Would you like to:

• Get nose-to-nose with some thrips?
• See what that grey fuzzy stuff really looks like?
• Find out what's going on inside your pots?

Then come to the workshop for ornamental producers July 21, 2008 from 1:00-5:00 on the Cornell Campus, Ithaca, NY - the day before the Floriculture Field Day.

You'll have a chance to get hands-on practice testing container media and looking at Botrytis and thrips. And bring your own media to test, or any insect or disease pests you need help identifying. You'll go home with a folder of materials that relate to the hands-on training sessions. DEC credits applied for.

Sessions:

Getting your hands dirty: Testing container media for pH and salts

During this session you will get hands on practice using the two most popular methods for media testing (the 1:2 dilution and pour thru methods) and pros and cons of each. Learn how to use these test results as powerful tools to adjust your fertilizer practices and reduce susceptibility to root-borne pests and pathogens. You will receive supplemental material with pH and EC guidelines for common greenhouse crops. Attendees are invited to bring their own container grown plant and a sample of their greenhouse tap water for testing. Led by Neil Mattson, Dept. of Horticulture

Thrips: Up close and personal

Learn the details about one of the biggest pests of flower crops: western flower thrips. You'll see them alive and under a microscope, in all their life stages, and learn about how to detect them, how they live, reproduce, and spread, a little about the viruses they can spread, meet a few of their natural enemies, and think over some ideas about how to control them. Led by John Sanderson , Dept. of Entomology.

Spots, Blights and Blasts: Hands-on plant disease workshop

We'll begin this session with an overview of plant diagnostics, and then through hands-on work with Botrytis, we'll learn how disease problems develop and how to best protect plants. Hand-lenses and microscopes will be used to see how spores spread, germinate and cause disease. Led by Brian Eshenaur, NYS IPM Program.

And don't forget Cornell's annual Floriculture Field Day the following day, July 22, and the Landscape Horticulture Short Course scheduled for July 23-24 in Ithaca, N.Y.

The cost of the entire program is $45, which will include a campus parking pass for the day.

Use this registration form to register for the IPM Workshop and/or the Floriculture Field Day For more information, please contact Elizabeth Lamb, (607) 254-8800 or eml38@cornell.edu.

This workshop will be held in Room 22 Plant Sciences Building. Use this map to navigate to this workshop and events at the Floriculture Field Day.