GrowerTalks and we actually have come quite a long way in a lot of things, one of those being the media you grow your crops in. Reading issues from the 1940s and ’50s, growers used to take soil from behind the greenhouse and use steam to “sanitize” it. Then came the advent of soilless media and the inclusion of peat for water retention in the ’60s. Fast forward to now and we’ve not only got peat, but myriad other amendments that could be added to growing media. That’s quite a lot of new stuff to learn over the years. 

For this month’s cover story, our friend Dr. Brian Jackson delves into the background of hybrid growing mixes and where we are today. With all of the options available to you, it’s not surprising that there’s a bit of a learning curve with what would work best for your operation. But Dr. Jackson gives us some sound advice to put in practice what you’ve learned.

If your preferred hybrid mix happens to be wood-based, you can learn how to manage nitrogen deficiency. 

Learn the best methods for setting up your vegetative crops for success from the beginning at the liner stage with a better nutritional regime. And you can use what you learned to make sure you’re misting those cuttings properly. And, speaking of irrigation, get a refresher on watering more efficiently. 

The learning curve can be steep on some of these new products and systems, so how do you keep up with all of the new information? Well, GrowerTalks, Green Profit and Tech on Demand, OF COURSE! But also newsletters, videos and social media. There are so many ways to learn new things nowadays that you should be able to find information on pretty much anything. Or you can be like the woman on the Instagram video and ask someone to teach you. Hey, you may even get a dinner or a kiss out of it! (But only if that’s what you want.) GT