Sunday, June 06, 1999
Growing plants matter of control
Insects, stress can be beaten
BY HANG NGUYEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Mike and Jill Miller are do-it-yourself people. That's how they were when they started out with a 20-by-30-foot nursery and that's how they continue to be, even when the nursery has doubled to 12,000 square feet.
“We do just about everything ourselves,” said Mrs. Miller, who owns Miller's Perennial Nursery at the couple's 13-acre home in Morrow. “That way we can make sure things are done right. Our focus is quality, quality, quality.”
And quality was the reason Mr. Miller, a dentist, and Mrs. Miller, a hygienist, applied organic gardening. Instead of using pesticides, which can sometimes damage the plants, they release carnivore insects to eat or kill herbivore insects. It's called organic gardening.
“(Organic gardening) isn't necessarily new, but it's in vogue,” said Mike Cherim, director of Green Spot Ltd., a New Hampshire-based company that sells beneficial insects. “People's education has risen. They know pesticides are bad. Organic gardening is safer, and it's a better way to do things.”
In the first four of six years in the nursery business, the couple, both 40, like anyone else, were driven crazy by the pest insect problem. So, like others, they turned to the familiar method of using pesticides.
“(Spraying) is the natural urge to squash a bug,” Mr. Miller said. The urge then becomes repetitive. Soon, he says, he was spraying the harmful pesticides every two weeks.
“We moved out here to be natural,” Mrs. Miller said. “We raise animals out here. And here we were spraying pesticides. I was scared. I was scared he was going to get cancer.”
Mr. Miller agreed with his wife that spraying wasn't worth it.
“With integrated pest management, you're treating only when you see a problem,” Mr. Miller said. It's a more efficient and healthy method, he said.
“The manpower is totally down, too,” Mr. Miller said. “I'm not spraying all the time. The bugs are eating 24 hours, and I'm sleeping.”
He is amazed at how fast the method works without much effort from him. He flicks at a sunflower.
“Look, there are three good guys (orius insidiosus) and two thrips — the bad guys,” Mr. Miller said. “Oh my god, this is great! It's outstanding.”
Mr. Miller continually monitors how many bad insects there are. He does that by examining the leaves. The other way is to use a blue sticky trap, a plastic sheet. The color blue attracts certain types of bad insects. Mr. Miller counts how many pests are in a square inch to see how bad the problem is. Knowing that, he knows how many good insects to release.
The majority of the nursery is filled with hostas, a greenhouse or front-yard plant. Their biggest pest insect problem are aphids.
Mr. Miller buys the beneficial insects, in this case the parasitic wasps, from Green Spot. The insects can either be periodically shaken out from a bottle or emerge themselves from a package with a hole placed in the plants.
The Millers have been using this natural method for two years, and the initial cost is twice as much compared with spraying. But in the long run, it's a cheaper method, they said.
Because of the initial high cost, Mr. Miller was at first resistant to changing from spraying to organic gardening. And the change didn't occur until he spent a year reading and analyzing material from Green Spot. He said that to succeed in any business, you have to be well-versed about it.
But if at one point the beneficial insects won't work, Mr. Miller said he would use botanical sprays, which aren't dangerous at all. For example, cinnamon, soap and natural fungus sprays kill aphids and mites on contact. Hot pepper wax coats the plant, preventing pests from eating them.
The Millers directly participate in everything that goes on at the nursery. They built their five greenhouses from scratch. Mr. Miller even installed his own sprinkling system. They do all their mail order. They send out the catalogs as well as box the plants. And they continually educate themselves about the nursery business.
The couple say quality is essential because they sell to mostly collectors and not wholesale customers.
To maintain the quality, the couple had to cut back on their jobs to take care of the nursery. Because the two love gardening, it wasn't a sacrifice.
“I think (gardening) is born in you,” Mr. Miller said. “My dad was a farmer. And Jill and her father love gardening. They have given me a lot.”
It's one thing to love what you're doing. But it's another thing to become a workaholic, the Millers said.
“Until recently, we never had a day off,” Mr. Miller said. “We worked Mondays through Sundays, but now we take Sunday off.”
“Sunday is our mental health day,” Mrs. Miller added.
And since 90 percent of the nursery business comes before July 1, the Millers have decided it's more economical to close after that date. Quality of life also affected their decision. They concluded that they started the business because it was fun. But it was no longer fun when they were stressed. So they cut back.
The couple have reached an ideal size for their nursery. The income they get from the nursery goes to pay for vacations and help pay for their daughters' college funds.
But the two said they're still and probably always will be collecting plants. They want to make their nursery a collector's dream.
“What do we do on our day off?” Mr. Miller said. “We go looking for plants.”
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