Choosing Two New Roses, Filling Our Huge Reservoir

After the movie shoot, Pedro and I took all our Ambience and Granada roses to the Rose Auction here in Mississauga and managed to get premium prices for all of them. Buyers were impressed with the extra long stemmed beauties, making us think that perhaps we’ll make a “mistake” with Iguana Juice Grow once more in the future.

I was ready to bid for a batch of Granada rooted seedlings, when Pedro stopped me. “No, my dear Jill, there is a tradition in our family. When we harvest a greenhouse completely, not leaving a single rose, we have to choose new varieties.”

“But we were so lucky with our Ambience and Granada Hybrid Teas,” I protested. “It seems foolish not to grow the same variety again!.”

“Whether or not it seems foolish, we must respect family tradition,” said Pedro, and I melted with the sentiment that he included me in his family. After all, I’ve been waiting for him to ask me, but so far there are no marriage plans on the horizon.

So we looked around the auction, and ended up buying a batch of Hybrid Tea Rose Midas Touch, a hardy yellow variety, and another Hybrid Tea, Voodoo, an orange-red blend, a very dramatic mixture.

I questioned growing a yellow rose, since they’re not meant to be grown in cold climates. However, Pedro convinced me that in our climate control Glasshouse it doesn’t matter that we happen to be located in Canada.

Voodoo grows best in the cool of Spring and Fall, it doesn’t like hot, dry summers. “We’ll keep the temperature down and make sure that there’s adequate humidity,” said Pedro.

Voodoo’s parentage can be traced back to Camelot, First Prize, Typhoo Tea, and Lolita, and it was an American Rose Selection in 1986. Rose patents are only valid for 20 years, so we don’t have to pay royalties on this one.

Also possessing an expired patent, Midas Touch was an American Rose Selection in 1994, and it’s supposed to be easy to grow and tolerant of different climates. Both of our new varieties are disease resistant. Of the two, Midas Touch is the more prolific.

Pedro saw how sad I was saying goodbye to growing Granada and Ambience again, so he promised that after a year, we could go back to our original multi-hued selections. “The tradition allows going back, but only after a reasonable time.”

By that time I’ll be in love with Voodoo and Midas Touch and not ready to give them up, either. However, the seedlings were actually cuttings grafted onto disease resistant rootstocks, and they looked quite sturdy and full of healthy vigor.

“Were you serious about feeding them extra organic fertilizer to make their stems grow tall?” I asked Pedro. He said he would think about it, but that he doesn’t like the idea of the Roses growing too close to our High Pressure Sodium lighting fixtures.

We treated all our fledgling Roses with No Shock, in order to minimize the effects of being transplanted. We placed them in the coco coir medium in our multi-bucket hydroponic ebb and flow system, and Pedro mixed up the first batch of nutrient solution for the young newcomers.

Don’t forget that our Glasshouses are huge (125 feet by 40 feet) and that our 2000 bucket ebb and flow system covers 5000 square feet in each greenhouse. Each bucket is fertigated by our ebb and flow system with 2 gallons of nutrient solution four times a day, then the liquid retreats into our 5000 gallon reservoir.

The Advanced Nutrients Nutrient Calculator calls for 19.8 Liters of Iguana Juice Grow to be poured into our pre-mix tank, along with 14.1 Liters each of Humic Acid and Fulvic Acid, 5677.53 mL of Carbo Load Liquid, 46.7 Liters of SensiZym.

Week 1 calls for 17 Kilos each of Piranha, and Tarantula, as well as 25.5 Liters of Voodoo Juice. We also have to pour in 31.2 Liters of Seaweed Extract along with the same amount of Organic B. Didn’t I tell you that Advanced Nutrients products are delivered to us by the truckload?

But we have our prize=winning Roses to show for it!

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.