Jeff, I know of some groves in central Florida that were ripped out and replanted in blueberries.

Everything that I've read says that they are planning on keeping the newly acquired groves in citrus.  The groves that they purchased were fairly clean, as far as HLB is concerned, and will increase their production to 10 million pounds per year.  Hopefully this type of acquisition can bring more stability in the juice market than what is has been for the past couple of years.

The current CEO wants to keep the business moving forward in the citrus industry, just like Ben Hill Griffin Jr. was doing with it when Alico got into the citrus business back in the 1960's. 

My only concern is that the majority shares of Alico stock were sold by Griffin Jr's heirs to investors from New York last year. If the farms do begin to decline from greening, the majority stockholders may want to sell the land as residential real estate, instead of replanting the groves. 

I use L.B. White heaters.  I lucked up and bought 5 210,000 btu heaters from a tropical foliage nursery down in Apopka, FL for $900 total.  The nursery was going out of business and selling everything. 

The primary reason for high mounts on heaters is to keep the heater out of the way, and provide an unabstructed area for the heat to be blown across the house.  I built a mount for the heater to sit on in the greenhouse.  It sits about 18 inches off the ground. There are 4 horizontal air flow fans in the greenhouse that are angled downward to blow the rising warm air down onto the plants.  The two on the right side blow to the back of the greenhouse and the two on the left blow to the front.  This helps to keep a more even temperature across the area.

As a side note:  Most of the weather services were close on Tuesday night.  We got down to 22.  All of the weather services , including NOAA, were off for my area last night.  The forecast was for 29 and we got down to 23.  I was late turning on my water in the field, and some of the microsprinklers had already stopped up with ice.

Do you test your own soil (I have the little NPK kit that I bought at the nursey), or do you take it to a lab?

I send my samples off to a private lab.  Most labs, both private and university, will send recommendations based on what crop you identify on the sample bag.  If the plants are already planted, it would be a good idea to send a leaf sample along with the soil sample. The leaves should be washed under running water if you have been spraying foliar fertilizers.  Fertilizer that was not absorbed can cause errors in the analysis.

The University of Florida has developed a few improved grapes that have genes from other grapes inserted into them for increased disease resistance.  They have had a hard time getting the USDA to allow them to release these vine outside of a quarantined area, and they were using plants from the same genus.  Since the issue of greening could be considered an epidemic, like the Papaya Ringspot Virus, maybe it will be allowed to go through without any problems.

It could be mealy bugs or some type of soft scale.  Post a picture if possible.

Thanks for that link.  If those pictures of the groves being sprayed were taken today, OSHA would be trying to get involved.  No masks or cabs back then, and the chemicals that they were using then are probably banned by now.  The govt always takes away the good stuff.

I've heard about what Mr. Hartzog is doing.  It sounds impressive.  There's a guy, about 15 miles southwest of me, that planted 10 acres of Owari two winters ago.  This past winter he tried several different methods of freeze protection; 17 GPA microsprinklers, bed sheets with a single incandescent bulb near the graft, bed sheets alone, and no protection at all.  He didn't lose a single tree.  His coldest temperature was around 22.  He has planted pines on the north, west, and east sides; where I only have thinned out trees to the west of my place.  One of the nights my weather station showed sustained 7-12 mile an hour winds, with gusts up to 18, that kept shifting from the northwest to northeast throughout the night.  If I would have been running the same amount of water as he was, then I would have probably lost everything.  The next planting that I'm going to attempt will have planted windbreaks around those three sides, and the citrus trees will have a lower rate of water running on them. 

I live on the border of zone 8A and 8B near the Okefenokee swamp in southeast Georgia.  Our Temps were below freezing for three nights in a row, with a solid two day period of below freezing temperatures.  The lowest we got was around 15 F.  I have microsprinklers on each tree that put out 30 gallons per hour each.  The deflector on them is a 120 degree pattern that sprays on the trees from the northwest side of the trees.  I did not lose any trees, bit did get severe damage in the tops of the trees.  All of my trees are less than two years old, and the most cold sensitive are the Hamlin orange and the Ruby Red grapefruit trees.

I have a friend in Florida that said that work is being done to try to treat the root system by injecting steam around the tree.  They are hoping that by doing both treatments simultaneously that the disease can be eradicated from the entire tree.

Before I wrap my trees trunks during the winter, I coat them with a mix of Kocide 3000 and latex paint (1/2 lb of product per quart of paint).  I haven't lost a tree yet from any type of phytophora complex.  Kocide 3000 is a copper hydroxide product.  Just be careful if you live in an area with low humidity or if you use phosphite products, as both can cause injury from copper applications.

Bifenthrin(Talstar, Upstar, Brigade) is great for ants.  It's one of the only chemicals that is allowed for use on plants shipped out of the fire ant quarantine zone.  It comes as a granular product as well as in a liquid formulation.  It is fast, persistent at higher rates, relatively safe for humans, and fairly inexpensive in the ag labeled form.  Another product that I've also used is diazinon.  It works for mound treatments, but is a little more toxic to humans than bifenthrin.

Millet,  what was the depth of the 4" pot you got from Logee's greenhouse?