Big-box garden centers embrace QR tags

This spring, plants sold at Home Depot and Lowe’s have bar codes on each plant tag that enable customers with smartphone scanners to check out whether the plant, for example, grows in low light or needs frequent watering, The New York Times reported.

This is the season when stores sell millions of garden plants, which are an important segment of the business. At Lowe’s, for example, nursery sales, which also include trees and flowers, were 4 percent of the chain’s total $48.8 billion sales in the fiscal year ended Jan. 28.

Chris Gerhard, a home gardener and real estate broker in San Antonio, said mobile bar codes have greatly improved her gardening outcomes.

“Those little plastic tags on plants always had minimal information,” she said of her purchases at her local Home Depot. “Now, with the bar codes, you can scan them and figure out immediately what is going to grow in the sun, when to plant and how far apart to place plants.
“That’s great for me because in this climate you can fry things to a crisp, and I have. This helped me know exactly what would work on my front porch and back patio without wasting a lot of time and money.”

Read the full story here.