Welcome! This is our first "on-line" strawberry plasticulture newsletter for the Southern Region's Virtual Small Fruit Center web site. A number of us at NC State, Clemson, UGA, VA-Tech, and Univ. of Ark. are very excited about having access to a "dynamic newspage" where specialists have a fast and easy way of submitting information to the web. Mr. Mike Bonnette, Assistant Information Manager at Clemson, has been utilizing this technology for the last eight weeks to support the Cotton entomology program there, and says, "It puts the information in the hands of the extension offices and growers very quickly, saving hard copy mailing costs and most importantly, time. This time lag, now diminished, is the key to making successful farming decisions in South Carolina."

Traditionally, we have communicated information through hardcopy newsletters, faxes, bulletins, meetings, site visits, and in more recent years, many specialists, agents and growers have found it easy and convenient to use the internet. Because this Web site is "so new", I know that many of us are feeling some apprehension about taking on "one more thing", such as a dynamic newspage column here in the BerryInfo section of
www.smallfruits.org. But, hopefully, some of this worry will disappear as we discover in the next week or two how incredibly fast and easy it is to enter a crop advisory - almost at the speed of thought!

So here goes!