Sun Valley Growers
Our first field visit this week was also my favorite. We visited Sun Valley Growers, a large wholesale cut flower grower in Oxnard. Sun Valley Growers has greenhouses and covered fields loaded with Gerbera Daisies, Lilies and other cut flowers for assembly by them into arrangements for 1-800-Flowers and also for loose cut flower bouquets for sale in Trader Joes, Costco and some Food Stores, notably HB Foods of Texas. Last year we had the opportunity to visit HB Foods in Austin and San Antonio. HB Foods is a Whole Foods type grocer.
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| Arrival at Sun Valley Growers |
Once at Sun Valley Growers, a representative from the Company met us and took us through their facility explaining all facets of the operation from packing to shipping, growing, preparing seed beds and cutting flowers.
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| Sun Valley Representative |
Inside the warehouse it is a quite cool 50 degrees where a team of workers assembles the cut flowers for shipping to wholesale customers.
Arrangements for customers such as 1-800-Flowers are assembled en mass where a large overhead monitor detailed which variety flower and quantity of each color should be added to the bouquet. The displayed instructions are referred to as a recipe.
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| Recipe for Assembling a Bouquet |
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| Assembled Bouquets |
After assembly, cut flowers are boxed and palletized for loading on tractor trailers. Some stems such as the Gerberas are shipped standing in buckets of water. This room is kept even cooler than the assembly rooms, at a chilly 45 degrees.
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| Assembled Bouquets in cold storage |
Next step was to go outside and warm up. We visited open sided greenhouses holding thousands of Lilies growing for the Easter market.
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| Easter Lilies |
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| Easter Lilies |
The Lilies are clear cut when harvested.
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| Clear Cut Harvest |
Soil beds are prepared by completely removing the previous crop and hauling it offsite in order to preven pathogens and disease from infecting the soil and new crop.
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| Preparing Soil |
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| Fumigated and Ready for Planting |
A new crop is started in the prepared beds.
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| New Cut Flower Crop emerges |
The Gerbera daisy growing areas are one of the most colorful on the property.
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| Libbie in a Gerbera field |
A trip to a growing facility is not complete until we examine some of the controls.
The first of these is the CO2 monitor. CO2 is introduced in the Gerbera growing environment in order to promote growth and increase flower yields.
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| CO2 Monitor |
We noticed a familiar looking device hanging from the rafters. This is a Sulfur burner which is used to control powdery mildew in the wet environment. A few spoonfuls of sulfur is put into the burner then it is plugged in. A heating element oxidizes the sulfur powder into a gas which settles throughout the greenhouse effectively destroying powdery mildew.
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| Sulfur Burner |
Proceed to the next page, to
Mission Produce, an Avocado Packer.
