From the Fields: Jon Reelhorn, Fresno County nursery grower

By Jon Reelhorn, Fresno County nursery grower

We grow ornamental trees, shrubs and perennial flowers. We service the garden center market and municipalities, some landscape businesses and homeowners. We have a retail store.

As we get 70-degree days, homeowners get the itch and want to come out and shop, so we’re seeing an influx of homeowners. We’re seeing the landscape business pick up, and we’re seeing garden centers order to restock. We ship between Bakersfield and areas in Northern California, and we’ll ship up into Washington and Oregon when rose season starts. 

We are seasonal. We’re crazy busy in the spring. We do half of our business for the year in March, April and May. But unlike other parts of the country, our business continues through the summer and winter. From Thanksgiving until beginning of March, we’re crazy busy planting. In springtime, we’re harvesting and selling. Summertime is slower, but because of our heat here, we’re having to nurture the plants. Then it starts over in the fall, which is the best time to plant your yard and garden, so it picks up again. 

We had a mild winter, so we didn’t have any frost damage here. I’m always concerned about the lack of rain because if we don’t get the water we need, then the municipalities will tell homeowners they can’t water as often. We have been able to get through previous droughts because homeowners were taking out their thirsty lawns and installing drought-tolerant landscapes, so we focus more on low water-use plants now than we used to. 

This winter, we’ve been very fortunate to not have any hard frost and enough cold weather to where the plants have gone dormant. I’m hoping and praying we’re not done with rain. We need more and obviously snowpack. But I’m not a fan of rainy weekends because that’s when customers come out and shop. As long as it rains on weekday evenings, that’s great. That’s obviously a joke, but we do need more rain.