Granada and Ambience Become Movie Stars

As you probably know, Toronto is a major motion picture production centre. Many American movies are shot up here, as well as numerous Canadian productions.

As you'e sitting at a sidewalk café in the fashionable Yorkville district, Robin Williams could be having a latte at the next table, or Lindsay Lohan could be digging into a fruit cup, laced with Cointreau, no doubt.

And everyone is either producing a movie, or knows someone who is. So it’s not surprising that I was skeptical, when Pedro called me all excited from Toronto and said that he was bringing a movie producer to “scout” our glasshouse number three, the Multi Rose greenhouse.

“They’re shooting a film featuring a greenhouse, and the script calls for hydroponically-grown, exotic looking roses,” said Pedro, hardly able to contain his excitement. “I told them that our Granada and Ambience Roses would be perfect.”

“What about the fact that these roses are really tall, after that mishap with the Iguana Juice Grow,” I asked. “Don’t worry, dear Jill, I showed him some pictures, and he loves our roses.”

I’ve never been “scouted” before, so I didn’t know what to expect. When they arrived, I was glad to note that the producer was a down-to-earth type of fellow, who didn’t know the first thing about roses.

Sure enough, the first thing he noticed was that our Rose plants in glasshouse three were growing way high, with very long stems, close to the HID lights. “They’re beautiful flowers, but why are they so tall?” he asked.

We explained to him that an inattentive staff member fed them the wrong amount of our basic 100% organic fertilizer. “Hey, that’s not a bad development. We could write that into the script. So you have to feed the Roses?”

We patiently explained that once a week we change the nutrient solution in our multi-bucket ebb and flow system, mixing in not only our basic fert (now that our Roses are ijn flower, we have switched to Iguana Juice Bloom), but also a potassium silicate product called Barricade; Humic Acid and Fulvic Acid, which are derived from a calcified organic material known as “leonardite;” as well as an energy boost product called Carbo Load Powder.

Additionally, we add Grandma Enggy’s Seaweed Extract in order to provide our Roses with a whole array of Vitamins (from A, B, C, to E and K), as well as growth stimulants and natural antibiotics.

We told the producer that we spray our Rose bushes frequently with Colossal Bud Blast (the bushes, never the flowers) in order to feed our plants through the stomata in their leaves with organic nutrients and hormones that increase the growth rate of the flowers.

“With all this stuff you’re feeding them, can you fatten them up a bit?” he asked. It visibly upset Pedro to hear this. “I realize that they’re taller than normal rose bushes,” explained Pedro, “but they’re perfect specimens, producing exquisite flowers. Not a blemish on them!”

The producer called his art director, his regular director, and his director of photography (a woman!). They arrived within twenty minutes to survey our greenhouse. After going back and forth a few times and sticking their heads together they agreed. “We need to fatten up your roses.”

I called Pedro aside. “Don’t be upset. I just saw a presentation of a wonderful Advanced Nutrients bloom phase fertilizer called Connoisseur. I guarantee you that within a week, our roses will meet their expectations. But it’s costly…”

“Don’t worry, with the money they’re promising us for the shoot, we can afford it,” said Pedro. And so we rushed over to our neighborhood garden shop, bought a big supply of Connoisseur A & B, and started feeding our Granada and Ambience Roses with this premium fertilizer.”

Pedro didn’t mind that it’s not exactly organic, since "after the shoot we’ll just sell all the remaining Roses and start organically with a fresh batch."

Within a week, the stems and leaves of our Roses in Greenhouse Three started to swell up, and the blooms themselves seemed to get bigger by the day. Pedro explained that it was the polyamino alcohols contained in Connoisseur (he read up on it) that caused the plant cells to become elastic, thus able to hold more sugars. The plant produces sugars through photosynthesis.

As the flowers grew bigger, they required more and more carbohydrates, so they drew upon the stored up energy in the cells, and within two weeks the production crew were very happy with our Roses and they were ready to shoot.

There was one hitch. It was a murder-mystery and they wanted to destroy the roses in the final scene. The murderer goes mad and takes a machete to his victim’s greenhouse roses.

Pedro would not allow this on principle. So the production company paid some artisans a huge amount of money to recreate our Granada and Ambience Rose plants out of silk and plastic. They did such a great job that it was hard to tell the difference.

The movie used the real Roses until the very end, at which time we harvested the real ones, and the fake ones took their place. Our long-stemmed Granada and Ambience multi-hued Roses were sold for a premium price at the Rose Auction in Mississauga.

Very fitting for Roses grown with a premium fertilizer. In addition to the polyamino alcohols, Connoisseur contains the best possible amino chelated ingredients available in horticulture.