Photo courtesy of Mucci Farms

Mucci Farms announces two-year expansion plan

Over the next 24 months, Mucci Farms will add 200-plus acres of production space in Ontario, Canada and Huron, Ohio, according to a press release.

The exact breakdown of the 206 acres that will be added between the two sites is as follows:

• 25 acres of tomatoes on-the-vine in Huron, Ohio, the third and final phase of the 75-acre project.
• 30 acres of multiple varieties of bell peppers in Kingsville.
• 36 acres of Smuccies Sweet strawberries in Kingsville, doubling the current acreage.
• 15 acres of mini-cocktail cucumbers, branded as the award-winning CuteCumber Poppers.
• 100 acres of multiple varieties of bell peppers at a new site in Kingsville with construction beginning in 2022.

>> Read the full story here.

Photo courtesy of AppHarvest

Kentucky-based AppHarvest to go public

The gigantic greenhouse produce grower based in Morehead says that it is combining with Novus Capital in order to go public. Current AppHarvest CEO will be in charge of the joint venture, and shares in the company will initially sell for $10 a share with a $1 billion pro forma equity value. The transaction will also provide $475 million of gross proceeds. AppHarvest plans to undertake its first crop harvest in the new facility during the beginning of 2021.

>> Read the full story here.

Photo courtesy of Red Sun Farms

Red Sun Farms begins use of supplemental lighting in Ontario

Red Sun Farms, a greenhouse produce grower in Ontario, Canada, is undergoing several projects to offer year-round supply. The projects include a 27-acre facility with partial lighting — allowing for a longer growing season for specialty tomato production, a 42-acre greenhouse dedicated to year-round organic and conventional crops and a third facility of undisclosed size that will feature first of its kind LED technology that reportedly recreates and modulates the full spectrum of the sun’s natural light.

>> Read the full story here.

You often hear that your customers can be your best advocates. Get them invested in your product, and you’ve got a great marketing tool. And with the market for organic produce, locally grown food and sustainable farming continuously growing, customers are making their preferences known at the cash register and beyond.

I recently ran across an interesting campaign by Edible Gardens, a New Jersey-based hydroponic indoor farm. The company has launched a crowdfunding campaign to help expand its reach, calling on individual investors to help raise funds.

The company is citing recent issues with produce safety, particularly the E. coli outbreak in California, over-fertilization and waste as reasons to back their “zero-waste inspired” farming option. As of print time, the campaign had raised more than $24,500 with 55 investors choosing to back the company. Individuals are commenting that they’re putting their money where their mouth is because they believe in locally grown, sustainable produce options.

And customers want to be involved in ways they haven’t traditionally. For example, Farm.One in Manhattan has offered tasting tours, complete with a sampling box to take home and enjoy. What a great way to get customers up close and personal with your operation. Over in Texas, Profound Microfarms opened up its greenhouse for a make-and-take seed bomb workshop with a tour of its hydroponic greenhouse. Of course, they also mentioned social distancing and a mask requirement to keep everyone safe.

Whether or not Edible Gardens meets its fundraising goal, it’s heartening to see customers choose to invest in local controlled environment agriculture. If they’re making the trek to visit their local greenhouse, investing in a company, buying produce at a retail store or ordering directly from growers, they’re finding ways to advocate for healthy options they can trust. And they want to know more.

Photo © merfin | adobe stock

As the coronavirus pandemic continues, Americans are dusting off a term from the past planting victory gardens, driving the demand for vegetable plants up.

The term was coined during World War I by the National War Garden Commission and promoted through propaganda posters advocating that civilians “Sow the seeds of victory” by planting their own vegetables. It returned to prominence in WWII, during which USDA estimates that more than 20 million victory gardens were planted. Fruit and vegetables harvested in these home and community plots was estimated to be 9-10 million tons.

When James H. Burdett wrote the Victory Garden Manual in 1943, the U.S. was more than a year into World War II. Food was scarce. Americans wanted to do something productive and feel self-sufficient.

Burdett founded the National Garden Bureau in 1920 and that organization’s current executive director, Diane Blazek, updated his tome for today’s gardens in a series of blog posts. The first one was about planning, the second one will be about planting, the third one will be care and maintenance and the fourth one will be about harvesting.

Blazek believes customers are looking for a return to normalcy. After posting “Victory Gardens 2.0: 10 steps for planning your own,” she thinks the messaging is a good fit for today’s times.

“Based on the reaction we got, yes, it definitely is striking a chord,” she says. “It’s the one thing you have control over. I can control my garden. I can grow my own produce. I can feed my family. That feeling of empowerment is a big part of it.”

Independent garden centers like Georgia’s Pike Nurseries are using the term in their messaging, as well.

Pike Nurseries has 17 retail locations, 15 in the metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia area and two in the Charlotte, North Carolina area. The company is part of Armstrong Gardens Centers, which is headquartered in California. Although their businesses are allowed to be open in each state, the company decided to close in-store shopping and implement its own online or phone order and delivery or curbside pickup model. Pike’s post-coronavirus marketing includes their own tips for planting modern-day victory gardens.

“Any time the country goes through a difficult time, you see people spending more time at home and watching their pennies a little closer,” Vice President of Marketing Desiree Heimann says. “So it makes sense that you’d start planting your own victory gardens. We started encouraging that and the sales went along with it.”

Not that sales are booming, but Pike has definitely seen a percentage of sales moving toward edibles. Whether it’s veggies, herbs or berries, people are grasping onto that message.

Victory gardens allow quarantined, stir-crazy people to get out in their yard and experience the mental health benefits of gardening.

“We’re being told to isolate and distance, and that’s not what humans do,” she says. “If we can encourage people to go outside and plant their Victory Garden, yes, they’ll have their fruits and veggies that they love to grow, but it’s also a form of therapy. And they can do that safely in their backyard.”

Nancie Corbett, owner of Bluebird Farms, a small IGC in Berlin, Maryland, opened March 23 after a two-month winter break. She’s stayed open for business staffed only with a skeleton crew practicing social distancing. She closed the retail area and has been receiving orders by phone for “porch pickup.”

Corbett has partnered with nearby Windmill Creek Vineyard and Winery on a victory garden project. The winery donated land for 60 garden plots, for which she would sell plants at a 20% discount.

“We’re trying to just keep plants moving and people buying,” she says.

On March 25, the winery hosted a Facebook Live virtual event introducing the victory garden concept. Corbett explained to interested participants how to plan, plant and maintain a victory garden. There were plenty of questions about how to start a garden, what types of plants to use, how to do it organically and more. Now, the winery has a waiting list for the plots. Corbett sees the reason people love the concept.

“It gives people hope,” she says. “They can envision their garden in August and right now each day we’re just trying to get through until the evening when we go to bed.”

The author is managing editor of sister publication Garden Center magazine.

pHOTOS COURTESY OF F&B FARMS AND NURSERY

When COVID-19 hit, F&B Farms and Nursery in Woodburn, Oregon, saw sales drop dramatically within the first two weeks. That’s when the annual and organic vegetable and herb grower decided to slow down annual production and ramp up edible plants. “I decided we’re going to plant every vegetable that we have on site,” says co-owner Leigh Geshwill. “Whatever we’ve got to seed and if we can get more, we’re going to plant them. I kind of figured having seen the first week or two in the grocery stores that food production was going to be top-of-mind for people.”

Even so, Geshwill says the greenhouse couldn’t keep up with demand. “We had people calling us from states we don’t normally ship to looking for product. So it was definitely a crazy year,” she says.

F&B Farms and Nursery is a 90 to 95% wholesale operation, supplying ornamental and edible plants to independent garden centers in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. In 2016, the greenhouse decided to transition all of its edible plants to organic due in large part to customer demand, Geshwill says.

The other issues were space, along with the time and the effort it took to do two sets of production. “I just wanted to be able to run the entire thing organically and have all my space certified and not worry about segregating or how it was treated,” Geshwill says. “I could just have more control over the whole process if it was all organic.”

And the organic trend isn’t one that’s likely to go away soon. Looking at the increase of not just organic produce, but organic products on store shelves, Geshwill sees a lot of opportunity.

“And as we get more savvy on production and growing things organically, that’s just going to continue to grow,” she says. “So I think that if you haven’t made it part of your plan, there’s no time like now. And tie it into health and wellness for people. I think that’s a great plant benefit and it’s a great marketing tool.”

We talked to Geshwill about the demand for organic edibles and where she sees the market heading.

Produce Grower: Do you think this boom in edibles will last after the COVID-19 crisis?

Leigh Geshwill: I think the edibles have been steadily growing anyway, so I think it will continue. And the reason I think that the organic market is a driver, but it’s also just edibles in general. I think consumers want to be more in charge of their health and their nutrition and what they’re eating. That ties into the local food movement. They want to know what it is and where it came from. And so I think growing your own food, I mean, you clearly know where it came from and what happened to it and how it was taken care of. So I think that’s just a continuing trend that people just really feel empowered to be in charge of their own health and wellness.

PG: Outside of the pandemic, what are some other factors driving the organic edible market?

LG: Another thing I think that helps now, especially versus even four or five years ago is just the availability of products. It used to be that you could get some things organic, but it wasn’t a very wide selection. And each year we just see that selection of seed availability and different types of vegetables and herbs really keeps expanding. So that helps sort of drive the sales that you can get. You can get all that variety that people are craving.

PG: What are some of the most popular varieties at the independent garden centers in your area?

LG: I think in a lot of places it’s heirloom tomatoes. In the Northwest, we have a fairly large Hispanic population and also we have some other ethnic groups like Russians that tend to like a lot of the specialty peppers. So, we see that and then of course lettuce, greens and basil and cilantro are the top two herbs. Lots of summer squash, a little bit of eggplant, but generally, we have a fairly sophisticated market. They’ll still buy some Early Girl and Better Boy type tomatoes, but people really want something that’s kind of unique and unusual. So they want it in their plants and they want it in their vegetables.

PG: Is there anything IGCs can provide their customers to help make them successful with an organic edible garden?

LG: Well, I think in our area, most of them do a really, really good job. In general, I think it’s just really educating consumers on the shift in mindset. Growing organically in my mind requires a little bit more planning and thoughtfulness about the whole network. When you grow conventionally, you have a problem and you go solve it with whatever chemical or fertilizer or whatever you need to do. When you do it organically, you have to think about: Have you amended your soil? Do you have a really rich microcosm going on? How are you going to deal with nutrition? Because you’re not going to throw some fertilizer on it. You’ve got to think about how you’re going to maintain nutrition throughout the growing season.

And so I think that it just requires a different kind of mindset or a sort of paradigm shift for how you grow. I think if people haven’t grown organically before that it may just take them maybe a really good seminar. It would help people to sort of plan ahead and then that would make them more successful.

PG: What advice would you give to garden center owners and retailers looking to find a good organic greenhouse partner?

LG: Well, the one thing I would say is there is so much vegetable demand in general. I do notice that some of our IGCs, we’ll do some pre-booking — not their entire sales volume, but maybe 50% of their sales volume. And I think that’s a really good idea just because seed supply is not robust and the availability is not robust. The days of being able to order anything off spec are gone. If you have some need, you need to share that with the grower now. So that if you’re thinking, “My vegetable sales are going to go up 50% next year,” that would be good to tell your grower so we can accommodate that and you’re not struggling looking for product.

That’s mostly what I see is product availability and knowing that you’re going to have something, at least some base level of product to have on your shelf and not be subject to, ‘Oh, I can’t get beans for three weeks.’