Do You Know How To Tango? ...Tango Lily that is!

Do You Know How To Tango? ...Tango Lily that is!

Lane DeVries Orange Art Orange ilex tango lilies

“All the freaky people make the beauty of the world.”

                                                                                                                -Michael Franti

Lane DeVries loves to grow flowers. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Lane DeVries’ favorite flower is a soil grown tulip, I swam against the tide to admit that my favorite flower is a lily. What may have gotten lost in translation is how much Lane loves to grow all sorts of other flowers.  Lane is constantly searching out new and different varieties of flowers. There are always several test varieties in the ground, and the growers are always whispering about a new flower they have growing out in the back greenhouse.

Do you know how to Tango?

Flowers not only take time to grow, but they take much more time to understand.  For about the last five years we have been growing larger and larger crops of a really wild Asiatic hybrid lily. Have you heard of the “Tango Series”? These lilies are the new comers to the Asiatic scene, and we are still getting our customers saying, “Whoa, what’s that lily?”

Autumn is in the air... and in a vase!

Today I would like to introduce you to a Tango variety called “Orange Art”.

 

Tango’s are bred in Holland using “Latvia Promise” as a base. Latvia Promise is an Asiatic originating in Latvia with slightly up facing blooms and most notably a multitude of dark speckles and heavy brush strokes.  The substantial amount of dark speckles and thick brush marks, against very vibrant colors is what makes the Tango Series really stand out.

Orange Art is a wonderful fall lily featuring stunning orange with dark burgundy, brownish tones in the throat. The dramatic color scheme can work in all sorts of autumn themed bouquets.  The gorgeous colors match pumpkins, scarecrows and all the fun of the Halloween season.

   

This lily however isn’t for the faint of heart; it could be paired with a witch and a haunted house to look very frightening.  Such a deep contrast all in one flower can be pretty scary.

Spooky!

Orange Art is painted with all the feeling of September, October and November; however, it is more than just a nice fall lily.  This lily has depth and personality that show off its sophistication. This is very modern flower, not just because it is a relatively new hybrid, but its whole feel.  This lily would stick out like a sore thumb at your grandmother’s house, unless your grandmother is Carrie Donovan . 

Orange Ilex and an Orange Art Tango lily.

The flower world gets so caught up in “tradition” and I am guilty myself.  The Ile de France tulip, the Stargazer lily and the American Beauty rose, these flowers represent a great tradition in the world wide cut flower industry. 

Tango Lilies, framed by a 125 year old Black Walnut Tree.

Make a new tradition today.  Break the mold and experience the entire Tango Series.  These lilies are making waves and their wild brush strokes are shaking up the floral establishment. Check out this short film from our new "Field in Focus" Series about Orange Art.

Lily Talks Lilies (Part 2)

Lily Talks Lilies (Part 2)

#CAGrown Broadway greenhouses Julia C.R.Dorr Lane DeVries Oriental lilies Sumatra

O my garden! lying whitely in the moonlight and the dew,

Far across the leagues of distance flies my heart to-night to you,

And I see your stately lilies in the tender radiance gleam

With a dim, mysterious splendor, like the angels of a dream!

                                                                            Julia C.R. Dorr

Pink Oriental Fields Collection from our Bouquet Department

Welcome back to Part Two of our “Lily Talk Lilies” post. When you enter the Dutch glass greenhouses you notice how tall they are, certain varieties of our lilies grow upwards of five feet, but the height of the greenhouse seems like overkill.  What’s the deal? The reason the greenhouses are so tall is to have plenty of air in the lilies atmosphere.  More air equals a more stable environment, meaning less temperature swings and more consistent humidity levels.  Oriental lilies like stability, they are creatures of habit.  They like 16 hours of light every day and they like the temperature to stay at a constant 60 degrees Fahrenheit. This is in sharp contrast our LA Hybrid lilies that we grow out in hoop houses; they like hot days and cool nights.

Lilies just before harvest.

A big factor that differentiates our lilies from all others is the abundant availability of crystal clear water.  As much of the nation simmers under drought conditions, Humboldt County is blessed with plenty of water…this is a nice way of saying that it rains a lot here.  Our farm has several wells on it from which we draw the water for our crops.  In tests we have found that the electro-conductivity of the water on our farm is very low compared to other flower growing regions of the world.  I know, what’s electro-conductivity?  It is the amount of salt in the water, salt conducts electricity and according to our head lily grower, Tim Crockenberg, lilies and most other plant don’t like salt and history shows this is true.

So our lilies grow tall and the blooms reach epic size, then our great picking teams harvest them at just the right time.  They are bunched by variety, then put in buckets, here they have a special post-harvest drink.  I asked what it was, and suddenly the usually very chatty growers clammed right up.  We do have proprietary information of the farm, so this will remain a secret to our success.

Lane inspecting a current crop of Orientals.

One aspect of Sun Valley’s growing operation which I think often gets taken for granted is our experience.  The methodical nature of Lane is instilled in our team of growers.  Lane carries a little note book with him wherever he goes, and if you pay attention on a farm walk you will see him jotting down extremely specific notes about the crops.  All these notes, based on specific batches, blocks of plantings, weather conditions and a host of other factors are cataloged and organized on spreadsheets.   This scientific data base has been building since the early 80’s.  This knowledge base shows in every stem we pick.

Our Lilies reach for the sky!

The post-harvest teams grade and sleeve the lilies, then they are "cart mapped" and sent to the coolers, where they await transport to their final destination.  Each cart holds a set of buckets, and the contents of the buckets are all accounted for on the cart map.  The Cart Map has information such as the flower variety, the grade, in some cases the specific customer, when they were picked and how many stems are on the cart.  The Cart Maps all have bar codes on them, so every cart can be scanned and tracked.  The organizational effort behind an operation like Sun Valley is pretty vast, the Cart Map system is one of the most reliable and dependable systems we have in place to make sure you get the right batch of lilies.

A Cart Map.

At the end of the day, an inventory crew goes through all the coolers and makes sure that the physical inventory matches the inventory our sales reps see on their computer screens.  When you call and request ten boxes of pink Orientals, and our sales rep says, “Today I have 9, I will have more tomorrow.”  These figures are amazingly accurate. 

A Broadway, Sumatra and Bear Grass combo...#CAGrown.

Obviously, we are proud of the lilies we grow at SunValley.  The vibrant colors, the great vase life and the consistent supply we offer point to a bigger issue.  We believe in high quality flowers, there is nothing worse than a consumer taking home a bunch of lilies which doesn’t perform at its best.  Many farms have similar rigorous procedures in place to insure the optimum quality; we applaud these efforts from our fellow growers.  High quality flowers that “Delight and Amaze” customers are the key to return sales and increasing flower consumption.  There is no short cut.

Lily shadows on canvas

  

Telstar Iris Bloom Boom

Telstar Iris Bloom Boom

#Blue #blueflowers #iris Growing iris Iris with Stargazers Lane DeVries Telstar The Sun Valley Group

Knock Knock.
Who’s there?
Iris.
Iris Who?
Iris Valentine’s Day was OVER!

Telstar Iris is one of Sun Valley’s core crops. We grow several other varieties and colors, such as Hong Kong, Hommes Blue, Casa Blanca and Skydiver, but talk to any flower professional, and one word keeps coming up. Telstar. The big, bright blue Telstar iris is the premier iris in floriculture. So why has the Telstar risen to such popularity?

The main reason for the Telstar’s success is that it always opens. …Yes, in this uncertain world, we stand behind our Iris with a guarantee that they will open. It wasn’t so long ago that some unscrupulous breeders flooded the market with substandard iris. This led florist and consumers to shy away from iris.

Luckily those days are past us, today, when you work with Sun Valley you get access to the largest, most reliable Telstar iris crop in the world. These blue beauties flourish in California's rich soil. Since we have farms both at the north end of the state and the south end of the state, we have virtually unlimited year round availability. Right now the iris crop is coming on strong at our Oxnard Farm.

Our Telstar Iris Field in Oxnard, CA.

The iris are situated among vast rows of strawberries in this agricultural hub, the thick fields of iris look like a sea of green, with little blue highlights. I was in these fields last week, and it truly is something to see. The day I was in Oxnard the wind was blowing hard, and the sun was shining cheerfully. It wasn’t “warm” but after walking with a very fast paced Lane DeVries you definitely start to warm up. The dryness in the air chapped my lips, but the view was so incredibly I barely noticed.
Our team of iris pickers were working close to the access road in waist high iris. They diligently make their way through rows as they evaluate the buds. Iris aren’t cut, they are pulled with a snapping motion that generally leaves the bulb in the ground. If the bulb hangs on, it is snipped in the field. The iris get bundled into various stem bunches, 10 is our standard size. They are then placed in white buckets full of water on carts at the end of the rows.

Iris, just picked.

Picking an iris at the proper time is truly an art form. An experienced iris picker can tell by both a visual inspection and also by feeling the development of the flower with his or her fingers. Visually, it is very hard to do this in the field, experienced pickers are able to see some very small nuances in the stem to make the call whether to pick or leave it to develop a little more. The logistics of picking a crop like iris are pretty wild. In ideal conditions, you actually pick iris twice a day, because just that few extra hours can really make a difference. A team will stay in a “block” for about a week, picking twice a day for 5 to 6 days, and this will generally cover the picking the early, normal and late developing plants.

As a novice, I thought I could hop in there and find the iris at perfect picking stage. Not quite…

One of the pickers showed me how they train the newbies. The key is to hold a stalk up to the sun. The sun lets you see what is happening inside the sheath of the flower. It’s almost like looking at an x-ray of the flower; there you can see the developing blue color inside the bud. However, when you are in the field you can’t actually hold each bud up to the sun. This is where skill and experience come in….these men and women have it, I don’t.

The work of picking iris is definitely hard, but the beautiful location of the fields, the great group of team members and the lovely Southern California weather, must be why you see a lot of smiles out in the field.

Deep in the Iris

While walking the fields with Lane, his attention to each block, to each row, to each individual plant is amazing. He is constantly stopping to feel the soil, check on bulb development and talk to the growers about how different plantings are performing. This attention to detail shows into the final product, day in and day out.



Lane DeVries inspecting our Telstar iris crop.

The iris has remained a hugely popular flower for one big reason. It represents the color blue more than any other flower.

Quick, can you think of another blue flower?

Sure with a little thought, you came up with a couple, some varieties of freesia, delphinium or hydrangea, but it was more of a challenge than you thought, right?

Iris are a favorite of the flower buying public and there is a huge market for them. If you aren’t currently offering iris, perhaps now is the time.

Women's Day 2013

Women's Day 2013

Floral Marketing International Women's Day Lane DeVries March 8 2013. Produce News Women's Day

Valentine’s Day 2013 has almost come and gone.  Hopefully you have spoken to your Sun Valley Sales Rep, and you are all squared away.  As farmers, we are always looking ahead, planting the next crop, looking far down the line to the next flower event.  Once the glitter, red ribbon and cupids of Valentine’s Day have been swept away, it’s time for Women’s Day.  To give you some background, and inspire you to help make this holiday a big floral event, I would like to share an article from Floral Marketing in The Produce News.  This article was written by John Niblock last fall, and features an interview with our CEO Lane DeVries. Help us make Women's Day 2013 a successful floral holiday. 

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The movement to establish Women’s Day on March 8 as a floral holiday is gathering steam. Lane DeVries, head of Sun Valley Group in Arcata CA, offered in-store promotional materials to retailers at the recent International Floriculture Expo, and told The Produce News in early September that a half-dozen or so supermarket chains will be using the materials in 2013.




“Women’s Day started in America 100 years ago, and it is still an American holiday,” Mr. DeVries told The Produce News. “Now let’s turn it into the flower holiday, which it is in Europe.” He had proposed a campaign to make March 8 a floral holiday in a guest column in The Produce News in January 2012 (Page 80).

“Women’s Day in eastern Europe is huge,” Mr. Devries pointed out at the IFE show. “And in Italy it is bigger than Valentine’s Day.” In Europe, the event is called International Women’s Day, a title Mr. DeVries shortened since it began here. In China and Russia, it is a national holiday. “Yellow is really the most popular flower color in Europe for Women’s Day,” he added in an interview.

The Sun Valley point-of-sale materials have photos of tulips, care-and handling instructions for tulips and bear the Sun Valley logo. They come in groupings of six to four items. Sun Valley is offering free digital copies of the items so retailers can print them in-house. Or Sun Valley will print them with the store’s logo for $110 for the largest set to $39 for the smallest. So far, most stores have ordered the digital copies and are printing the materials themselves.

Materials include theme posters with slogans like “Celebrate the women in your life with flowers” and “Fresh flowers for the women who make your days bloom with happiness.” The posters come in two sizes with tulip care-and-handling instructions on the back. Other items include bucket flags, hang tags and bucket sleeves with a Women’s Day logo and photos of women with tulips. Sun Valley also offers special bouquets for Women’s Day. 

Our "Power of Women" bouquet

 Officials at supermarkets in the Midwest and Northeast told The Produce News that Women’s Day is a big floral holiday at their stores that serve European immigrant groups who celebrated the day in their native lands.

Christian Maldonado, a sales associate at Silver Vase interviewed at IFE, said that the timing of Women’s Day, between Valentine’s Day and Easter, would fit well. “This is an additional sales stock week anyway,” he said. “We’d be getting ready to ship for Easter. What we need is a communications program with point-of-sales materials.”

Joep Paternostre, chief executive office of Bloomaker in Waynesboro VA, also interviewed at IFE, was cautiously optimistic. “It would fit nicely in our growing cycle," he opined.

Front

Back

The first women’s day celebration was held in the United States in 1909 and was called National Women’s Day. It was adopted by other countries and became an international celebration in 1910. Last March 8, 2012, 268 events were held in the United States to inspire women and celebrate their achievements, up from 74 events in 2011.

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Here at Sun Valley we are excited to see this holiday get more exposure.  If you are interested in the materials mentioned above send us an email lily@tsvg.com or give us a call 1-800-747-0396.

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.

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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