Holganix Blog
Have You Joined the RAD Club?
Have you joined the RAD club? I’m sure you’ve heard the term “RAD” thrown around by Holganix and the extended Holganix community, but what is the RAD and how can it make your life easier?
The RAD stands for Refrigerated Automated Dispensing Unit. It’s an innovative piece of equipment that allows you to both refrigerate and hold Holganix in bulk. It also allows you to save space within your warehouse. Instead of dealing with jugs of Holganix or bags of fertilizer, the RAD holds large amounts of Holganix in an efficient manner.
One of the really amazing aspects about the RAD system is when it’s combined with the Holganix Flash Fill and Inductor. These pieces work in unison to more efficiently fill your trucks without a water tank. The equipment functions in a way that is safer for your technicians. Instead of pouring buckets of product into your truck and using a hose, the combined effort of the RAD system, inductor, and flash fill allows you to tank mix the appropriate inputs (fertilizers and pesticides) with Holganix. This means you reduce the risk of technicians slipping and falling while mixing and adding inputs. Yet, one of the greatest aspects of the flash fill and inductor is their ability to save time filling trucks. In fact, it can reduce the time it takes to fill a 250-gallon tank from 1 hour to 15 minutes. That means labor savings or more time for your technicians to get production complete!
Interested in joining the RAD club? There are two key sizes companies can pick from. The RAD you select depends on the amount of square footage per round you treat. For example, the RAD 200 holds enough Holganix to treat 72 acres per round. Meanwhile, the RAD 600 is designed to provide enough product to treat 254 acres of product per round. However, no matter your size, there is a Holganix refrigeration option available to you. Check out the Holganix Logistics Page for more information on the Holganix RAD and Holganix Fridge, or speak with your Holganix representative to discuss which option best fits your company.
The Science Behind Holganix
Saving Lake Erie
Photo by: Brenda Culler/ODNR Coastal Management
In the mid 20th century, Lake Erie used to be known as the poster child for polluted lakes until the U.S. and Canadian governments stepped in. After millions of dollars and changes to agricultural practices, the pollution subsided and the lake was restored to most of its former glory. Unfortunately, within the past decade all of our hard work has unraveled. As Michael Wines, New York Times reporter, stated, “Lake Erie is sick. A thick and growing coat of toxic algae appears each summer, so vast that in 2011 it covered a sixth of its waters, contributing to an expanding dead zone on its bottom, reducing fish populations, fouling beaches and crippling a tourism industry that generates more than $10 billion in revenue annually.” Although there are many culprits to Lake Erie’s sad state, scientists are saying that fertilizer users are partially to blame.
Phosphorous, a key nutrient in most fertilizers, is washing away into surrounding waterways, which feed directly into Lake Erie. The phosphorous then acts as a food source for a toxic algae bloom known as a microcystis, which has been contributing to the large and expansive dead zone. What’s the problem with dead zones? Dead zones are bodies of water where oxygen levels are so low that marine life cannot exist. It can lead to fish kill and hurts the fishing economy.
Even if we teamed together and eliminated our use of fertilizers as a country, our nation would suffer. We depend upon the farming industry for a large portion of our nations (and the global community’s) food. In addition, landscaping companies have provided jobs to Americans and have done well to beautify our country. Limiting either industry would be devastating. The solution lies in finding a balance between the needs of fertilizer users and the needs of our streams, lakes and bays.
Bionutritional products and organic methods at large could hold the key to achieving the needed balance. The thing that makes bionutrition so special is that it helps improve efficiency in the soil, allowing for reductions in chemicals like nitrogen, phosphorous and concentrated pesticides (NPK). For example, Holganix (a bionutritional product) can help users reduce their use of NPK by 70-90%. Together, the green industry is coming up with new technologies that can help replace or decrease the use of NPK, which means cleaner water for the world.
Works Cited
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/science/earth/algae-blooms-threaten-lake-erie.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
The Holganix Blog
Breaking News for the Holganix Community!
We are so grateful and honored to have won the prestigious Philadelphia CleanTech Enterprise of the year award for 2013. The PACT Enterprise is a celebration of, “achievement, innovation, and success in the Greater Philadelphia region.”
Awards are given out to technology and life science companies. The CleanTech award is sponsored by Ben Franklin Technology Partners, Exelon Company and PECO. Winners must have an innovative new product or service with a positive impact on the environment. In 2012, the CleanTech award went to FieldView Solutions for their efforts in helping customers cut energy usage and power bills as well as for utilizing greener IT practices.
Holganix is a 100% organic bionutirional product that helps promote strong plant health while dramatically reducing your chemical inputs. That means less chemicals are being applied and less chemicals are running off into our water systems. Holganix is a cost efficient product that’s better for your plants and the environment. The nitrates and phosphates in traditional fertilizers promote an overgrowth of algae and plankton in our water sources, which in turn depletes the oxygen levels in affected areas.
This is a special occasion for the Holganix team and we could never have done it without the help of the Holganix community. Thank you for making it all possible!
The Science Behind Holganix
Improve Your Flower's Healing In Process
When transplanting or potting your flowers, you are moving the plant from the familiar medium to a foreign one. The process of what the flower goes through when adjusting to its new habitat is known as “healing in.” The ingredients found within the Holganix secret recipe speed up and improve the healing-in process by helping the flower’s roots do their job better. Before you even think about transplanting or repotting one of your plants, consider both pruning the plant’s roots and adding Holganix to the soil. Here’s why!
Water and Nutrient Uptake
Endo and Ecto Mycorrhizae fungi, found within the Holganix recipe, will team up with new roots and assist with water and nutrient uptake. The mycorrhizae “extract phosphorous and nitrogen from the soil and release them inside the roots of the plant, and the additional nutrients that the plant receives from the fungus allow it to grow faster and larger” (What Is Life? A Guide To Biology).
Breaking the Potting Material Down
Beneficial bacteria in Holganix help break down the initial potting media, making organic matter available to plant roots and improving soil for the rooting process. This maximizes the value of your potting soil.
Breaking Up Compactions
Lignin polymers found within Holganix assist in breaking up compaction, allowing the roots to funnel deeper into the new habitat. The filaments of mycorrhizae fungi and the roots of plants follow the channels used by the lignin polymers to grow deeper into the soil. Deep roots and mycorrhizae assure that the plants will utilize all water and nutrients available.
To learn more about the Holganix Flower Program, click here to read more.
The Science Behind Holganix
Protecting Flowers From Disease and Insects
Reader's note: Above rose bush suffered from both insect damage and a fungal disease known as black spot. Holganix soon revived the flowers. No pesticides were used. Holganix was applied for two years prior to taking the picture. Picture taken in the heat of August.
Nothing can annoy avid gardeners more than seeing their beautiful flowers succumb to disease and insects. Keeping both these nasty things away from your flowers is important to maintaining the perfect garden. By protecting roots, strengthening your plants and deterring harmful insects and fungi, you can help promote the health of your flowers. Here’s how Holganix can help.
Protecting Your Roots
One of the best things for your roots is a hardworking beneficial fungus known as Trichoderma. This beneficial fungus is a part of the Holganix recipe and lives in association with your plants’ roots. Their job is to protect your roots by suppressing specific disease-causing fungi. Some of these harmful bacteria include but are not limited to: Phytopthora, Pythium and Fusarium. In addition, Trichoderma is also effective against Dollar Spot because the fungi eliminate over-wintering disease organisms in the soil. Talk about effective disease suppression!
Weakening Bad Insects and Fungi
Yet another useful ingredient found within the Holganix recipe are Chitin-Degrading bacteria. These bacteria attack the exoskeleton of both insects and fungi cell walls, which are composed of chitin. By doing so, they are attacking pesky insects and harmful fungi before they affect your flowers.
Botanical and Essential Oils
Botanical and essential oils team up with the strong plant physiology to naturally suppress insects. Some of these types of oils include but are not limited to: Tea Tree Oil and Melaleuca Oil. These oils create nutrient barriers to insects and in some cases certain insects are repelled by the smell of the oil or their reproduction is altered.
All in all, Holganix can help you proactively build strong flowers and suppress disease and insects while also promoting vigor and color (click here to read more on this topic). That means healthier, happier flowers for your garden. Learn more about the Holganix secret recipe here.
The Science Behind Holganix
Promoting Vigor and Color in Your Flowers
Nothing looks more beautiful in a garden than colorful, healthy flowers. With annuals, achieving the most pop and life in as short a time as possible as compared with turf is key. Yet, how do you promote vigor and color in your flowers? It all comes down to fertilization and how the flowers efficiently acquire and use nutrients and water. By utilizing a bionutritional product like Holganix, landscapers and gardeners alike can create the perfect, colorful garden.
Fertilization—Reducing Fertilizers with Great Results
Fertilizer is necessary to promoting colorful flowers. However, as you apply fertilizers, many of the nutrients don’t actually make it to the plant. Instead, some nutrients become locked within the soil, becoming unavailable for plant use. Bionutritional products like Holganix help unlock these nutrients and covert them to a useable form for your flowers. That means that the fertilizer you use gets you optimal results. Just think, with Holganix, you can reduce tablespoons of fertilizers to mere teaspoons!
Food Sources—Making Natural Food Sources Available
Yet another helpful feature of Holganix is its ability to improve the cation exchange capacity of your soil. This is the ability for the soil to store one particular group of nutrients called cat ions. The major cat ion nutrients include calcium, magnesium and potassium. Improvement of the exchange capacity of your soil will make nutrients that were unavailable to your flowers accessible!
Watering—Reducing Water Needs Is Easy
Holganix significantly reduces your watering needs. The mycorrhizae found within the Holganix secret recipe helps create a thicker, deeper root system allowing for better water, food and mineral translocation. Furthermore, Yucca and additional sugars also help the plant increase water retention.
http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/sciences/earthscience/geology/Soils/SoilComposition/ComponentsStructure/CationNutrients/CationNutrients.htm
http://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/ay/ay-238.html
Marketing Tips and Hints
Become a Purple Cow!
Think back on the last time you ever bothered to give a commercial or piece of advertisement a moment of your time. According to CBS the average person sees roughly 5,000 adds each day, yet despite these massive numbers we hardly pay any attention to them. This is because Americans have become so bombarded by boring advertisements and the dull companies that they no longer spark our attention.
In his book, The Purple Cow, Seth Godin calls these boring companies and advertisements brown cows. After all, we see brown cows all over rural America and never give them a second thought. Seth Godin believes the answer to the brown cow disease is to transform your company and/or marketing angle into a purple cow! A purple cow is a product, company or advertisement that is unique and remarkable; it’s something that grabs your attention and won’t let go. Make your company remarkable and worth talking about to win in today’s market.
Examples of Purple Cows:
- If you were watching 2012’s Super Bowl then you remember the Chevy commercial that played during half time, staring Clint Eastwood. It was entitled Halftime in America. This is a great example of a purple cow advertisement. In only 1 week it has had 6 million you tube hits alone! Click here to watch the commercial for yourself.
- Whether you like her or not,
- it’s hard not to notice Lady Gaga, especially when she shows up to receive awards wearing a dress made of meat! Lady Gaga is a prime example of a purple cow, after all how could you forget her?
- The whole concept of 1800-GOT-JUNK? is clean junk removal. When was the last time you put the words clean and junk together in one sentence? This company is remarkable and as a result they’ve reached 150 million dollars in 10 years and are now a global, international enterprise. But perhaps the craziest thing is that they practiced non-revenue marketing! Instead they wrote a simple one-page letter to Oprah, which after appearing on her show started an international phenomenon.
- Apple is another company that we all know and love. The thing that makes them a purple cow is their incredible focus on design and user inter-phase. Such a unique focus allowed Apple to reign supreme in an industry where Dell had held the monopoly.
So what makes you remarkable? How is your company different from your competition? How does your add stand out? Becoming a purple cow is easier then you think. It all comes down to adding value to customer’s lives. Making your product or service better, cheaper, safer or more convenient is sure to get you noticed. For those in the lawn care world an easy way to become a purple cow and add value to your customer’s lives is to useHolganix. Holganix is a 100% bio nutritional product that keeps your lawns greener, attracts customers and saves you money. Be remarkable and be worth making a remark about!
The Science Behind Holganix
How Holganix Helps Mother Nature Do Her Job
Within the natural world there exists a complex balance among living organisms known as the “food web.” Plants, animals and microorganisms are all instruments in an orchestra; each plays a crucial part in the natural symphony of life. If even one of the players is out of tune, the whole soil food web suffers. However, when everything is in order, the results are beautiful.
A healthy soil food web is very similar to the food web we all learned in middle school (see figure 1). The soil food web occurs when three key events are met.
- All the organisms that a plant requires are present in the soil and functioning.
- Nutrients in the soil are in their proper forms for
the plant to uptake. It is one of the functions of a healthy food web to hold nutrients in non-leachable forms so they remain in the soil, until the plant requiresthem. The plant then “triggers” the right biology to convert the nutrients into forms the plant can uptake (but which are typically very leachable).
- When the correct ratio of fungi and bacteria to protozoa (ratio of predator to prey) is present, the soil pH, structure and nutrient cycling occur at optimum rates. This produces the right forms of nutrients for the plant at the appropriate times.
One of the biggest problems our soil is facing today is a poor ratio representation of predator and prey. When we treat lawns with chemical products, the ratio typically appears as a narrow triangle (see figure 2). In this triangle, there aren’t enough predator or prey present for balance to occur or for plants to be healthy.
Protozoa, nematodes, amoeba and ciliates are examples of predators. These predators feed off of bacteria and fungi. When food and micro-bacteria are added, the triangle enlarges and levels are increased (see figure 3). With more food sources available, balance in pH and food for each species occurs naturally.
As an individual in the lawn care world, your number one goal is to enlarge this triangle to achieve a healthy balance. How do you do this? If you remember our first entry in this blogging series entitled “The Secret to Compost Tea,” you already know the answer. Utilizing compost teas or evolved versions like Holganix allows you to “feed” the predators and prey and enlarge the triangle!
Stay tuned for next week’s entry in the Behind the Science of Holganix series or check out our Marketing Tips and Hints series for helpful tidbits during the marketing season.
Works Cited
http://www.soilfoodweb.com/sfi_approach3.html
Stephen Lange, scientist and inventor of Holganix
The Science Behind Holganix
New Studies and Products Underway at Holganix
Before joining the Holganix team as our Director of Soil and Plant Science, Dr. Robert Neidermyer did not initially accept the claims Holganix was making. He has had a long history in the agronomic and crop protection industry. He had seen organics at work and was not impressed; to him Holganix had to prove itself. Yet, he was curious and he started researching the Holganix claims. In the end, Holganix prevailed and Dr. Neidermyer became a Holganix enthusiast.
In this video, Dr. Bob (as he affectionately is called by the Holganix team) gives a speech on some of the studies and products that are underway through the Holganix Research and Development Team as well as by our university partners. In the first half of his speech, Dr. Bob discusses how to properly view scientific studies by Holganix or, for that matter, any other company doing agricultural research. Afterward, he launches into an overview of our Holganix Granular 10-0-0 product (7:45). He further dives into some of the cool things the Holganix community can look forward to in the near future (12:05). Some of the products to be on the look out for are:
- Holganix liquid with nitrogen
- Holganix Granular with an increased nitrogen content
- Agricultural applications
If you are interested in what research studies are underway at the universities, Dr. Bob reviews that as well (13:30). All in all, it’s an exciting time in Holganix history with new innovations just around the bend. Watch the video to learn more about Dr. Bob and some of the awesome studies and products that are underway at Holganix Research and Development as well as by our university partners.
Marketing Hints and Tips
Marketing With Bionutrition
Last October, key members of the Holganix team lined up to give speeches to attendees at the Holganix Bionutritional Summit. This video features Holganix Head of Marketing Nicole Wise who discusses marketing with bionutrition and easy things you can do to help grow your lawn care company.
One favorite thing Nicole reviews is messaging. She discusses the importance of messaging your lawn care company to incorporate all the wonderful new things you are providing with Holganix. After all, with Holganix you are helping reduce your environmental footprint and the footprint of your clients. Get credit for it and tell them just how green you are! You are also providing a superior service with Holganix. Your lawns are achieving the grass green dream naturally and are healthier than a synthetic lawn; let your customers know in your messaging.
Want to learn more marketing tips from Nicole? Nicole hosts Wise Webinars every Tuesday and Thursday. Contact Nicole today to reserve your slot in next week’s webinar. If you don’t want to wait until your Wise Webinar, we’ve dug up blogs and articles that go over different segments of Nicole’s speeches. Consider checking out: What Does Your Messaging Say About Your Company? and The Golden Street Approach. On a last note, be sure to pencil in this year’s Bionutritional Summit, which will take place at GIE on October 23, 2013 (more details to come)!