Gambling, Flowers and the Weather

Gambling, Flowers and the Weather

Califonia grown Doug Dobecki flower farming gambling Holiday planting Iris Lane DeVries Lilies Matsumoto Asters Oxnard santa claus Tulips Valentines Day

“I don’t have to go to Las Vegas, I’m a farmer.” –Lane DeVries


While most of the nation is working on their list for Santa, stringing up lights on the house or preparing for Hanukkah, here at Sun Valley we are already looking ahead to Valentine’s Day. As flower farmers, we have to have our crops in the ground well ahead of any holiday event. Of course, Valentine’s Day is to flowers, what the Super Bowl is to football. You have to have your team functioning at the highest level and all systems must be “go”. All your training and sacrifice has been leading up to this moment for the wild ride which kicks into high gear just about on Ground Hog Day.

Baby Iris, these will be ready for Valentine's Day.

Now the gambling begins. Flower farmers have an extremely perishable crop, much more so even than food. We wager every time we plant a bulb, wagering that that flower will be sold, after we give it all the love, attention and resources a flower needs to grow. There is nothing sadder than tossing out a bunch of flowers which were grown, but never purchased. This is sad on many levels, especially the economic one.

We track Mother Nature’s cycles so we have a historical context to work with. Seeing how the weather patterns effect the flowers growth and harvest rates is a constant job. Anticipating the first frost, knowing when a big weather system is going to move in, planning ahead to know that the shorter days are going to create a need for more time in the ground for a flower to reach maturity, all of this is a science. However, Mother Nature is not a scientist. She is crafty, wily and always happy to throw a curve ball at you.

Walk onto any farm in the world and ask the simple question, “What is the weather going to be like tomorrow?” and prepare for an onslaught of information, debate, charts, Doppler radar print outs, almanac readings and a fair amount of superstition. In our office the weather guru is Doug Dobecki. Better have your facts straight if you are going to talk weather with Doug. If you didn’t notice that low pressure building off the Philippines which could bring rain to our Oxnard Farm or didn’t notice the cold front lingering in the Aleutian Islands that could set back our tulip production by a day or two next week, you are going to get a weather clinic. It is even rumored that Santa Claus calls Doug on the 24th of December to know how warm to dress.




Flower farming is a job done with two hands. One hand is harvesting the flower which will bloom today; the other hand is planting the bulb, which will bloom in the future. There is very little time for rest this time of year, as we harvest for the holidays and plant for Valentine's Day, in February we will be picking for Valentine's Day, while we plant for Mother’s Day. And so it goes, as the earth travels in its yearly journey around the sun.

We are about 11 weeks out from Valentine’s Day, so our enormous the lily crop is in the ground. A lily takes between 12-16 weeks to reach harvest, and what a beautiful flower for all you Cupids out there. Our iris crop is in the ground as well, since an iris takes about 14 weeks in the winter months to reach harvest. Our tulips are already rooted, and sitting in the cooler, waiting to be put into a warm greenhouse in the weeks just before Valentine's. Of course, all these numbers are just educated guesses, if there is a cold snap, the flowers will slow down and we will be sweating to get them to harvest in time, and vice versa, if it  suddenly gets unseasonably warm and sunny, then the flowers will be ready to pick in late January…uh-oh.


Soil grown Tulips in their early stage.

Another challenge our growers face is anticipating the color mixes needed. Using our stunning Matsumoto Asters grown at our Oxnard Farm as an example; here is what has to happen. A Matsumoto takes 14-15 weeks to reach harvest. For Valentine’s Day, we need to have almost the entire crop blooming in Red and Hot Pink colors for about 10 days. The weeks before and immediately after Valentine’s Day, the colors that are in demand for bouquets, weddings and such are purple, white and lavender. So it takes some serious forethought to make it all work out…luckily this isn’t our first rodeo, and Sun Valley is known for having the best year round flower availability in the industry.


Red and Hot Pink Matsumoto Asters will be ready for Valentine's Day.

Anticipating the color demands, matched with environmental conditions is just one of the interesting equations in the flower industry. Too bad they don’t have Powerball in California, with the odds we face every day, our growers would win.


Walking the farm with Lane and Gerrit this fall, I commented on how much I enjoyed seeing the crops in the ground, getting a different perspective on our Matsumotos which are an almost bush like plant. From my perspective, I enjoyed seeing the whole plant not just the stem with a flower on top. As I made this comment, both Gerritt and Lane stopped dead in their tracks, Gerrit politely said, “I like to see the flowers in a box.”

We turned and kept walking, a moment later, Lane added, “With a label on it.”

Such is the flower business, hoping against hope, stem by stem to get the flower to grow, to harvest, to market and to get the next bulb planted.

Farm Weather Report

Farm Weather Report

greenhouses hoop houses Humboldt County Iris Lilies Oxnard Rain Redwoods Salmon Tulips



A flock of egrets looks for shelter from the rain on our Arcata farm.



“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” -Rumi


Our farm here in the north is ready to batten down the hatches, it looks like the classic Humboldt County rains have begun. Puddles are forming, and it appears they are here to stay.  Just east of here, our farm in Willow Creek has had a dusting of snow and a few showers in the last week.  To the south, our farm in Oxnard is still enjoying a dry, windy autumn.  Our farm in St. Catherines, Ontario, Canada has already been shoveling some serious snow, and at the farm in Baja, people are still wearing shorts…maybe they always wear shorts?

Here on the rugged north coast we are hardy people, many of which don’t even own a raincoat, while living in what is termed a “temperate rainforest.” The rain is essential to our ecosystem, which includes the tallest trees in the world and some of the most dramatic rivers in America.

Coho and Chinook Salmon are starting their amazing journey up the rivers to their ancient spawning grounds.  About 2 miles from the farm, salmon are schooling up and preparing for the water levels on the Mad River to rise so they can begin swimming upstream, in some cases over a 100 miles, to reproduce. We are blessed here in Humboldt County with a stunning natural environment, and an awesome community.  This environment, although not ideal for suntans, air conditioners or sunglasses is perfect for growing tulips, lilies and iris.

So what happens on the farm when the rain starts? Luckily, all our field crops have been harvested except our yummy artichokes, which don’t mind the rain.

Our hoop houses are the most exposed to the elements. They don’t have much structure, just plastic sheeting stretched over arched metal poles. I asked grower Tim, “What happens to all the water that runs off the top of these hoops? It seems that you would need huge trenches to keep the water under control.”

Hoop House drainage system.

Tim explained something you would never know without getting the inside scoop. When a hoop house is built on the farm, it isn’t just put up with metal stuck in the ground and the sheeting pulled over to cover it. Our team actually builds up the ground below the hoop house with about 3 feet of sand, and in that sand is a huge series of drainage pipes. This keeps the area well drained, water run-off is controlled and the flowers growing in the hoop house don’t get flooded. The main crops growing right now in our hoop houses are our Royal LA Hybrid Lilies, Asiatic Lilies, Iris and Freesia.



Sun Valley's "Royal" LA Hybrids are coming on strong for Thanksgiving.

Our large complex of glass Dutch Greenhouses are where we grow the Oriental Lilies and our soil grown Tulips. These greenhouses have a steel infrastructure, thousands of glass panes, sliding doors and create a very controlled temperature atmosphere. When the rain comes; the humidity in the greenhouses spikes. A little humidity is great for the flowers; a lot of humidity is a recipe for disaster. A high level of humidity will encourage botrytis. Botrytis is the scourge of the flower farm. It is a fungus growth that will rot the stems and buds of lilies and turn them brown. No bueno.

Cold and wet outside, warm and dry inside.

Grower Antoon explained to me what they do to keep the humidity levels in check. The first thing they do is turn on the heat. Not your traditional heat, but a long series of white pipes through which they pump boiling water. This radiant heating system warms up the air in the greenhouse. Warm air holds more moisture than cold air, so the moisture which has accumulated in the greenhouse moves into the air, and away from the lilies and tulips. After a few hours of heat to pull the moisture into the air, the growers open up the vents on the greenhouse.

The hot, moist air rushes out of the greenhouse, rising into the sky, leaving the plants dry and safe from the devil botrytis. This clever system is repeated throughout the wet season and keeps our greenhouses producing year round lilies and tulips.

The first rainbow of the season, taken from the door of our sales office.

lily@tsvg.com

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On the Wet-Pack Line

On the Wet-Pack Line

flower packaging Freesia geotropism gravitropism Iris Lilies phototropism Tulips

Your mother always told you to stand up straight, keep your shoulders back, chin up and don’t slouch! She would be thrilled to see how we keep this same attitude with our flowers. It amazes me that we ship many of our flowers standing upright, and sometimes standing up in water.  I decided to head down to the warehouse to learn what the process is.

The first word that got dropped on me was geotropism…geo-whaaaat? Geotropism, also known as gravitropism, is the response of a plant part to the stimulus of gravity. Plant stems will grow upwards irrespective of the position in which they are placed, this phenomenon is actually "negative geotropism" as the tulip will grow against gravity.  Roots show positive geotropism as they grow down, with gravity.  So when we lay tulips down to ship them, they might lose the perfectly straight posture our growers have worked so hard to achieve. There is also phototropism, which is a response based on the direction of the light source. We want to protect the integrity of that long elegant stem as long as we can, so the tulip doesn't bend in the vase when it is placed as the center piece of your room.


Kept in a dark room, over the course of 14 hours this tulip illustrates "negative geotropism."

Tulips and Snapdragons are the most geotropic flowers we grow. And our soil grown tulips, which are prized for their stem thickness and length, can really bend dramatically while packed in a flat box. Irises have some geotropic qualities, and lilies aren’t geotropic. The majority of Sun Valley’s customers have their tulips and iris packed upright.



On the day I chatted with the upright pack team, they were in the middle of doing a lily wet pack. The "wet pack" keeps your flowers as fresh as possible, since they ship while sitting in life-giving water.  Now this gets pretty wild, big carts of lilies are wheeled in from the coolers. The team sets up plastic bags, then places black buckets inside each bag, the buckets have about 2 or 3 inches of water in each. The conveyor belt moves forward in short bursts while team members fill the buckets with bunches of California Grown lilies. 


The lily wet pack line in action.

This is some hard work as the lilies are pretty unwieldy, so the crew really has to struggle to get the lilies in the buckets and bagged up, then the conveyor belt slides them down to the boxing area. Here the boxes get formed, and the lilies are inserted for a perfect snug fit. Next packaging tape is wrapped around the box, and it shoots through into the shipping area. The boxes are set upright on pallets, and away they go, with plenty of water for their journey. Speaking with team leader Douglas Miller, he says, “Customers are finding the upright pack is better than a flat pack, we are seeing more and more orders going upright than ever before.”  We have also started packing our freesia in wet packs since it keeps the flower vitality and increases vase life.

Team Member Michael, dropping wet packed lilies into a box.

Iris like to be shipped upright as well. They go into a special box which is resistant to moisture, but they don’t ship with standing water. Producing boxes at Sun Valley is actually a full time job for 2 or 3 people. Seeing these specialized boxes on the packing line, I decided to head upstairs in the warehouse, where Danial, John and Nick are making boxes on a huge level. Daniel was making hamper dividers for iris on this really cool foot operated stapling machine. He can turn out about 500-600 boxes per hour on this machine. Watching him work you see a deep level of concentration, as he assembles the various components of our shipping materials.



Danial making "hamper dividers" for shipping iris.

The same team that runs the tulip and lily wet pack line, will shift over to the iris line depending on the work flow.  This crew is usually blasting classic rock and wearing t-shirts in the chilly refrigerated air.  It is astonishing how many boxes they can ship in a short period of time.  This time of year the line will run for about 4 to 5 hours.  However, around Valentines Day they will be shipping 8,000 boxes of tulips every 24 hours! 

Buckets of Iris on carts, then getting packaged.

The upright packing line is a great combination of team work, technology and innovation.  This helps Sun Valley stay true to our mission, which is to create the best floral experience through operational excellence.

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lily@tsvg.com

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Hollywood Flowers

Hollywood Flowers

Bouquets channel islands beach eucalypyus Gerrit Vanderkooy Iris Lane DeVries Oxnard Rosehips salal snapdragons sunflowewrs Tulips

“In Hollywood, brides keep the bouquets and throw away the groom.”


                                                                                            -Groucho Marx

The first thing you notice when you step into the Sun Valley Oxnard headquarters, just about an hour from the glitz and glam of Hollywood, is the smell. The incredible aroma knocks you off your feet. You look around, what is going on here? Why doesn’t the Arcata farm smell this good?

You take a closer look, oh, they are making bouquets. There are racks of eucalyptus, salal, bear grass and all sorts of other fragrant greens. People are busy snipping them to just the right height to combine with stacks of lilies, tulips, irises, snapdragons and sunflowers. Whoa, this is quite a big production!


Our Oxnard bouquet makers, with eucalyptus and rosehips.

What most people don’t realize is that on a flower farm, you don’t get to enjoy the scent of the flowers all that much. The flowers are picked when the buds are developed, yet not quite open. So if you go stand in a cooler brimming with ultra-fragrant Oriental Lilies you don’t smell anything special. These flowers will open up perfectly and their fragrance will enchant the person who takes them home, however, in the cooler they are just patiently waiting for their time to shine. This is not the case in the Oxnard bouquet division, the wonderful smell of the all the different elements is truly captivating.



Our Oxnard bouquet makers, with tulips, snapdragons and sunflowers.

Our farm in Oxnard has a little different vibe than Arcata, everybody has sunglasses either on or perched above their foreheads, this is a fashion accessory you rarely need in foggy Humboldt County. Getting to the farm you realize that you are in a serious agricultural area. Field after field is being plowed and shaped to grow strawberries, raspberries and a few flowers. According to Oxnard General Manager, Gerrit Vanderkooy, this land was all citrus groves, specifically lemons, up until the seventies. At that point, people started removing the lemons and planting huge fields of more profitable berry crops, it was at this same time that the first Dutch style greenhouse was built in the area.

Sun Valley now has three non-contiguous pieces of property we cultivate. We have named them, Home Ranch, Channel Islands and Golden Coast. If you are familiar with Southern California geography, you know the Channel Islands are just off the coast. I thought it was a long shot that we were actually growing flowers out on the Channel Islands, since most of them are a National Park. I did have a pleasant vision in my head that the Channel Islands Farm was near Channel Islands Beach. The farm would have a sweet view of the Islands as they lay off the coast in the warm waters of So-Cal. Add surfboards, guitars, bon fires, icy cold beer, along with some flowers, and this topped my list of “must see” things to do in Oxnard.

We hop into “Old Red” the mud caked Ford pick-up truck which will take us to the Channel Islands Farm, I immediately think, “Well, this ride isn’t going to impress anybody at the beach.” As we attempt to pull out into heavy traffic, my thoughts change to, “Well, I may die in this muddy truck.” Gerrit punches the gas pedal, and about 2 seconds later the truck lurches forward. I notice with a bit of concern that Gerrit is steering one way and “Old Red” is going the other. The truck miraculously straightens out onto the road.

Full steam ahead, I figure when we get to the beach, I may just have Gerrit drop me off behind a sand dune or something. We bump off the paved road onto a dirt track surrounding a huge swath of land in tidy rows. “Mmmm," I think, "taking the back roads to the beach, cool.”

A minute later the truck comes to a stop by a stand of iris, Lane and Gerrit hop out, Lane pulls one stem out of the ground and starts inspecting the bulb development with his pocket knife. Then they dive into crates of bulbs to see if they are at the ideal stage to be planted. Lane and Gerrit are discussing rhizomes, weather conditions and soil conditions, while I start having a realization.


Gerrit and Lane, with Casa Blanca Iris bulbs, ready to plant.

We walk the length of the field, team members are busy planting Telstar iris bulbs in the fertile soil. Besides the lack of beach, the scene is rather beautiful. The rows of bulbs are being planted by hand, surrounded by palm trees, raspberry fields and the mountains of the Los Padres National Forest rising in the distance. There is something intangibly peaceful about standing out in the fields. Perhaps it is the quiet, or the breeze, or the potential which the soil holds. I still can’t put my finger on it, but I see why farmers, whether flowers, wheat, cotton or whatever, do it. There is a quiet spiritual experience to be found out among the rows.



We hop back in the truck to head back to Home Ranch. Old Red’s engine pouring on more horsepower that somehow gets lost before it reaches the rear wheels.

“So Gerrit, why do you call this field Channel Islands?”

His finger points up from the steering wheel to a passing street sign which reads, Channel Islands Boulevard.

“This is not the first time I’ve explained this question” he replies, with a knowing smile as his eyes laugh behind his sunglasses.  “You want to head over to Golden Coast?”

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"When the Saints come marching in,"... they'll be carrying Irises

"When the Saints come marching in,"... they'll be carrying Irises

Arcata Fleur-de-lis Hiroshige Iris Irises New Orleans Saints Sun Valley Van Gogh

At Sun Valley Floral Farm one of the things we do best is grow irises. Dramatic fields and hoop houses bursting with tall, vibrant irises in a dynamic range of colors. Our most impressive iris crop is our “Telstar” Iris.  The Telstar is the only iris variety that is guaranteed to open.  The iris has captured the world's heart, and you will be surprised by all the references to the iris we see every day.
 

A Telstar Iris abstract

In ancient Greece, Iris was the goddess of the rainbow, the messenger of the Olympian gods. She was often represented as the handmaiden and personal messenger of Hera. Iris was a goddess of sea and sky--her father Thaumas "the wondrous" was a marine-god, and her mother Elektra "the amber" a cloud-nymph. For the coastal-dwelling Greeks, the rainbow's arc was most often seen spanning the distance between cloud and sea, and so the goddess was believed to replenish the rain-clouds with water from the sea. It is rather fitting, that Sun Valley grows iris. We are just a mile from the roaring Pacific Ocean in Humboldt County, legendary for the heavy rains which fill our rivers with salmon and nourish the giant coastal redwoods.

Arcata Iris Fields

The iris has captured the imagination of artists through the ages, many people's favorite image of an iris is the Vincent Van Gogh oil painting, Irises. Currently, number 12 on the Most Expensive Painting List (Wow, this list is wild!)



Van Gogh's "Irises"

Van Gogh was inspired by the Japanese wood block style of painting called, Ukiyo-e. The image of irises below represents this style, created by the artist Hiroshige in 1856.

The Fleur-de-lis is based on the shape of an iris. Fleur means flower in French and Lis means lily, however this classic French image is based on a stylized version of an iris. There is some debate in the origin of this iconic symbol, perhaps after more research I can dive into the Fleur-de-Lis Conspiracy Theory.   As big burly NFL Football fans cheer on the New Orleans Saints, make sure to remind them that their team actually has the picture of an iris on their helmet...very manly!

Iris grow in the wild in North America, Europe, Asia and Northern Africa, and with their elegant petals and tall stems, it is no wonder why they have been adopted by so many people and so many cultures. The state of Tennessee even has the Iris as its' state flower.

For more iris appreciation check out, Presby Memorial Iris Gardens in New Jersey, which is a living iris museum with over 10,000 plants. In Europe, the most famous iris garden is arguably the Giardino dell'Iris in Florence (Italy) which every year hosts one of the most famous iris breeders' competitions in the world. Both of these Gardens are pretty quiet now as prime iris season is spring, however, at Sun Valley we have a great selection of iris year round.

The noble iris has captured many a persons' heart...but some folks may just take it a bit too far, so be careful if you fall for the lovely iris.

To learn more about our Irises (or our other flowers), visit Sun Valley's Flower Resource Pages, they are a great place to increase your knowledge of flowers.

"Like" Sun Valley Floral Farm on Facebook and follow us on Pintrest for more beautiful flower imagery. 
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-Lily

“The earth laughs in flowers.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Springing Forward and Up

Springing Forward and Up

Around the flower farm California Flowers Freesia Iris Iris flower Lilies Love Lilies Royal Lilies

Today is the Vernal (or Spring) Equinox, meaning Earth's northern hemisphere is about to tilt towards the sun, thus prolonging daylight hours. In other words, we're leaving winter in our rear view mirror!

"Springing forward" brings on a few changes around our Sun Valley farms, as you might imagine. For example, longer daylight hours equate to less need for the use of growing lights in the greenhouses. More significantly, from today's Vernal Equinox to its counterpart (Autumnal Equinox), our core crops are essentially relocating from one California farm to the other.


Core crops are mostly grown in Arcata during the spring and summer

Over the next few months, our Arcata farm, nestled in the Pacific Northwest right in the heart of the Redwoods, will have an ideal climate for growing field, hoophouse and greenhouse crops, like Iris, Asiatic Lilies and Oriental Lilies respectively. Steady moderate temperatures, an abundance of moisture, and the right amount of sunlight are just what the farmer ordered this time of year!   

Most of the core crop production moves to Oxnard for the fall and winter

Alternately, the ever-warm and sunny - except for right now with the crazy weather patterns of late - Oxnard farm in southern California allows us to grow the flowers mentioned above during the winter, when Arcata tends to be under a constant blanket of rain clouds. Even with shorter days, the Oxnard farm gets plenty of sunlight and its winter climate is just right for crops that love a little warmth, like Freesia, Brassica and Dubium. (I'll be talking all about Freesia next week, so stay tuned!) 

Chasing the weather from our NorCal farm to the SoCal farm and back is one of the factors that allow us to grow our core crops year-round nearly seamlessly. (In case you're wondering, the other factors include ample cooler space and hardworking flower farmers!) Now that the days are getting longer than the nights, it's time for our flowers to head north!

(Note: the aerial pictures above are a little dated - I'll call them "vintage" - but they give you the general idea of our farms!)

The flower behind the fleur

The flower behind the fleur

Blue Iris Fleur de lis Iris Iris flower Mardi Gras flowers

I hope that everyone had a delightfully fun, extraordinarily wild, and resoundingly safe Mardi Gras. In spirit of the recent holiday, I have a little trivia for you:

Do you know what flower the fleur de lis (the New Orleans city emblem) symbolizes?



http://www.etsy.com/listing/89181570/mardi-gras-wreath-new-orleans-style-door

 Here's a hint...

You've been seeing this flower sprouting up all over our website, facebook and here on the blog...

And here's your answer!

Telstar Iris

That's right! The fleur de lis is meant to represent the Iris. See the resemblance?


With springtime around the corner, now is the time to fill your buckets with Iris! Call Sun Valley at (800) 747-0396 to find out more about our spring Iris production.