Off-Farm Exploration
Greetings!
This week Elisa and I traveled to East Windsor, New Jersey for the American Specialty Cut Flower Growers Regional Conference. On Monday, we toured Moonshot Farm and Kube-Pak, a massive greenhouse operation. It's not often that we get to visit other farms, so we had a great time getting to see how other businesses operate. Of course, I forgot to take many photos to document the journey.
Moonshot Farm, owned by Rebecca and Mark, grows flowers for market and CSA on their 10 acre farm in East Windsor. They harvest blooms 52 weeks of the year, thanks in part to a geothermal greenhouse that also allows them to grow unique tropicals such as curcuma in the summer months. Moonshot is growing exponentially, and it was fascinating to see and hear them talk through their decision to grow more and try to become as big as they can handle. At Two Boots, we're pretty set on staying as small as possible, but it's interesting to hear from people who want to scale up and desire to do so sustainably.
Moonshot grows a lot of bulbs in crates, which is not something we have much experience with at Two Boots. We typically grow a handful of lilies in crates each year to get us through lean times, but that's nowhere near the thousands of lilies that they're growing each year. In addition to growing lilies in crates, they do hundreds of thousands of tulips in crates throughout the winter. Growing bulbs in crates allows you to force the bulbs to bloom on a schedule, and gives you a longer season than simply planting into the field. It's a great way to extend your season!
Another thing Moonshot does well is taking advantage of grants. Through funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, they just put up two new high tunnels, and through an NRCS grant they are building an in-vessel drum composting system that will help manage waste with minimal labor inputs. There's money out there for all sorts of farm projects, and Rebecca is tapped into all of the outlets for finding this money to fund her farm's growth, and takes advantage of every opportunity she comes across.
Visiting Kube-Pak was a wildly different experience than that of visiting Moonshot. Walking around a farm always feels vaguely familiar, full of things I recognize and relate to. Of course, we has a greenhouse and grow seedlings, but the scale at which Kube-Pak operates is unlike anything I've ever seen. During their peak season, they employ 250 people. Seeding is mechanized, and there are machines for filling trays with soil, replacing plants in empty cells, and potting up seedlings. Workers using these machines are working on assembly lines, each responsible for one specific task. The greenhouses stretch across 20 acres, and employees ride bicycles to move throughout the facility. While we were there, we watched workers taking cuttings from thousands of strawberry plants hanging from the greenhouse purlins. I imagine they’d been doing this same thing for days or weeks on end. It was astounding to imagine working in an environment that’s so similar to the farm in some ways, and yet the day to day for each employee is so drastically different from what I or my coworkers do.
One of Kube-Pak's many high-tech machine, this pricks seedlings out of a cell tray and pots them up into their signature kube paks.
Kube-Pak sells seedlings through plug brokers and to garden centers, farmers, and landscapers. They don't work with big box stores, which is unique in their line of business.
One of the most interesting things we learned about Kube-Pak is that they have almost eliminated the use of chemical pest control by developing a good integrated pest management program. They still occasionally spray pesticides when levels begin to get out of control, but they said that these applications are now few and far between, and when they do need to spray it is generally more effective because the insects haven't built up a tolerance to pesticides. I'm happy to see the greenhouse industry moving in the direction of integrated pest management, and I hope the trend continues.
It was such a treat to get off of the farm for a couple days and spend time learning about other farms and ways of doing things. I'm grateful for the experience and the time to contemplate our own farm work,
Just one of the spaces in Kube-Pak’s endless greenhouses.
While Elisa and I were away for the conference, the crew held down the fort for some truly massive harvest days. The farm looked great upon my return, and we’ve all been thrilled to have some cooler weather to finish out the week. We’re looking forward to lots of weeding and caring for perennials in the coming days.
We’re at the Baltimore Farmers Market this Sunday, July 28th from 7:00- 12:00!
We’re planning to bring bouquets, cosmos, eucalyptus, lisianthus, snapdragons, rudbeckia, assorted bunches of flowers and Two Boots merch.
And, of course, the Build Your Own Bouquet bar is back!
Thanks for reading, and we hope to see you at the market!
Amelia & The Two Boots crew
Summer blooms packing the delivery van
This week’s florist harvest was one for the mid-summer record books! The front and back of the fridge were jam packed with florist and DIY bulk bucket orders for Thursday, a complete anomaly for the end of July.