Alternative subirrigation way, capillary wick system (CWS) was tested to reduce labor cost, waste water, contamination of ground water, and use of fungicide compared to overhead irrigation system (OIS). CWS helped reduce remarkably the working hours for watering from 4 hours in OSI to just 5 minutes. Labor cost was saved 98% in CWS compared to OIS. By the physical characteristics of various growing media, 1 coconut coir＋2 perlite (v/v) mixture was selected because it had an ideal distribution of three phase, e.g. 1 solid: 1 liquid: 2 gas phase. Medium mixture containing scoria had so high bulk and particle density to hurt root. In bark-containing medium, the liquid phase and the percent saturation of liquid phase with time elapsed was lower than that of other mixture. It meant that the mixture contained very low level of water. Application of CWS for cyclamen pot production played an important role in reducing the incident of fusarium wilt symptom from 18% in conventional over watering system to 4%. Cyclamen pot irrigated by capillary wick had shorter petiole and more leaves than those by overhead watering. As a result, this system was highly beneficial to get uniform pot products with high quality. It improved water and nutrient solution efficiency relative to conventional overhead irrigation system (OIS).

The influence of sodium hypochlorite and ethephon on the germination of narrow-leaved purple coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia) was investigated. Treatment of seeds with ethephon (1 mM) for 2 h followed by soaking in 0.525% sodium hypochlorite greatly increased germination (>90%). The treatment of seed with a combination of sodium hypochlorite and ethephon shortened number of days required to reach 50% of the final germination (T₅₀) from 4.2 days in control to 1.1 days. Seedlings grown from ethephon-treated seeds had shorter and thicker hypocotyls and roots with higher dry weights compared to the control. The same trend was observed during seedling emergence from soil. Ethephon treatment longer than 2 h resulted in weaker seedlings, probably due to leaf senescence. Anthocyanin content in seedling leaves increased linearly from 0.04 mg/g fresh weight in control to 3.72 mg/g fresh weight in 24 h treatment as the time of seed exposure to ethephon increased. Seed treatment with bleach and ethephon may well be practiced to facilitate the establishment of E. angustifolia in the field.