From the Fields - Rob Miller

By Rob Miller, Del Norte County flower grower

We have Easter crops in the greenhouse growing. We have Oriental lilies, calla lilies, hydrangeas and Easter lilies. Those crops are all progressing. Right now, they’re small with no flowers on them. They were all planted mid-December to mid-January, so they’re just starting. They look good and are on schedule. I don’t foresee any issues.

To get them to bloom for Easter, we use temperature variability. If it’s an earlier Easter, they have to be forced in the greenhouse with a little warmer temperature to push them along a little quicker. With a later Easter, we go cooler. When they’re in the greenhouse and growing, they have to be watered and fertilized. They have to have growth regulators applied potentially to control the size of the plant. There’s a lot of jobs between now and Easter. It isn’t just plant and then go on vacation.

Pretty much everything I have in the greenhouse for Easter is sold. If the chain stores don’t cancel orders, we should be in good shape. As most everyone in the greenhouse nursery business remembers, there were massive cancellations during COVID, but I certainly don’t expect that at this point this year.

It’s always a problem to get enough labor, so that hasn’t changed. We used to grow a lot more product for Easter than we do now. We cannot get the labor to do the higher numbers, so we do less.

Prices of all the inputs have skyrocketed. Pots, peat moss, soil amendments, decor boxes—all that stuff has gone up drastically. We were able get some price increase this year, but you never are able to get enough price increase to cover the increase in expenses. If you needed to raise the price 25%, you’re probably not going to get that out of your customer.