Sorry for not having posted anything in a while. I have been sort of busy with things here and sort of lazy and procrastinating this first post of the year. One of the reason’s I didn’t post was that I really didn’t have much to talk about. I don’t really have much to say now but here goes.
The poinsettia season ended OK. We didn’t sell them all but that was because they were not up to our specs, and we didn’t try. Overall we cut back a little on poinsettia production and could probably have sold that last little bit had it been good enough to ship. Next year we are looking at producing approximately the same amount of poinsettia. We are also going to do a few trials to make sure we are growing the best poinsettias for you.
A couple of white poinsettias caught my eye in the Dummen catalog. Unfortunately with these white poinsettias shown below, you can never be sure if the color is true to the catalog until you trial them. Environments can affect the color as will photoshopping the color in the catalogs as these producers sometimes do. Also even if the Glace is that white, a 10 week poinsettia wouldn’t color up until Christmas and would miss your selling window. Glace Early (right) looks promising.
After the New Year, we went to the Western Show in Kansas City. It’s been a few years since I have been to that show. It shrunk.
In my opinion, the economy has hit that show particularly hard. The IGC market which that show caters too is tenuous at best in the central US. There have been a lot of IGC’s fold up in the last few years. Several growers and suppliers have folded as well. The ones left seem to only attend the bigger shows. I think the Western Show can hang in there for now but it will have some tough years to get through until it can get it’s legs back under it. I don’t see a whole lot more exhibitors or attendees showing up than were there this year which is bad news for exhibitors looking for more attendees. Just my opinion. As long as the show was in the black this year, it should be able to continue to operate in the present format and model until the industry picks back up and more people start going to their state and regional shows again.
An unexpected outcome of the economic downturn as it relates to these shows is that the people who have been attending and are now not are finding out that they can still operate, find new products and run business as usual without attending. It will be a challenge to attract them back into attending the shows. The show planners will need to keep up the educational and social sides of the show to get these folks back in the door.
After we got back from the show, I have been trying to catch up on the work I fell behind on when I goofed off the last couple of weeks of 2013. Now I am paying for it in a big way. There is a lot of work that needs to be done on the website, marketing and scheduling for fall and winter of 2014.
While all of that was and wasn’t happening we have been planting our early crops of baskets and annuals. Here is some of what we have planted.
