Webinar Date: July 23, 2026
Speaker: Kate Cassity-Duffey, University of Georgia Department of Horticulture
Recorded introduction: Narrated by Bethany Harris
Moderator: Gabrielle LaTora, ANR Agent, Fulton County, Georgia
Duration: 20:18
Segment: 04 of 08
Series: Cut Flower Symposium
Credit at a Glance
| CEU Categories | [PENDING] |
| Live attendance | CEU was offered at the live symposium on July 23, 2026. |
| Archive viewing | No credit is attached to this recording. |
Read the pending status literally. The categories offered at the live symposium were never supplied to the archive team, so this file cannot tell an agent which Georgia applicator categories, if any, this segment would sit under. That is a missing input rather than an oversight, and it holds across every Cut Flower Symposium segment processed so far.
This one is cleaner than most as a non-applicator program. No pesticide, no product recommendation, and no control measure appears anywhere in the segment. The only chemistry is fertility: nitrogen sources, rates, and the mineralization chain. Segment 03 carried one insecticide-class recommendation in a chat answer and needed a caveat here. This segment needs none.
Who This Is For
Use this with growers who are deciding whether to put a cool season cut flower under cover. The whole first half is one question answered with data: what does a high tunnel actually buy you on snapdragons, and what does it cost. The answer has a shape agents can use, because it is not uniformly good news.
It also works for organic and transitioning vegetable growers who are adding flowers. Cassity-Duffey is a soil scientist and she spends four minutes on why organic nitrogen behaves differently from conventional, at a level that assumes no soil science background. That section stands alone if you need a short segment on fertility for a mixed audience.
At 20:18 it fits inside a single meeting hour with time for discussion, or splits into two short viewings at the 10:30 mark, where the high tunnel trial ends and the plant date trial begins. Neither half depends on the other.
What the Session Covers
- 0:36 to 5:28, setup. Why organic growers are adding cut flowers, what makes southern field production hard, and the nitrogen cycle in organic systems. Ends with her own view that cut flower growers may be under-fertilizing.
- 5:28 to 10:30, trial one. High tunnel against field, December 1 plant date, two cultivars, four replications. First harvest unchanged, harvest window halved under cover, stems 10 cm longer, spikes less dense.
- 10:30 to 15:57, trial two. January 7 against March 11, eight Johnny’s cultivars, 100 lb N at planting plus 50 side-dressed. Includes a cultivar-by-cultivar walk with stem lengths. Sixty days between plantings did not give 60 days between harvests.
- 15:57 to 17:24, wrap. Year two plans, thanks, and her contact slide.
- 17:24 to 20:18, four chat questions. Seeding Potomac for fall, whether year two changes cultivars, spacing, and what the snapdragon groups mean.
Viewing Notes for Asynchronous Use
The recording is a screen share of a slide deck with the speaker’s audio. Nothing on screen requires color discrimination to follow, and every figure she shows she also says aloud, so the audio carries the content on its own.
One thing to tell viewers up front. The recorded introduction promises field-grown sunflowers and lisianthus. She delivers snapdragons instead, and says so in her first minute. She asks the audience to come back for a second part “after around the 11,” which refers to a slot at the live symposium that went to another speaker. That second part was never delivered and does not exist as a recording. A viewer who is not warned will wait 20 minutes for a lisianthus section that never arrives.
Two figures on the slides are not readable from the video. Her email address on the closing slide is pointed at but never read aloud, and the University of Maryland document she references is never named or linked. Neither is recoverable from the recording.
Pull These for Discussion
Four segments that carry a discussion on their own, with the timestamp range that answers each.
“The high tunnel did not make them bloom earlier.” Watch 6:48 to 8:01. First harvest date was identical in field and tunnel for both cultivars, which she says surprised her, because flowering answers to light as well as temperature. Good opener for a group that assumes protected culture always means earlier.
“You are trading harvest length for stem length.” Watch 8:01 to 9:41. Fifteen days of harvest in the field against eight under cover for Chantilly, and 10 cm longer stems under cover. Ask the group which side of that trade their own market sits on.
“Sixty days apart does not mean sixty days apart.” Watch 14:34 to 15:57. The succession planting point, with the stems-per-plant difference behind it. This is the practical takeaway most likely to change what somebody does next season.
“Why organic nitrogen is hard to predict.” Watch 3:53 to 5:28. The full mineralization and nitrification chain with the three loss pathways. Works as a standalone fertility segment for a mixed audience.
Resources to Share
Nothing in this segment can be handed out as a link, and that is worth knowing before you plan around it.
- Her email address is on the closing slide and is not spoken. Ask the symposium organizers before you promise growers a contact.
- The University of Maryland Extension cut flower document is shown and described as the only regional fertility guidance available, but it is never named or linked.
- Johnny’s supplied the eight-cultivar trial, and American Takii is thanked alongside them. Neither is given as a web address.
Three Things to Get Right When You Use This
-
Do not repeat “Potomac is a group one.” She says it at 18:05, a participant corrects her in the chat at 19:43 with “typically it’s a three to four,” and she accepts the correction on air. Her own cultivar walk calls Potomac Orange and Potomac Lavender group three or four. If you quote the exchange, quote both halves.
-
The rates are for her organic system and she says so. 100 pounds of nitrogen at planting plus 50 side-dressed sounds high against conventional practice, and she addresses that directly: organic fertilizer releases over time, so not all of it is available when it goes out. Passing on the number without the explanation would be a real disservice to a grower.
-
This is one season of data and she is candid about it. She calls it her first time growing snaps for cut flower production, attributes the density result to an unusual winter, and says she will repeat both trials next year to separate weather from cultivar. Frame it as a first-year result, which is how she frames it.
Scaling Note
Target. Stage 3 derives from the Stage 2 package. Segment 03’s Extension Agent file ran 13.6 KB against an 18.2 KB archive summary, a ratio of 0.75. This archive summary is 15.0 KB, so the proportional target was about 11 KB.
Delivered. 8.5 KB, a ratio of 0.58 against segment 03’s 0.75. Two structural reasons, both of which should hold on future short segments. The Credit at a Glance section is shorter because there is no pesticide content to caveat, where segment 03 needed a paragraph about one insecticide recommendation in a chat answer. And What the Session Covers is a timestamped outline rather than prose, which is the change that held segment 03’s file flat and works harder here.
What was not scaled. Pull These for Discussion keeps four full entries. It is the section an agent actually uses on the day, and cutting it to two would save half a page and most of the file’s value.
Processed for UGA Center for Urban Agriculture / Cut Flower Symposium Archives
Source: Stage 2 Archive Package, GTBOP_Archive_Summary_2026-07-23_CassityDuffeySnapdragons.md