BMancaster Farming. Saturday, April 2, 1994
Floral Crop Ready
For Easter Harvest
JOYCE BUPP
York Co. Correspondent
YORK (York Co.) While
area field crop producers are gear
ing up for the. spring planting sea
son, Joe Hoffman is overseeing
last minute details of the harvest
Hoffman’s crop is a fragrant
and colorful one, a sprintime array
of lilies, hyacinths, daffodills, and
chrysanthemums. The Easter pot
ted plant crop is the first of several
seasonal harvests taken annually
from the 40,000 square feet of
glass and plastic greenhouses at
Aug. H. Schaefer Flowers, 145
North Albemarle Street.
As lilies and hyacinths waft
their perfume through the airy,
warm greenhouse environment
dozens of other sorts of plants in
various stages of growth fill bench
and floor space and cascade from
overhead. Employees are busy
planting tiny seedlings to market
packs, blooming size plants get
repotted into larger, specimen
containers, and pastel buds are
beginning to peek out from
beneath the graceful foliage of
hanging baskets.
Christmas poinsettia cuttings
will arrive shortly, even before
space is vacated by flats of bed
ding flowers and vegetable plants.
And before the Memorial Day
weekend, rush for colorful gera
niums, Joe Hoffman is looking
ahead to ordering Easter bulbs for
1995.
“We work 10 monthys to a year
ahead in planning and ordering,”
says Hoffman, from his office
haven in a secluded corner
between the busy greenhouses and
the retail shop.
Roxanne Vadermark, floral designer at the Aug. H.
Schaefer retail shop, tucks some final greenery Into an ar
rangement of colorful, fresh flowers.
Chrysanthemum* are one of the most popular Easter—season flowers at the Aug.
H. Schaefer florist business. This greenhouse full of these customer favorites will of
fer buyers a variety of color and size selection.
Joe Hoffman grew up on a
northern York County general
livestock and crops farm near
Dover. As a young man, he
decided he preferred a career
away from the long hours and hard
work of agriculture, and earned a
degree in mechanical engineering.
But after many years working at
that field in the corporate world,
Hoffman felt it was again time for
a change of direction.
“I needed .a new set of prob
lems,” he quietly chuckles,
adding, “I had no illusions that
going into business for myself
would be easy or take less time.”
After one particularly frustrat
ing day in his mechanical engi
neering position, he called the
owner of Aug. H. Schaefer Flow
ers, which he had learned might be
for sale. A few months later, in
July 1981, Joe Hoffman was in the
greenhouse-florist business.
It was a major career direction
change for a man who says with a
grin that he barely knew the differ
ence between a marigold and a
geranium. But Hoffman had spent
an intense few months researching
the operation with the owner and
accountants, and believed it to be
a viable business venture for him
to undertake. In addition, the pre
vious owner was eager to teach
Hoffman the greenhouse business.
While there was much for him
to leant, absorb, and digest about
the floral cultivation and retailing
business, he recalls not worrying
too much originally about success
or failure in his new venture.
“I didn’t know enough to wor
ry,” he jokes. “After a few years of
experience, I knew enough to wor-
Aug. H. Schaefer employees Helen Hyder, left, and Elsie Winter transplant Impa
tiens seedlings.
ry. But you reach a point where
you quit worrying and concentrate
on what can be addressed.”
Instead, Hoffman directs his
energies into planning and paying
attention to details he can manage
' and control. Months ahead of each
planting or holiday season, he will
have scheduled down almost to
the last pot or pack just how many
bulbs, how many varieties, how
many different colors! of each par
ticular plant will be marketed.
One crop factor he shares with
all growers - no control ovelr the
weather.
“But weather is not really that
big a factor, because we grow
inside. You do have to make
allowances for the changeableness
of temperatures, but that can be
handled with ventilation. And we
don’t have to rely on rain,” he
explains.
Most critical weather uncon
trollable is sunshine. Shading
materials are used as heeded to
avoid burning and overheating
plants in hot, bright weather. Sun
shine, or the lack of it, impacts the
watering needs of the plants and
blooming schedules, especially
critical to holiday plants that need
to be at peak bloom within a few
day customer demand period.
‘Two days after Easter, those
potted bulb plants are virtually
worthless,” says Hoffman of the
tiny “sales window” for which
seasonal floral growers and retail
ers must aim.
Hoffman feels this year’s
extreme winter cold had a mini
mal effect on greenhyouse opera
tions, though causing what he esti
mates was a ten-percent increase
in heating costs. Although he had
Jos Hoffman check* the progress of hanging baskets,
being grown for the busiest “flower holiday of the year,
Mother’s Day.
no weather-related damages to
facilities, many producers did
have greenhouses collapse under
the weight of heavy snow and ice.
Like any successful marketing
business, customers demand is
what drives the final production
decisions in this retail-oriented
and service company.
“I track plant trends by our sales
here,” Hoffman says of letting the
customers be the ultimate deter
mining factor in choice of color
and varieties are grown. “If the
industry says the trend is to pinhk
geraniums and our customers are
buying red ones we grow red
ones.”
Voluminous notes he keeps
help Hoffman track the successes
and less-in-demand plants from
each major retailing season. That
comprises the data bank of infor
mation he reviews when planning
an dordering for the next year’s
seasonal crop and producing to
meet changing trends in the gar
dening and floral industry.
“Customers are buying more
easy-care plants, like impatiens
instead of petunias, because they
take less ongoing care. And we
used to grow lots of materials for
customers to plant hanging
baskets; now they prefer buying
them already planted,” observes
Hoffman.
He also sees a continuing
decline in demand for vegetable
plants. Customers who do plant
vegetables, he says, are planting
fewer of them, but starting with
larger, well-started plants rather
than small transplants.
Transportation plays a large
role in the changing greehouse
Jfomesteod
Jtoles
business, Hoffman believes. Both
food and cut flowers can more
readily be shipped from distant
areas where climate conditions
makes their production easier and
more cost-effective.
When the Schaefer firm went
into business in 1903, the flowers
used for the arrangements
designed and sold by the retail
shop were grown on-site. Now,
with improved more-durable var
ieties, refrigerated shipping and
hours-away air transportation,
flowers grown all over the world
go into the designs delivered by
the Schaefer delivery vans.
South American counties are
major suppliers of cut floral
materials for the United States,
along with Mexico and Hawaii.
Israel has great potential, Hoff
man says, to become a major cut
flower source, limited only by
water supplies. While many var
ieties are also grown domestically
in warmer southern states, Hoff
man estimates that volume to be
only half of what it once was.
“Cut flowers are a stable, pre
dictable market,” relates Hoff
man, with demand peaking during
such flower-oriented holidays as
Valentine’s or Mothers' Day. But
even cut flower buying trends are
changing, as fresh bouquets
become more available at super
markets and conevnience stores.
“Floral shops are a service
industry; we offer buyers a ser
vice,” Hoffman emphasizes. “We
deliver, we make something spe
cial the customer can’t get some
where else. The greenhouses are
really a separate business. There,
(Turn to Pag* B 3)