This time of year, I like to go online to blackfriday.com where the purveyors publish the Black Friday advertising flyers from all the big stores. I look specifically at Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe’s, and I look specifically for poinsettias and other living holiday décor, to see if we are at 99 cents, $1.99, $2.99, or maybe something big and special for $24.99.

This year? Walmart did not have your traditional one-day (or one weekend) sale flyer. The Black Friday sale period is November 11-17, and the ad flyer is 39 pages. Not a poinsettia in sight anywhere.

Now here’s where it gets sketchy. Home Depot’s sale, like Walmart’s, runs for an extended period—Nov 7-27. And again, no poinsettia promotion to be seen. But I have it on good authority that they WILL have a Black Friday poinsettia offering … perhaps there’s another flyer coming out closer to the day.

As for Lowe’s, there was no Black Friday posted as of November 19. And they, too, will have a Black Friday poinsettia I am assured. No word on size or price or other details, including when it will be promoted.

Guess we’ll just have to load up on tryptophan and pumpkin pie, get a good night’s sleep, then hit the stores early Friday to see what they’re up to!

Wait, back to Home Depot: I just discovered a Costa Farms poinsettia, 6-in. gold décor pot, for … wait for it … $39.97 shipped to your door.

Now that’s a healthy price!

I mentioned this event, Trade Fair Aalsmeer, a few weeks ago, telling you it’s one of my favorite horticulture shows, because of the 620 or so exhibitors, about 80% (500) are growers of flowers and plants. It’s a great place to get cultivar and packaging ideas.

This year, the three-day event again drew more than 21,000 attendees, making it one of the world’s largest professional horticulture shows. While that number is about flat to 2023, organizers say international visitors were up 5%. Still, the show is still about 95% European, with the top represented countries being the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, the UK, Belgium and Poland.

I didn’t attend, but looking at the awards given is one way to figure out what was cool and noteworthy. Starting with the Greenovation Award, which emphasizes sustainable production and products, the winner was Decowraps Europe, for their new Silphie paper packaging (right). Silphie paper comes from the silphie plant (Silphium perfoliatum), a North American native being grown in Germany (and probably elsewhere) as a biogas source. Silphium is praised, too, for improving soil quality, preventing erosion and attracting pollinators.

A company called Our Nature has figured out a way to make paper from the fibrous biproducts of the plant, and Decowraps is now offering flower sleeves and skirts made with 35% Silphie paper. Decowrap’s goal is to produce paper from a residual stream, maximizing sustainability and minimizing environmental impact.

The Glass Tulip Awards go to the favorite flower and plant introductions in five categories, and each category gets two picks—one by the show jury, and one by the audience. Only one noteworthy variety won the hearts of both the jury and the audience:

Cut Flowers
Jury Prize: Alstroemeria Fashionista Sofiena (HM Tellelaar)
Audience Award: Alstroemeria Fashionista Sofiena (HM Tellelaar)

Flowering houseplants
Jury Prize: Kalanchoe Wild Flowers Surprising Canyon (Vilosa)
Audience Award: Dendrobium Nobile Variegata (De Hoog Orchids)

Green Houseplants
Jury Prize: Begonia maculate Black Forest (J&PO ten Have)
Audience Award: Aloe vera Tropical (Amigo Plant)

Garden Plants
Jury Prize: Camelia japonica Femme Fatale (Plantipp)
Audience Award: Geum Orange Pumpkin Colour Your Season (Natuurlijk Hopmans)

Concept
Jury Prize: Chrysanne (pot) Flowerpops (Fa. Lionplant)
Audience Award: Hosta Aqua+ (Jac. Uitenbogaard & Sons)

If you can’t find the plants above to add to your selection, you can certainly find these next intros, because All-America Selection winners are supposed to be ubiquitous and readily available for growing and retailing! The National winners for 2025 include four flowers and four vegetables. They are:

Dahlia Black Forest Ruby (American Takii)
Marigold Mango Tango (Benary)
Petunia Shake Raspberry F1 (Hem Genetics)
Snapdragon DoubleShot Yellow Red Heart F1 (Hem Genetics)
Kohlrabi Konstance F1 (Bejo USA)
Pepper, mini Pick-N-Pop Yellow F1 (Seminis Home Garden)
Squash Green Lightning F1 (PanAmerican Seed exclusive)
Squash Thriller F1 (Sakata Seed America)

Each will soon be featured in custom videos on their individual AAS Winner web page, on the AAS YouTube channel, and via social media, public relations and trade shows. Plus you can get bench cards, variety markers and more from All-America Selections.

All AAS Winners are trialed throughout North America by professional, independent, volunteer judges who grow new, never-before-sold entries next to comparisons that are considered best-in-class. Only those entries that have superior garden performance—better than the comparisons—are granted the AAS award designation.

Here are the eight National AAS Winners:

Dahlia Black Forest Ruby

Black Forest Ruby features striking deep black foliage and abundant ruby-red flowers. Blooms range from semi‐double to double. Grown from seed, plants are sturdy, do not flop open and are disease-free all season long.

Marigold Mango Tango

Mango Tango offers stunning, super-saturated bicolor flower of yellow and red. Compact, vigorous plants bloom prolifically over a long flowering window to make an eye-catching display.

Petunia Shake Raspberry F1

Petunia Shake Raspberry has the coloration of a blended raspberry milkshake swirled with lemon-lime green sorbet on a superior performing seed petunia. Naturally compact, this petunia will not melt in summer heat but instead will provide season-long, delicious color.

Snapdragon DoubleShot Yellow Red Heart F1

Yellow Red Heart joins her sister Orange Bicolor, a 2023 AAS Winner. Yellow Red Heart blooms early and holds up well through summer’s heat better than the comparison variety. The AAS Judges loved the early blooms, healthy plants, vibrant colors and long-lasting flowers. An additional bonus its candy-like scent.

Kohlrabi Konstance F1

This new purple kohlrabi has an improved smoother skin and an attractive, vibrant purple color that extends out through the leaf margins. Great for spring or fall, Konstance continues to produce flavorful crunchy bulbs that are crack-resistant and long-lasting. A bonus to the crisp, sweet, peppery bulb is that the leaves are also highly flavorful when roasted, sauteed or eaten raw when the leaves are young and tender. 

Pepper, mini Pick-N-Pop Yellow F1

These are cute, snack-sized mini peppers that are extra sweet with just the right amount of juiciness and crunch. Moderate-sized plants with outstanding bacterial leaf spot resistance produce a prolific number of bright, canary yellow-colored, uniformly shaped peppers.

Squash Green Lightning F1

Green Lightning squash impressed the judges with its early maturity. Said one, “This entry not only looked better, but also tasted better than the comparison. The color and pattern of the squash was novel and cute—pretty enough to use as a decoration. When cooked, this squash had a nice robust flavor that stood up to added seasonings.” The light green rind has an attractive glossy sheen, and the small seed cavity means more delicious edible flesh.

Squash Thriller F1

Thriller squash brings new psychedelic color patterns to your fall décor. The 1- to 2-lb dumpling squash have shallow vertical ridges that alternate between a variegated cream and green with bright orange. The dark green stems are decoratively twisted and well attached. The semi-bush plants mature in 75-80 days from planting. The fruit colors shift and change as they mature for early to late season color. Judges across the U.S. and Canada agree that Thriller is unique, well-adapted and easy to grow.

The Florida Nursery, Growers and Landscape Association is launching the FNGLA Emerging Leaders Program in conjunction with the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Science Center of Ag Leadership. As its name implies, the association will provide resources and tools for horticulture industry members to best prepare as future leaders of their company, their communities, their industry and potentially the association. It’s a nine-month in-person and online program where participants will learn about key topics such as advocacy and civic engagement while engaging in networking to build key relationships and strengthen industry ties. Course topics include Leadership 101, Personal Leadership, Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership, Communication Styles, Local Advocacy and Branding Yourself as a Leader.

The first class of 11 soon-to-emerging leaders had their first in-person gathering last week at UF. I was invited to join them and even make a presentation, but alas, I already had another commitment, doggone it! Otherwise I would have been thrilled to be amongst this stellar group of Florida future leaders. They are:

Christina Barber, All Pro Landscaping of Tallahassee
Libbie Clark-Smith, CEPRA Landscape, Longwood
Billy Deal, FNGLA, Winter Park
Robert Kizer, Cherrylake, Ocoee
James Lynn, SiteOne Landscape Supply, Naples
Annee Nelson, O.F. Nelson & Family Nursery, Winter Garden
Jay Perez, Bloomings Landscape & Turf Management, Parrish
Anna Roberts, Central Florida Ferns & Foliage, Winter Garden
Jacob Schwartz, Hunter Industries, Boynton Beach
Mary Pat Thomas, Hackney Nursery, Quincy
Jordan Zoellner, Everglades Equipment Group, Lehigh Acres

Congrats to all. Study hard!

Last time, I told you of the passing of Jan Hoek, founder of Royalty Administration International (RAI) and a pioneer in plant patent enforcement. I have since learned a bit more about the company, and that is that Jan was co-founder with his SISTER, Nellie Hoek. I incorrectly stated that Nellie was his wife—my apologies for that error, Nellie!

Jan was also a plant breeder, and after about nine years of dealing with RAI and plant breeding, Jan left RAI to focus solely on breeding, leaving Nellie to continue the royalty rights business. In 2001, Nellie hired Maarten Leune (formerly with the Chrysanthemum Breeder’s Association) to take over her role as Managing Director so she could focus on special projects and accounts. In 2016, Maarten purchased all the shares of RAI and became sole owner.

Thanks for the correction, clarification and added information, Nellie and Maarten!

“Growing mushrooms indoors is similar in a lot of ways to growing green plants indoors.”

Now that’s a statement you don’t hear very often … if ever.

It comes from Dr. Nadia Sabeh, aka Dr. Greenhouse, in the introduction to her newest video, the title of which is the title to this item. Mushroom production is actually how she got her start in CEA—she worked at a shiitake mushroom farm in Pennsylvania some 26 years ago.

To continue with her opening thought, with both crops you need to manage heat, moisture, humidity, oxygen and CO2, as well as pests and pathogens.

So what are the unique challenges to growing mushrooms? To find out, you’ll have to watch her latest video on the topic! You can find it HERE on YouTube. It’s just 20 minutes, and it’s an interesting look at the unique nature of mushroom production—which Nadia calls “the original vertical farm.”

Reminds me of the old joke: “The boss treats us like mushrooms—keeps us in the dark and feeds us s***.”

Reader Mike Poretsky from A-Roo Company sent me a link to a piece by PitchBook that gets into the detail of why Bowery, for a time one of the hot startups in the vertical farming world, went from a $2.3 billion valuation in 2021 to net zero today … a great measurement for your so-called carbon footprint but not so much for your financials.

It turns out to be a disease, namely phytophthora. One farm got it, then all of them, and they couldn’t get it under control. They couldn’t sell anything and they couldn’t produce new clean produce. The big-name customers like Albersons and Whole Foods that helped draw investors dropped Bowery as a supplier. And new investors were losing interest in the whole agtech scene, especially with the failures of other fancy startups like AeroFarms and AppHarvest. And when a vertical farm runs out of OPM—other people’s money—they quickly fail.

The PitchBook piece is interesting and well-researched, but it ascribes some of the blame for the failure on the lack of additional funding to keep the business going.

Let me ask all of you: If I loaned you $700 million, could you build and run a profitable greenhouse business? I bet you could, and bank a bunch of that money to pay back the loan. So it wasn’t lack of money that hurt the business … if anything, it was too much money!

Second, I am dismayed! For years, I have been promised that vertical farms don’t get pests. They need no chemicals. They are perfect, flawless, beautiful systems that provide more nutritious food with almost no inputs.

Guess they found out the hard way that they’ve been wrong about that.

I’ve written and videotaped about Sustee moisture sensors at both TPIE and Cultivate trade shows after they’ve won product awards. I guess LiveTrends has paid attention to my coverage because founder/CEO Bisser Georgiev just told me they’ve entered an exclusive distribution partnership with the Japanese brand for the North American mass market. Based in Tokyo, Sustee is the world’s leading designer and manufacturer of moisture sensors.

Said LiveTrends in a press release, “This collaboration will unite Sustee’s patented technology with LiveTrends’ design expertise and market reach, bringing accessible plant care tools to millions of consumers.”

The products will be co-branded with Sustee and LiveTrends labels and shipped from LiveTrends’ North American facilities.

“The idea is to have a simple, affordable and totally analog solution to watering,” Bisser told me via email. “It takes (out) the guess work and encourages consumers to confidently purchase live plants … with reduced fear of killing them,” he added with a smiley emoji.

I asked Bisser if his clever designers would create a line of products around the sensors. He replied not yet … but, “Down the road we will most likely incorporate their technology into our design work.”

Priced at an MSRP of just $6.99, the Sustee/LiveTrends moisture sensors will be available to ship to retailers around March 2025. Oh, and Ellen Wells is gratified that refill inserts will be available.

Nice to see Thanksgiving being promoted at my local grocery … this display in Publix featured classic Pelee mums at the impossible-to-resist BOGO price of $9.99 (we brought home two, one for the new neighbors across the street).

These are from Elizabeth & Alexandra Nursery in Winter Garden, Florida, which I do not know except it was founded by third-generation grower sisters Patricia and Kimberly Dewar, of the famous Dewar Nurseries family. I need to pay these ladies a visit to learn more!

Alongside the nice mums were “Copper Poinsettias,” “grown for” Sunshine Growers of Lakeland, Florida, which I visited some years ago. I couldn’t be sure, but the Copper Poinsettia might have been Norwin Orange or Autumn Leaves or a similar fall variety sprayed with a touch of copper dye plus something to make them shiny.