Howdy, everyone.
On Monday, I received my weekly BUZZ! Email from Green Profit (here is a link to the web copy). The first article talked about a consumer panel that we done on the Garden Centers of America Holiday Tour in Cleveland, OH. The point that I want to ask about is that 3 out of the 5 panelist said that they "didn’t really find poinsettias appealing” (quotes add by me re: the article) and that they “prefer decorating with bulbs.”
So my questions is: Are we (growers and garden centers) so out of touch with consumers that we are not providing them the products that they want to buy, or is this panel a fluke and not representative of the whole?
I am shipping out a LOT of poinsettias next week. Does that mean the people still like poinsettias or are consumers just buying them because of tradition or lack of alternatives?
I am interested to hear your thoughts.
Things are slow around the farm today. Most of the crew has the day off because we have to work Saturday packing poinsettias. There have been several pick-up customers come through today as well. All in all though it’s been very quite. Next week is a different story. We will pack and ship out almost 6,000 cases of poinsettias which is about 60% of our poinsettia crop. Monday and Wednesday will be the big days. It will probably take us until 8-9 o’clock to finish loading. No big deal. We’ve done it lots of times before.
On the spring scheduling front, I have calculated all my floor space. It looks like I still have an empty house that I really need to figure out a way to fill. I may be able to use it to plant my hanging baskets on the floor before we hang them up. Hanging basket space is my next project. We are several weeks into our seeding and things are going well. One thing I don’t really understand is why the seed companies have to back order so many seed. I know we start early here in the south but I know we are not the only growers down here that are seeding now.
Looking further ahead, I received the new mum and aster catalog from Syngenta yesterday which reminded me that I need to work on my mum variety list and schedule for next fall.
The fun never ends.