QUALITY GREEN SPECIALISTS, INC.
DELAND, FLORIDA

Quality Green – your best place to shop for the finest Natural Products: We at Quality Green Specialists, Inc. meet your agricultural & horticultural needs with the highest standards of excellence. We provide information, testing, and products for agriculture & horticulture to reduce excessive use of toxic chemical fertilizers & pesticides used to unproductively grow crops & control diseases, insects, and other pests. We sell natural & organic products and recommend techniques that work better in every way, including lowering your costs. Soil should be improved with natural fertilizers, minerals, and other natural inputs, as testing indicates. That is why we sell Azomite® volcanic pumice – the finest quality natural mineralizer & our own unique fertilizer blends. Our products are unexcelled in promoting the health of the beneficial microbial life in the soil, a key reason our soil & plant quality programs work so well. A combination of our natural plant nutritional products even knocks out parasitic nematodes! Quality Green recommends natural, organic products and practices that work better in every way than chemical, high salt index programs, including long-term sustainability and greater economic returns. We focus on the utilization of naturally mined minerals and plant-based organics for mineral deficient or stressed soils (generally with both excesses & deficiencies of minerals and low in mineralizing & other beneficial microbial life). Our research-based natural fertilizers, customized to your situation with our comprehensive soil & plant tissue testing, improve the health of your soil and ensures the production of high-quality plants and livestock. We have years of education and training to give you precise and accurate recommendations. Owners Dana Venrick and Allen Day are experts in the field of Agriculture and Horticulture. Dana received his M.S. from the University of Florida in Botany (Plant Physiology), Fruit Crops, and Chemistry. He has owned and operated a large Citrus grove and an ornamental & fruit tree nursery. He had six years of experience with FDACS and served for 10 years as a UF/IFAS Commercial Horticulture Agent as well. Allen has grown high-quality vegetables for many years. Best of all, we have a passion to help you with your horticultural or agricultural needs. Quality Green’s beautiful fruit tree nursery is a showcase of our philosophy, our practices, and our nature-based products. Come see us at work. We will be happy to answer any of your questions and explain how we can make your operation more productive and profitable. This is my story and history & philosophy of Quality Green Specialists. It stands to reason that healthy crops will produce much more high quality fruit and produce, withstand hard freezes better, and resist diseases much better. Through years of experience, I have helped many farms achieve these results for their crops and much more. My name is Dana Venrick, President of Quality Green Specialists, Inc. Along with co-owner Allen Day, Vice President, the company was founded based on our passion to help growers and horticulturists reach a higher level of plant nutrition. Not only did I receive a Master of Science degree from the University of Florida in Botany (Plant Physiology and Mineral Nutrition), Fruit Crops (Citrus), and Chemistry, but I have learned from many real world experiences, such as owning and managing 150 acres of citrus groves in Winter Haven, Florida and owning an ornamental plant nursery for 15 years and now co-owning a fruit tree nursery for over two years. Plus I taught high school vocational agriculture, worked for the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services for over 6 years and was a University of Florida UF/IFAS Commercial Horticulture Agent for 10 years. This is a story of my journey and how our company developed the philosophy that has proven to give outstanding growing results for farms, gardens, turf, and landscapes. Truth is, the groves didn’t look too good and production was not that hot, but it was making money. Later I learned the grove was on life support and was suffering from poor, incomplete nutrition that I like to call “hidden hunger”. Well, I knew some of the secrets. Potassium, Magnesium, Sulfur, Calcium, Manganese and other trace elements must be present in optimum amounts. But what else? Then while working for the University of Florida, IFAS Extension, I demonstrated the cold protection power of Silicon and Azomite®, which is a highly mineralized volcanic pumice with over 50% bio-available Silicon. As a 4-H Horticulture Club project, the members potted 40 four inch high guava seedlings in gallon containers in September. I said, “why don’t we try to see what good silicon will do?” I put a teaspoon of a high silicon product on 20 of the seedlings. All the seedlings were lightly fertilized the same. All other treatments were the same. The temperature reached 25 degrees F several times that winter in January. No protection of any kind was given to any of the seedlings. Come March guess what? All except one of the seedlings with silicon were doing just fine. (All 19 were later sold for a tidy sum to help the 4-H members go to 4-H Congress and win the State Horticulture Judging Contest and go on to the National Competition.) One guava seedling out of the 20 was struggling and later died. All of the guava seedlings without Silicon died. What a dramatic difference. This was amazing as young guava seedlings are especially cold sensitive.Azomite® volcanic pumice has generous amounts of bio-available Silicon (as Silicon Dioxide) and over 70 natural minerals that are easy for plants to translocate and metabolize as well! These are some of many eye-opening experiences. There is much more to the story. Humic acid/humates/organic matter is an important part of the nutrition solution in poor, low-organic matter soils. Quality Green Specialists, Inc., founded in July, 2010, recommends a number of natural materials, depending on the results of comprehensive, accurate soil and leaf tissue testing. Our testing and detailed scientific analysis promotes maximize results for growers and gardeners while keeping costs low. We recommend inputs that will improve soil health and promote beneficial soil microorganisms. Did you know that soil with good organic matter and the right amount of all the minerals with a slightly acidic pH (generally from 6.0 to 6.8) will have more nitrifying bacteria and produce more plant-available nitrogen (for most plants) with fewer pounds of applied nitrogen? Keys to a good basic soil structure are optimum amounts (within a certain favorable range) of the base minerals (elements with a positive charge) such as calcium, magnesium, and potassium. Based on the soil testing, limestone in the form of either calcium magnesium carbonate (dolomitic limestone/dolomite) or calcium carbonate (calcitic limestone) is a basic recommendation to raise the pH (make the soil more alkaline) of soil that is too acidic (remember that blueberries and Azaleas like a more acidic soil with a pH of around 5.0). The goal is to achieve otimum amounts within a desirable range of the two bases -Calcium and Magnesium – held in the highest amounts in the soil colloidal complex. Optimum ranges and ratios of Calcium and Magnesium are necessary to achieve good soil management of air, water, microorganisms, and minerals. Appropriate levels of Calcium and Magnesium help prevent a whole host of problems such as soil compaction, a condition I call “tight” soil. Adding too much Calcium makes the soil too “loose”, while adding too much Magnesium “tightens” the soil.