We Made It!
The last ten weeks have been some of the most intense summer weeks we have ever experienced. Seed shipments have been fantastic! We are very grateful and thankful to all of our customers for choosing to purchase your seed from Smith Seed Services. We hope that we have served you well. THANK YOU!
Our challenges on acquiring seed fast enough to keep up demand has stretched us and been demanding on all our personnel. Many items, like hairy vetch, orchardgrass, winter peas, and medium red clover, to name a few, have been very challenging to keep in stock and available.
Speaking of stretching, we added a new “employee” of sorts. Its name is “Hoss 2.0”, and it is an automated palletizer. With a little help - and a lot of electricity - Hoss can palletize and wrap a full trailer load in 1 hour. Hoss has been working lots of hours lately.
More Meroa Information
A few months ago, we briefly introduced you to Meroa, a new tetraploid Italian ryegrass variety. We’d like to tell you more about it since we have received additional results from last year’s trial results. Here’s the key points:
- Its a tetraploid. This means 2X the chromosomes as a diploid, higher sugar content, and big juicy leaves
- Its an Italian. Plant it in the spring and it won’t go to seedhead until the next summer. True Italians need to go through a cold spell before wanting to reproduce.
- Its late-maturing and high-yielding. Data from numerous fall-planted annual ryegrass trials put Meroa at the top or equivalent to the top of yield trials. While more expensive than traditional annual ryegrasses, these extra yields may actually justify the add expense for fall-planted one-season markets.
- It has great forage quality. Italians are known for excellent forage quality and Meroa is no exception.
- Its more winter hardy. The data is frankly very impressive.
Learn more at SmithSeed.com, or give us a call.
SmithSeed.Com Gets a Makeover
Over the past year we have been rebuilding our SmithSeed.com website. Those of you who are involved in maintaining your own websites know that one of the main issues companies have faced over the past couple of years is the growing use of non-traditional computer devices, such as smartphones and tablets. Our new website uses ‘responsive’ technology that allows the pages to adapt, or respond to whatever device is viewing it.
In addition to trying to make it more user friendly, we have also added extensive content including planting and zone information, more general information on legume species, and a revamp of our library of resources. Check it out and give us your feedback. If you have suggestions as to how we might make it a better resource for you and your customers, please let us know.