On Mount Desert Island, Maine, Matt knows everybody. Or at least everybody knows Matt. Farmer Matt. We couldn’t go anywhere on the island without meeting someone who knew Matt. We know Matt Gerald from the flower grower’s conferences, and we look forward to seeing him there every year, but to those of us in Texas, Bar Harbor was just some mythic place where Martha Stewart had a summer house, someplace it rained in the summer and the weather stayed cool.

Back in the early 90s, the first president Bush taught us Texans that the word summer could also be used as a verb, as in to “summer” in Maine. (Before that, summer was just a swear word in these parts). So this past July, we took a cue from “Poppy” ( as the senior Bush is affectionately known around here) and we decided to do a little summering ouselves–at least for a week. So we called up Matt.

Matt moved to Mount Desert Island from New York City way back in the 70s to attend the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor and to “talk to the whales” as Matt puts it. He ended up staying in Bar Harbor and somewhere along the way he bought 100+ acres of land and began growing and selling cut flowers and vegetables tor the summer folks. Mount Desert Island has long been a summer retreat for the likes of the Rockefellers and the Fords and so forth. (The Rockefellers donated a large part of the land that makes up Acadia National Park, which itself makes up a large part of the Island.) These days, Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park have become a tourist destination, and summer homes on the island have become astronomically expensive. During the summer, the population more than doubles. Summering is a competitive sport in Bar Harbor.

No doubt about it, the place is gorgeous. Lots of ocean and islands, sailing, kayaking, hiking. Great microbreweries! Lobster, chowder, you name it. And Matt. Everybody knows Matt.

All this wanton and shameless summering attracts folks like the guy who owns the largest grocery chain in Texas (“Charlie”, Matt calls him – he’s essentially our boss because he also owns Central Market, where we sell our flowers!) plus folks like Martha Stewart. These people make great flower customers, and Matt sells flowers to them all.

For many years Matt has run a farm stand right on the main highway that takes you into Bar Harbor, but this year he has leased it out to concentrate on farmer’s markets, and to lighten his work load. The farm has several acres of outdoor flower and vegetable production and three double-poly covered greenhouses for a total of 9,000 square feet of covered production area. The greenhouses have roll-up sidewalls and the long house (150 feet) has a saw-tooth top vent. Matt says that the top vent is a real pain when it comes to recover the poly, and if he had to do it again he wouldn’t get the top vent.

According to Matt, the growing season in Bar Harbor is about 115 days. So he uses his greenhouses to extend that production window to about six months. One of his greenhouses is used to produce cut lilies and lisianthus, along with plugs for the field crops.

Matt says he grows about 16,000 lilies a year, both outdoors and inside. When we were there, the lilies were mostly oriental types, although he does a few asiatics too. Some lilies were in ground beds, but the bulk of his production was in bulb crates. After the lilies are finished, Matt double-crops the soil in the crates by planting lisianthus plugs right between the cut stems of the lilies. Matt also had several hundred large pots with cut gerberas.

In a second greenhouse he plants tomatoes, and this gives him a real jump on the season, although the tomatoes require heat even in July in chilly Maine! Matt has some of the first tomatoes at the market, and so commands a premium price! He had about 600 tomato plants growing directly in the ground in the 100-foot greenhouse, trained up on strings connected to the overhead trusses. After trying several tomato varieties that suffered from foliar diseases, Matt had settled on the variety Trust, which he gets from Johnny’s Selected Seeds (800-854-2580). The plants were robust and beautiful, and the first fruits were ripening while we were there. In this same greenhouse, Matt had a bed of huge Karma dahlias, a cut flower type that is available from cuttings. The plants were nearly six feet tall! Needless to say, he was way ahead of the market on dahlias.
Karma dahlias are available in at least 6 colors, maybe more. We’ve grown them in our winter greenhouses here in Texas and they are spectacular. Cuttings can be ordered from Germania Seed company (800-380-4721) or Gloeckner (800-345-3787). We plant the cuttings on one foot centers, four rows to a four foot wide bed. It looked like Matt’s plants were spaced about the same.

Hoophouse roll-up sides
Matt had a nifty gadget on his roll-up sidewalls to crank them up. We’ve been looking for a reasonable priced crank that would roll up a 150-foot sidewall, and we found it at Matt’s. They are made by Harnois Company in Canada, but Matt buys them in Maine from Greenhouse Supply in Brewer, ME (207-989-1585). It was a little crank that tracked up and down a pipe along the greenhouse corner, but still had the strength to easily lift the long sidewall. Matt says they are about 70 bucks apiece. When we checked with Agri-tech, the company that makes our cold frames, they wanted $1200 a house for the roll-up sides! These little Harnois gadgets are just what we were looking for. Matt says be careful, they can still give you a “Ford fracture” from the crank spinning backwards. You can look up distributors at Harnois.com.

Outdoors, Matt has several acres, maybe five, in various stages of production, tucked in the rolling meadows around the farm stand, and he grows lilies, various perennials, lots of delphiniums, and vegetables. The delphiniums are produced on a two-year cycle, and then are taken out the second year to avoid diseases. His beds are laid out very much like ours are–four rows to a four foot wide bed.

Vegetables, too
Matt also grows a lot of vegetables. Lettuces are an important crop for him, and he grows them just like we do–four rows to a four foot wide bed with a foot between the plants in the row. They looked great. In July, he was just putting out his heat-loving crops, the squashes and peppers. This has been a cold summer in Maine, and some things, like cucumbers, won’t make much of a crop before frost.

During the past year, Matt has developed a cooperative relationship with a local microbrewery. Matt leased them his on-farm stand this summer, and they have taken over the day-to-day operation of the stand. The brewery produces one of the island’s well-known microbrews – Bar Harbor Real Ale. (Frank got to know it real well while we were there!) Recently the brewery has branchd out into winemaking, and they have leased Matt’s stand as a retail outlet for the wine and beer. They also carry Matt’s flowers and produce, and Matt keeps a small greenhouse at the farmstand stocked with bedding plants and beautiful hanging baskets. We noticed that almost everyone who stopped at the stand bought at least one bottle of wine. In all honesty, Maine is probably not going to rival France’s Bordeaux region with its wines, but they were passably good, and it was clear that local wine was a great souvenir item to take home as a gift. This really has us thinking about our farm, because the Texas Hill Country also has a good tourist population, and a pretty fair wine selection too.

Matt’s farm stand is very attractive, having been built from trees harvested and milled from his farm. On the highway in front of the stand, Matt has planted grapes. He is trying lots of different varieties – some viniferas (French) and some American hybrids. The new vines were wrapped with plastic Growtubes (growtubes.com) which have really boosted their first season growth. They are a clear plastic wrap that has a removable sky-blue liner. According to the company, the blue color stimulates cloroplast production. Something was getting stimulated because these vines were really growing!

The cooperation with the brewery has yielded a huge bonus for Matt – compost! The brewing process generates 80 tons a year of organic by-product, the leftover grain (“Schmuts,” Matt says, “a Yiddish word!”) and the “trube” (the stuff at the bottom a the tank after brewing). Whew! This stuff packs a real wallop to the nose (Matt says it smells like money to him!) Over the course of the year, Matt mixes these 80 tons with about 1,000 yards of spent bedding from horse barns. This on-site compost production provides his main source of fertilizers.

Matt calls himself “a hippie farmer with Buddist tendencies”, and he has several people that live on his farm in return for helping him out seven hours per week. Matt is also a blacksmith and an avid natural historian, and a great storyteller. He stays involved with the College of the Atlantic, where he got his first experience with distilling spirits. “ We had a grant to produce ethanol from Maine potatoes. You could get a special bond for experimental stills, but the revenuer would come sneaking around trying to catch us at something. The still would blow up frequently.” At the college there is a 10 foot tall whale skull in front of one of the buildings. Matt and some other COA folks drove down to a New Jersey beach where it had washed up and collected it. They brought it back in a U-haul trailer and cleaned it up. Matt says they never could get the smell out of that trailer!

Of course the high point of the trip was getting to see Martha Stewart’s estate. Matt sells flowers to Martha Stewart, and has even had some flowers in her magazine. Of course Matt knows the caretaker (he knows everyone) and we got to see the house! The house was originally built by Edsel Ford in the 30s, made from Maine granite quarried right on the property. The buildings and terraces fit right into the hillside, and the view of the ocean is spectacular. The 100 acres of spruce/hemlock forest surrounding the house were impeccably groomed. It looked like each rock and maidenhair fern was placed there for effect (and they probably were!). What a treat. A trip to Mecca!

Of course we couldn’t go to Maine without going to see Johnny’s Selected Seeds. We took a day trip over to Albion, but in no time we were hopelessly lost. None of the backroads has any signs in Maine. Nor do the towns. We felt like we were in wartime London, where they took down all the street signs to confuse the Germans! If this was meant to keep the Texans out of the countryside, it almost worked!

We finally made it to Johnny’s and our sales rep Woody Woodward gave us the red carpet treatment. The trial and production farms were just beautiful. Johnny’s has a large cut flower trial garden, but because it had been such a cool year, many of the plants were small. Even still, it was a great visit.

Johnny’s has recently moved into a new headquarters in Winslow, Maine, and Woody toured us through their extensive seed packing areas, seed testing labs and the huge storage chambers for keeping seed. Imagine a whole pallet of 50 pound sacks of Bright Lights swiss chard! That’s a lot of chard! It was really a first class operation, and everyone made us feel really welcome.

So… one last thing about Maine. What’s up with the front doors? Matt said “Look at the front doors of the houses. Nobody uses them. The steps will be gone and there is no walkway.” We confirmed this when we were lost in rural Maine. No steps. No walkways. We knew for sure Matt was right when we saw a house that had an air-conditioner installed right in the middle of the door! Of course, then we had to wonder what they needed an air-conditioner for! In a land where summering is a contact sport, who needs AC?!

Pamela and Frank Arnosky are the owners of Texas Specialty Cut Flowers in Blanco, Texas. Their columns are collected in the book We’re Gonna Be Rich! Growing Specialty Cut Flowers, $19.95 plus $4 shipping. Order at www.growingformarket.com or phone 800-307-8949, or send check to GFM, PO Box 3747, Lawrence, KS 66046.

More Recommended Reading: Specialty Cut Flowers by Alan Armitage and Judy Laushman is a comprehensive reference on cut flower production. It provides detailed cultural, harvest and postharvest information on hundreds of species of flowers. $39.95 plus $4 shipping; ordering information above.