Stems, Weeds, Purple Cows, and Flowers Gone to Seed

Thanks to a grant from the State of Alaska, Department of Natural Resources, Division of Agriculture, I attended the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers 2008 National Conference, Growers’ School, and Trade Show in Portland, OR, Sept. 8-11. Within minutes of starting Growers’ School at 8 AM, I began to build a new frame of reference for my incipient flower growing business. I am a flower “farmer” and my dahlias, lilies, cosmos, snap dragons are my “crop” from which I produce "stems." I also learned about two routes to success: you might be able to grow a “purple cow” or perhaps just as good - produce a crop that “grows like a weed.”

A “purple cow” is a crop that you can produce that no one else is producing. But you know what happens to purple cows – they can become quickly common and lose their advantage. The orange calla lily is apparently a purple cow gone awry. Pat Zweifel of Oregon Coastal Flowers had so many orders for orange callas last year he couldn’t fill them. Reasonably, this year he doubled his crop, and as these things seem to go, suddenly interest in orange callas dropped off. But still, callas must be the right crop for Zweifel because they seemed, at least to me, to “grow like weeds” on his place in Tillamook. From start up in 1994, Oregon Coastal has become the largest supplier of fresh cut callas in the United States.

The owner of Bear Creek Floral, also in Tillamook, introduced us to a reigning purple cow that also grows like a weed: the purple artichoke. Despite the fact that Bear Creek’s fields were inundated with two feet of water last December, this year’s artichoke crop is a good as ever. Apparently, Bear Creek is enviably cloud-covered, more so than lands a half-mile to the east or west, and the misty days are exactly what are required for tasty artichokes. The situation at Bear Creek illustrates the edge a farmer can have when a crop is chosen that is suited to the microclimate and soil type. Actually, that is the secret to weed-like crops. Know your soils; know your microclimate. Although I might absolutely love to grow carnations, I better huddle up to my sedum if I want a profitable field grown crop. More on sedum later.

Back to the artichoke. It has more relevance to the flower grower than you might at first think. It represents a multiple use crop. If you “miss” the correct harvest time for the edible artichoke, let it go to seed and harvest the gorgeous artichoke flowers. Or let’s say the petals on a flower get tattered, making it otherwise unattractive. Pull them off. Use the center. Use the foliage. Sometimes florists even prefer this. Apparently there is a market for Echinacea centers. Same thing with cosmos. The petals shatter quickly. Pick ‘em off. Use the foliage. The whole idea of using seedpods, centers, and foliage without its flower in arrangements was new to me and has opened up a whole new set of possibilities for my flower bouquet business aspirations.

Well, artichokes will definitely not “grow like weeds” in my fields in Haines, Alaska, but I do have other plants that grow amazingly well in my location: cosmos, dahlias, lilies, monkshood, iris, astilbe, mint, hosta. And when I saw an acre of sedum growing at Oregon Flowers, Aurora, Oregon , I nearly flipped. I have a new appreciation for this plant, which not only “grows like a weed” for me, but has felt like one too. Look for it in my future flower arrangements!