Trouble With the State
By Stan Brown, Alameda Wholesale Nursery
In the 1960’s, several Colorado Nurserymen’s Association (CNA) members were getting complaints from the state, who said we were practicing false advertising by advertising and selling nursery plants as 1 gallon or 5 gallon, when the plastic pots that they were in held significantly less soil than that.
The verbiage came from an old nursery practice of using old 1-gallon cans that jams and jellies came in and 5-gallon cans that egg whites and other products came in. Then (and now,) 1- and 5-gallon plastic pots do have substantially less volume than 1 or 5 gallons. Not to mention that there are many different manufacturers, styles, and sizes.
At a summer meeting of CNA in the early 1960’s at Glen Bechtholdt’s Highland Nursery in Greeley, the Colorado Department of Weights and Measures threatened that they were ready to start issuing “significant” fines to our members if they did not “Cease and Discontinue” this dastardly practice. Some members started calling the sizes #1’s and #5’s (this didn’t help.) Some members changed signs to liters (which was really confusing.)
After we explained that this was a standard industry practice in all 50 states and when they realized that the public didn’t really care, (they just want a healthy attractive plant above the pot,) the state eventually gave up.
