What seems like a really long winter is finally giving way to spring. We were severely short handed this past winter, and when our Mexican guys got here last week, Frank breathed a huge sigh of relief: finally there is hope to get things back into some kind of order!
Just as the workers arrived, Pamela went off on a whirlwind tour of Ecuador with a group of Association of Specialty Cut Flower Grower members in the first week of March. She toured eight farms in three days. John Dole, hort professor at North Carolina State University, set up the tour schedule via contacts he had made previously, and we were escorted from farm to farm. Just getting onto these farms for a visit was a big deal, with a guard meeting us at every gate.

Ecuador is very diverse ecologically, from high mountains to lowlands, tropical forests to dry scrub, all situated right on the equator. We toured farms northwest and south of Quito, where hundreds of greenhouse structures dot the hillsides and valleys. The farms ranged in size from just a few acres, employing a dozen workers, to hundreds of acres, with 3,000 employees. The flowers raised on these variously sized farms are almost entirely for export, and major crops among the more than 50 varieties they grow include gypsophila, roses, hypericum, and “summer flowers,” which are the ones we call “specialty cuts.” Many farms specialize in one, or just a few crops, and then market their products together as an export group. Air freight is expensive, running something like $25 per box of flowers, and marketing is mostly done through Miami or Holland, so working together is absolutely necessary.

Flower production is incredibly labor intensive, and almost everything is done by hand in Ecuador, including bed cultivation. The volcanic sandy soils are turned over, then shaped, by men wielding wide hoes. Both men and women harvest flowers, using pruners like the Felcos we use. Women appear to do most of the stripping of stems, grading, and bunching; men do most of the lifting and transporting of flower boxes, buckets, etc. In general, we were told that workers, who have mostly a primary school education, are paid about $250 per month, they work an 8-9 hour day, and they get Sundays off. Transportation to and from work is provided by the farm owners. Breakfast and lunch are provided on site in cafeterias, and some of the farms grow their own vegetables for the kitchens. A medical doctor visits the farms each day. Workers are provided with respirators and suits when applying pesticides. And everyone covers up to protect themselves from the extreme sunlight.

Pest and disease control
Watering on the farms we visited was either from wells, or from the aqueducts that bring water down from the mountains. Aqueduct water has to be treated with bactericides for diseases, or in the case of the really big operations, the water is sterilized before it is put onto crops. Disease in such a tightly managed system is a major concern. The soils are so sandy, so porous, that a thin layer of organic matter is often applied to the top of the bed to hold the water and fertilizers; otherwise, they just run off. Fertilizers are usually injected via the irrigation systems. Between crops, beds are often fumigated with methyl bromide.

But biocontrol techniques for pest controls are implemented, too, since growers are aware of the pitfalls of pesticides; besides which, pesticides are expensive. For example, to control leafminers in gypsophila, one farm has a two-person crew going between the rows every day, one carrying a blower, blowing the adult leaf miners onto the giant sticky trap carried by the person on the other side of the bed. I picked up some tips that I think may be useful on our farm. In a rose operation we visited, pepper plants are growing at one end of the greenhouses to help monitor for aphids. Chamomile is planted in the beds throughout the greenhouse, and pennyroyal grows along the sides of the greenhouses to help control powdery mildew. The idea is that during the day when the greenhouse heats up, powdery mildew spores are released into the air. The chamomile and pennyroyal oils are volatilising at the same time, and affect the viability of the mildew spores. Rue, fennel, and other herbs are planted around the outsides of the greenhouses to help repel, or trap, other insects.

Post-harvest
We pick directly into buckets of water on our farm, and moving flowers around more efficiently is a big concern. Almost every farm we visited had “gantry rails” set up to move flowers either in buckets of water, or in boxes, from the field to the packing shed. This single track is like those sliding barn doors, and the carts hang from them, and a person pushes the carts along. In the last major volcanic eruption in Ecuador, many farms stopped picking into water in the field because the ash was completely dirtying the water and clogging stems. Instead, many farms now pick flowers directly into large corragated plastic boxes that have holes in the ends. The boxes are then set upright in buckets of clean water (often with just a bactericide added), then are moved in water via the rails into the packing sheds. Or the boxes are taken back out of the water and are transported on carts – and every farm has manufactured carts for their own specific purposes!

In the sheds, the stems are stripped of leaves, graded, and bunched according to specifics for different customers. Many flowers require an anti-ethylene treatment, and STS (silver thiosulfate) was the one used by the farms we visited. After STS treatment, stems are sleeved and packed into boxes for air shipment. One idea we will implement is to assemble a digital photo library of all the flowers we cut, and how and when we cut them. We have begun the laborious process of assembling a comprehensive production manual of how we do things on our farm, and the idea of a photograph of the correct stage for picking only occurred to me when I saw the photos posted on the rose farm we visited (I’m not sure if that was an “ah-ha” moment or a “duh” moment.)
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Marketing
Just like most of us, the flower farms are always looking for ways to sell more flowers. I heard mention several times of increased marketing of farm-made mixed bouquets that are assembled in Ecuador, shipped dry to Miami, then processed and shipped in water to supermarkets across the States. Bouquets are made from the flowers from several farms and may be boxed into variously named boxes, so clients think they are getting flowers from different farms. One marketing group we visited is participating in a “green labeling” program to promote their flowers and farms as “environmentally and socially active.”

I came away from this tour recognizing that we have a really good thing going here in Texas. We pick and deliver our flowers locally, so everything is fresher than any offshore farm could ever hope to achieve. People know who we are. We have been building a brand since we began selling cut flowers 12 years ago. It began with our names and the slogan “Fresh from the Texas Hill Country,” and then progressed to our logo, which combines our little blue house and our company and farm names (you can see it on our almost-completed website, www.texascolor.com). Although we no longer sell at a farmers’ market, we get to go into the grocery store to directly talk to customers, promoting our flowers, sustainable production, and fair labor practices. And we invite our customers to tour our farm every year, so they can see where it all comes from.

Pam and Frank Arnosky are the owners of Texas Specialty Cut Flowers in Blanco, Texas. A collection of previous columsn, We’re Gonna Be Rich! is available for $19.95 plus 44 shipping from GFM, 800-307-8949 or www.growingformarket.com