Greenhouse Rose Production--Spectacular Ambience

The three greenhouses on the outskirts of Mississauga are nearing completion. A spike of warm temperature has facilitated construction. We are awaiting the arrival of the glazed glass from a factory in upstate New York.

Commercial cut flowers are increasingly produced using hydroponic methods. In Israel, soilless rose producers are grossing two hundred thousand U.S. dollars for every 2.4 acres of greenhouse space. This might be the highest per acre income from any agricultural endeavor world-wide.

97% of Israel’s rose growers use hydroponics. Many of these greenhouses are computer-controlled. By regulating the bloom stage of rose production, perfect-sized roses can be grown according to the calendar to be harvested just before Valentine’s Day, on February 14th.

Competition from developing countries, such as those in Africa, is threatening cut-flower production in Israel. Field hands in Africa are paid ten dollars per month. The only way the hydroponic growers can compete with that is to computerize more and more of the operation, thus cutting down labor costs.

Low labor costs in Colombia allowed that country’s rose producers to grab 40% of the U.S. market, forcing many California growers out of business.

Mississauga is home to an International Rose Cooperative Auction House, which will allow Pedro and I to sell our flowers in the increasingly competitive marketplace.

When I was growing cut carnations in my basement rec-room I marketed the flowers myself to retail outlets in the area, making my profit margin larger but my distribution costs also increased.

With three huge glass houses producing cut roses that method of distribution would not be feasible. By becoming part of an international marketing process, we’ll be able to sell our flowers strategically. Most cut flowers are sold around the time of the major holidays of Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Thanksgiving.

Roses are by far the most popular flowers sold in the U.S., with 1.5 billion roses sold per annum. Around 1000 acres of greenhouses in America are devoted to rose production. These greenhouses produce flowers year-round and are responsible for double the number of commercially grown roses outdoors in the field.

Flowers have slightly different micronutrient requirements than vegetables. In addition to balancing the NPK of our 100% organic base nutrients—Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom—with the NPK of Colossal Bud Blast, we also plan to add Sensi Cal Mg Mix Grow and Sensi Cal Mg Mix Bloom to our Ebb and Flow system reservoirs, in order to provide the exact micronutrients required by roses.

When our flowers become mature and in extended flower production, we plan to maintain our roses on the bloom nutrients, which are formulated by Advanced Nutrients to keep our rose bushes producing more and more copious flowers.

Sensi Cal Mg Mix Bloom, for instance, not only contains 4.59% of Calcium (Ca) in three different forms, including a chelated form, but also 1.5% of Magnesium (Mg), 0.15% or Iron (Fe), 0.09% of Manganese (Mn), 0.045% of Zinc (Zn), 0.0015% of Copper (Cu), 0.027% of Boron (B), 0.012% of Molybdenum (Mo), and 0.0036% of Cobalt (Co).

In addition to the trace amounts of these micronutrients, which are essential for healthy flowers, Sensi Cal Mg Mix Bloom also has 2.0% of Nitrogen (N) in the form of Calcium Nitrate, which guarantees crisp, robust plant foliage, and plant growth in general.

The macro and micronutrients in this and other Advanced Nutrients products are designed to produce a synergistic effect, which means that they will interact in a very effective way to provide our roses with much needed nutrition and growth and bloom enhancers.

Colossal Bud Blast, for instance, contains a form of urea that increases the pigment content of flowers, helping to produce incredibly vibrant blooms. I used it extensively on my prize-winning carnations and can personally attest to its effectiveness.

The Potassium Nitrate in Colossal Bud Blast has proven to increase the speed of bloom formation, as well as the abundance of flowers. This well-researched product was originally designed as a foliar spray, but it can also be effectively added to the root zone of flowering plants, both during the vegetative and flowering stages.

Speaking of spectacularly colored blooms, Pedro has added another Hybrid Tea Rose to our production list. This one is called Ambiance, and it has a three-tone motif of bright, canary yellow, coral red, and burnt orange. He had a dream about these colors then he spotted the picture in a catalogue.

“I’ve been looking for this rose all my life,” announced Pedro dramatically. “The market for multi-colored roses is increasing, just as more and more people are buying multi-swirl ice cream flavors. The old, single-hued ice creams aren’t exciting enough, according to Pedro, and neither are the single colored roses.

I reminded him that the single biggest sellers are still the red rose varieties, especially around Valentine’s Day, so I’ll insist on growing Alec’s Red. But Granada and Ambience are like the Spanish spices that Pedro likes to add to his cooking.

I also told him about Scorpion Juice and Barricade, two Advanced Nutrients products that are designed to make the lives of flower growers much easier. Pedro knew all about spider mites and aphids and Black Spot and Rust. He’s seen all the pests and diseases to which roses are prone.

Preventative spraying with Scorpion Juice will impart induced systemic resistance to our roses so that insects and pathogens won’t have a chance. Using Scorpion Juice is akin to giving our plants a “vaccination” that arms them with strength to fight off the invaders.

Similarly, adding Barricade to our nutrient mix will build up the cell walls of our rose bushes and flowers so that insects and destructive microorganisms will not be able to penetrate them. The Potassium Silicate in Barricade not only reinforces the walls of rose cells, but it also helps to increase plant metabolism, which causes faster growth and more robust rose plants.

“I will e-mail my father to tell him about these products,” said Pedro. “Our roses on Mallorca could use a good vaccine to keep pests and diseases away.”

Three glasshouses in time for Rose Planting

Despite the winter weather, construction is progressing at breakneck speed and soon our three glasshouses will be a reality. Pedro and I are deep into the planning stage. We are equal partners, which means that if we disagree we have to compromise in order to overcome the hurdle.

So far we’ve agreed on using an Ebb and Flow hydroponic system to grow our roses in the medium of coco coir. We are going to use a 100% organic feed regimen, with Advanced Nutrients Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom being our base nutrients, with Colossal Bud Blast making the NPK more attractive to roses.

We’ve agreed to name our company Jill & Pedro’s Hydro Roses with a 50-50 capitalization. Pedro’s share is coming from family money, while my share was made possible by an inheritance from a recently deceased uncle.

We’ve also managed to establish new credit lines from the bank, which is essential for the cash flow of any business venture.

What about my previous decision to grow Hybrid Tea Roses, as opposed to the other varieties? Pedro agreed that Hybrid Teas were the most marketable, but he thought that my choices—Alec’s Red and Julia’s Rose—required further consideration.

He was being very diplomatic. He said that “in addition” to my choices, he would like us to grow a few more varieties. It seems that there is a multi-coloured very fragrant strain called Granada, which his family has been growing for a number of years.

It’s continuous blooming, extremely disease resistant, hardy zones 6-10. It’s been around since 1964, so it’s no longer subject to patent. It grows to three, three and a half feet and it mixes the colors rose-pink, lemon-yellow, and nasturtium red.

He showed me a picture of a Granada rose, and I fell in love with it right away. Another exquisite rose that Pedro would like to grow is called Blue Girl. It’s also very fragrant, grows to four or five feet in height, with classic, high pointed blooms of lavender blue.

It seems that there is no such thing as a perfectly blue rose, but this comes as close as it gets. Somehow the color lavender sneaks in whenever breeders attempt to hybridize a purely blue rose. Blue Girl originated in Germany, and has won the prestigious Rome Gold Medal.

So we put in an order for these four varieties, but we’re keeping an open mind about other Hybrid Teas that might fit in with our plans. We also put in a huge order at Advanced Nutrients for Iguana Juice Grow, Iguana Juice Bloom, Grandma Enggy’s Humic Acid, Fulvic Acid, and Seaweed Extract, as well as the root colonizers Piranha, Tarantula, and Voodoo Juice.

Pedro has contacted a fellow rose grower in Mallorca, who is using these root colonizers from Advanced Nutrients, and he received a glowing report. The guy sent him some before and after pictures of rose bushes treated with these beneficial fungi, bacteria, and microbes.

He was astounded to see the size and quality difference, as well as the number of blooms on the treated bushes. “I look forward to using all these products,” enthused Pedro as he examined the bottles and labels I had left over from my carnation growing days.

Hydro System Choices--Go Organic, Stop Synthetic

Pedro and I had a long discussion about the pros and cons of each hydroponic system. Even though his English is excellent, there is still a slight communication problem when it comes to technical words.

It turns out that the Nutrient Film Technique system that his family’s greenhouses were using in Majorca (by the way, he says it’s spelled Mallorca, in Spanish) wasn’t exactly a pure NFT system.

NFT was the way hydroponics got started. It involves growing your plants in a constant flow of nutrient solution, a truly aquatic form of agriculture. You could call it aquaculture. There are two major drawbacks in trying to use this system to grow roses—the roots of rose plants don’t like to be continuously immersed in water and rose bushes would just topple over in water, without some means of support.

The way Pedro’s family got around this was that they converted their NFT system into a quasi Ebb and Flow system, by systematically draining and flooding the system using the pumps at periodic intervals.

The horizontal tanks of this system are placed on a slight slope on purpose, so the nutrient solution always flows in one direction. Then a pump at the deep end catches the overflow and recycles it back to the beginning.

The other major drawback for roses is the lack of support for the plants. Pedro’s family suspended some strong twine netting over the entire pond, so the rose bushes actually grew through the netting and were supported by it in their maturity.

I argued that it would be real difficult to adapt this system for the coco coir medium. I still thought that using the same Drip Irrigation System that I used for my carnations would be better. However there were several reasons why my idea wasn’t great either.

Small scale Drip Irrigation Systems, like the one I used, are geared to recycle their nutrient solution, which makes them highly economical. The same DIS setup on a large scale would have to run to waste, which means that the cost of replacing the nutrients each day would be very high.

They are also very tricky to maintain on a large scale, and need constant monitoring of the pH and CF levels. Since these levels differ from the reservoir to the centre of the growing medium, where the roots are, I had to use a syringe to take samples from deep within my rockwool slabs.

To do this on a large scale with coco coir would be unmanageable. So we were back to square one in trying to choose the most favourable hydroponic system for our three large rose greenhouses. (We signed the papers, btw., purchased the real estate, and construction has begun on the project.)

In a large Drip Irrigation setup you’d have to take levels perhaps several times a day and add pH Up or pH Down to your nutrient solution, then take another pH and CF reading, until you get everything just right.

Also, the pumps and drippers tend to clog up frequently, causing drought stress in the plants after the grow medium dries up. The need for constant maintenance and upkeep would just about kill any profits that Pedro and I might see from our rose growing operation.

We finally decided on an Ebb and Flow system, modular in design, where we could add as many buckets as we needed for our large rose bushes. The coco coir will sit well in the buckets for an extended period of time, and since 40% of this grow medium always stays dry, the roots of our rose plants will be able to breath.

The Advanced Nutrients tech guys told us to use airstones regardless in our reservoir, even though every time the system floods and drains, it sucks air into the grow medium, causing even more aeration. Ebb and Flow is the Rolls Royce of hydroponic systems and Pedro was impressed by that.

The nutrient solution is recycled, which was another point in the favor of choosing this solution to our dilemma. Now we had to finalize our plans for plant nutrients. Pedro had second thoughts about using Grow and Bloom, with a tiny bit of Micro. He said he had a dream and the way he interpreted it, meant that we have to use organic fertilizers and supplements.

Luckily, we figured out that if we use Iguana Juice Grow and Bloom, then supplement it with regular sprayings of Colossal Bud Blast, we could manipulate the NPK so that it becomes favourable for roses.

The NPK of Iguana Juice Grow is 3-1-3. If you add the NPK of Colossal Bud Blast (0-3-6) you end up with a combined NPK of 3-4-9, which is a good, low Nitrogen rose NPK.

Iguana Juice Bloom has an NPK of 4-3-6. When the NPK of Colossal Bud Blast is added, you wind up with a combined NPK of 4-6-12, which is very good for blooming roses.

Pedro was still complaining that this solution is the best, but it’s not perfect. Seems his grandmother had a special, organic food preparation for roses, which somehow got lost during the war and his family have been trying to recreate it ever since.

“Iguana Juice comes close, but I feel there’s something missing. I can’t quite put my finger on it,” said Pedro, and he had a sad look on his face.

I suggested we go have dinner in an Argentinian restaurant. They serve the best churasco, with roast potatoes swimming in butter and grilled red peppers to top it off. My mouth waters just thinking about it. Pedro cheered up and with the decisions we made this week, our rose growing operation is that much closer to becoming reality.