Nursery and Landscape Notes is a quarterly newsletter for Louisiana's green industry professionals. It includes production information for nursery growers and cultural practice recommendations for landscape contractors. New plant information is also included.

On the last couple years, a number of new Liriope muscari and Liriope gigantea cultivars have been released. These are being evaluated in landscape performance trials at the Hammond Research Station.

(Distributed 10/09/07) Nearly 200 lawn and garden professionals were on hand for an ornamental horticulture and turfgrass field day Oct. 9 at the LSU AgCenter’s Burden Center in Baton Rouge. The morning featured plot tours and presentations by LSU AgCenter researchers, extension specialists and graduate students.

Weeds compete with nursery crops for water, nutrients and light and can potentially harbor insects and diseases. They are common in all container nurseries and can cause significant losses in product quality and quantity.

After Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Louisiana on August 29, 2005, the AgCenter quickly began to assess the damage caused to the agriculture, forestry, and fisheries industries. Since those initial estimates, the AgCenter has refined its projections and now pegs the total economic impact due losses in revenue and additional production costs at slightly over $1.0 billion.

Based on the information known at the time of the storm, and given the historical value of these industries to the state, the AgCenter was able to provide preliminary estimates on losses of revenue due to production losses.

The dollar amounts, which are estimates of reduced revenue and increased costs, are broken down by storm and commodity. Total estimated costs are also provided.

Traditional pot-in-pot production in a nursery attempts to combine field and container-growing techniques and offers advantages over both production systems.

This guide for 2008 contains suggestions for management of the most important or more prevalent diseases of Louisiana plants. It includes information on fungicides, bactericides and nematicides, as well as safety precautions for using them.

Studies of water distribution uniformity and fertigation uniformity with sprinkler irrigation were conducted in a commercial container nursery. The first phase of the study consisted of determining water uniformity for two sprinkler heights. The second phase consisted of determining fertilizer application uniformity.