GREENHOUSE-TOMATOES: A NEW E-LIST FOR COMMERCIAL GROWERS

Abstract

The greenhouse-tomatoes list was created to provide a method for commercial greenhouse tomato growers to communicate with each other to learn from others' experiences. Its purpose is to connect growers with vendors of greenhouses, fertilizers, seeds, and other supplies, and to facilitate networking among growers, agents, specialists, and researchers. The goal of the greenhouse-tomatoes list is to develop high quality discussion that benefits commercial growers and the entire greenhouse tomato industry. This is accomplished by promoting the list to growers; keeping the list small so that the traffic is manageable; avoiding promotion to hobbyists so the list does not become cluttered; avoiding SPAM. Excellent majordomo software has been 100% effective in the latter. The list was first offered to growers at the 2004 Greenhouse Tomato Short Course (GHSC) in Jackson, Miss. Then, it was promoted through other e-lists for vegetable specialists, new crops, greenhouse growers, hydroponics, etc. The final phase was to promote it at various grower meetings around the U.S., through trade magazines, and at the 2005 GHSC. Currently, the list consists of 141 members. Subscribers are from the U.S., Argentina, Australia, Canada, England, Germany, Newfoundland, Pakistan, Romania, South Africa, Virgin Islands, and Thailand. Demographics are 31% university, 15% suppliers, 34% growers, 20% unknown. The greenhouse-tomatoes list is housed on a server at Mississippi State University with nearly all functions handled seamlessly by majordomo software. To subscribe: send e-mail to majordomo@lists.msstate.edu with the following message: subscribe greenhouse-tomatoes. You will get a confirmation email telling you that you must reply. You must be subscribed to send anything to the list. Once subscribed, to communicate with the whole group, address an email message to greenhouse-tomatoes@lists.msstate.edu and everybody on the list will receive it. To make this easy, the user can save that address to a nickname, such as ght or greenhouselist. More information can be found at http://www.greenhousetomatosc.com.