Dec 2, 2013

New App Helps Deliver Crucial Information at All Times

Your customers demand a consistent, high quality finished product grown from Proven Winners and Proven Selections liners. Having access to crop culture information developed by Pleasant View Gardens’ expert growing staff is a key to your success and bottom line.

The Grower’s Challenge

Inputs to greenhouse production vary between varieties, liner types and finished container sizes. While in the field or greenhouse, growers often need to make critical production decisions related to temperature, moisture, pH, lighting, pinching, PGRs and more.

Getting help on your growing decisions from experts is not always as easy as picking up the phone or reaching out by email. The person you need may be away from their desk or in another time zone or tied up in a meeting. Growing issues wait for no one.

Technical advice or assistance might be abundant online but growers don’t have the luxury of being at their desktop computer station for support at the drop of a hat. The rubber meets the road in the greenhouse Ð that’s where the problems generate. On-site solutions could make the difference between crop success and failure.

The Smart Solution

Pleasant View Gardens is helping to remove the barriers of access to information when and where the grower needs it. They’ve always provided their greenhouse growers with product information, tools and tips for better growing and training and support to maximize production. Now, by contributing to the development of a unique mobile technology, they’re making training and crop management tools available for nursery and greenhouse growers on the go.

Pleasant View Gardens is providing customers with a new smart phone and tablet application called Smart-Grower that turns roadblocks into super highways for the flow of relevant, on-demand and convenient information that educates and solves problems, 24-7. With Smart-Grower, greenhouse growers will have a cloud database of plant product information, tools for growing and employee training at their fingertips around the clock. This database can be accessed via smart devices from wherever the user might be Ð in the field, the greenhouse, their vehicle or with their customer, day or night.

The underlying Back Pocket Grower software powering PVG Smart-Grower is being developed by e-learning expert Dr. Bruce MacKay at ThomasBaine Ltd. of New Zealand. Back Pocket Grower is a collaboration with Dr. Paul Fisher at the University of Florida and companies including Pleasant View Gardens in the Floriculture Research Alliance (floriculturealliance.org). The software is being developed to provide both university extension information as well as customized product guides to mobile devices.

Smart-Grower will have complete product information on Pleasant View’s plant list, liner solutions, optimal container options and growing procedures and instruction. Content will be variety and crop specific, including all Proven Winners, Proven Selections, and Edible Collection plant material. The software will have cross-referencing capability, whereby a grower can search a specific variety and pair it with the best liner option, or connect with tools and tips for improving production, or develop growing processes/schedules that custom fit the grower’s operation and time-table. Customers can also email or phone our expert Veronica Lende directly from the application.