Florida's Nursery Industry Scrambles After Triple Storms

Cecilia Shaw makes her way through the branches of a fallen tree on Sept. 16 in Parker, Fla., after Hurricane Ivan passed through and generated localized tornadoes. (Photo: AP/ Phil Coale)

Charley, Frances and Ivan have devastated Florida's nurseries-with damage estimates likely to exceed $650 million. Some businesses may never recover, but others are salvaging what they can and moving forward to rebuild the state's until-recently-thriving plant industry.

The first thing on many business owners' minds is insurance. Some nurseries had plant insurance but such coverage is far from the norm in the industry. Of 350 large nurseries in Palm Beach County, for example, only about half had plant insurance, according to Joe Cialone, president of the Palm Beach Wholesale Growers Association and the Palm Beach Chapter of the Florida Nurserymen & Growers Association.

There are close to 8,000 nursery businesses throughout the state.

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Efforts are now underway to secure federal aid for the hardest-hit uninsured businesses. Ben Bolusky of the Florida Nursery, Grower and Landscape Association has been working with congressional delegations, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the governor's office to get federal assistance for the state's nursery industry, which employs close to 158,000 workers.

With relief up in the air, most nursery owners are doing what they can on the ground.

The most immediate concern is to see that plants receive enough water when irrigation systems are damaged. Growers should then consider re-fertilizing, since heavy rains may have washed most existing nutrients away. It may be a good idea to apply fungicide and bacteriacide if those chemicals haven't been used recently.

A list of post-storm measures business owners can take is available from the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. The document, authored by Thomas H. Yeager, is titled, ?EUR??,,????'?????<