How Timbuk Farms aims to capitalize on a trend and increase sales year-round.
When you drive into Timbuk Farms’ Granville, Ohio, location, the first thing you see are Christmas trees. Lots of them, in fact, as if you were dropped into the middle of a thick forest of pine trees, and not the the home of a large commercial greenhouse. The business was founded as a Christmas tree farm in 1952 by the Schmidt family. Currently, there are more than 300 acres of Christmas trees on the property.
Today, the business is owned and operated by Jim Gibson and his wife, LaVonda. The two bought the business from the Schmidt family in 2004. Jim had grown up in Indiana on a vegetable farm and in the garden center business before spending eight years working for Ball Seed as a sales rep in Michigan and Long Island, New York. When they bought Timbuk Farms, the Gibsons had wanted to move back to the Midwest, and the Schmidts happened to be ready to move on. The new owners’ first move was to begin modernizing the business.
“The [former] owners did a really good job in their day, but they were older, and they probably quit investing towards the end there,” Jim says. “So, we got up to date with more carts and trucks and [plants]. Basically, in the first couple years, we didn’t really add on any greenhouse space, we added on efficiencies to be able to do the work easier.”
Fourteen years later, making things easier is still what Jim and LaVonda want to do. Beyond the sea of Christmas trees are greenhouses where Timbuk grows young plants, bedding plants and other crops for wholesale to sell wholesale. And within the last year, they’ve add succulents to their operation — the exact opposite of trees, size-wise, but grown the same in spirit — in hopes of giving the Timbuk a new, consistent revenue stream.
“Succulents are a year-round business, or at least it’s nine months,” Jim says. “It's not just the spring.”
The tree farm at Timbuk offered a source of income separate from the greenhouse division, which appealed to Jim.
“It’s an important part of what we do and a very good diverse piece of our company, because it’s a lot of sales in December. It comes at a good time [when] we want stable income,” Jim says. "eurWith the traditional bedding plant, you map out 90 percent of your sales for the year in the fall and [annuals] in the spring, and then you basically hibernate the rest of the year, do some poinsettias and do some mums [later in the year].”
According to Jim, 45 percent of Timbuk’s business comes from the sale of finished bedding plants to garden centers and other retailers, with another 45 percent coming from young plant production. Another 10 percent comes from a mixture of their two garden centers — one of which is in Granville, the other a roughly 45-minute drive away in Delaware, Ohio — as well as the tree farm. The tree farm also provides the opportunity to make wreaths, evergreen combo pots and other holiday-themed items that are designed to boost sales in the dead of winter when plant sales are typically slow.
Jim, though, says sales of certain plants — most notably poinsettias — have dipped enough to be noticeable, and have left a gap in the business. That’s where succulents came into the picture. Timbuk rooted its first succulent cuttings last February, although Jim feels he was a few years late to trend, which almost kept him from pursuing it.
The first step for Timbuk was to partner with a Dutch grower Jim and LaVonda met on a European trip who had experience with succulents to ease the learning curve. It also has access to cuttings that have come in every other week since last February. They partnered with Kurt Weiss Greenhouses, a Moriches, New York-based operation that has its own in-house marketing team that helped the two businesses develop a brand for the succulents. Succulent Society, the name for the brand, now has its own website (succulent-society.com), and the partnership has allowed for succulent upgrades — often the wooden box or burlap cover the plant is put into before being sold — to be done in a way that doesn’t make the program too expensive to pursue.
“What we were able to do is secure a good source of the inputs coming to us, and we were able to work with some other growers and work on the upgrades,” Jim says. “Because 40 percent or 50 percent of the succulents go into upgrades, we’ve got to do that efficiently and [consider pricing].”
Timbuk’s plan for succulents is simple and direct. The idea is to not just sell succulents by them themselves or in a small pot, although those are available. They are going for something more distinct.
For example, consider their holiday collection for 2017. In 4-inch sleeves, there are three different designs — one with Christmas trees and snow, another with a present next to some Christmas tree branches, and another with red, green and blue Christmas Lights — that offer customers something seasonal, but doesn’t take up as much space as a poinsettia or other holiday crops. There is an also an 8-inch succulent bowl that is painted red and filled with succulents and evergreens, and an 8-inch decorative bowl with an opening in the middle where the customer could place a painted succulent or a poinsettia if they want to mix tradition with a new trend.
There’s also a succulent Christmas wish ornament. Not unlike the painted poinsettias that have become popular over the past few years, the ornament is sparkly and attention-grabbing. The succulent is placed inside the ornament — either red, gold or silver — and painted the same shade with some glitter added to the paint.
“It’s not for everyone, but I think it’s going fill a void, especially in the holidays,” Jim says. In their catalog, there are already sleeves and succulent bowl designs for the Fourth of July, Halloween and Valentine’s Day. There are also more generic sleeve options for someone who wants to buy a succulent, but isn’t interested in having it sit in a standard clay pot.
“There is a group of people that think [painted succulents] are weird and strange and they don’t understand it,” says Timbuk Sales Manager Christen Keith. “But there were a lot of people, and people I didn’t expect, who are excited about it.” She cites a glow-in-the-dark, 4-inch succulent as a product that has won some painted succulent skeptics over because it engages a younger customer base.
Beyond the holidays, painted succulents are a key part of Timbuk’s succulent portfolio. Aside from the painting they do themselves, there is the Paint Your Plant echeveria marketing program for kids and families. Before it is shipped out, the plant is painted white, but it’s up to the end consumer to design it as they see fit with the yellow, green, red and blue paints that come with the plant. The idea is that a child could design the succulent to sit in their room, or as a gift for a teacher or parent. According to Keith, some of the garden centers they work with are hosting succulent-painting parties around the product.
The idea is for this model to continue throughout the year, catering to different holidays with different designs and colors depending on the time of the year. That means to-be-created designs for Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving and every other notable holiday will be available between now and next December.
“We want steady, monthly production. We want to basically grow the same amount, year-round,” Jim says.
So far, what Timbuk is selling has been a hit, in part because the offerings are different, and because of how the products are shipped to stores. The succulents are sold as a program, so they come in smaller quantities than bedding plants and poinsettias might. Orders can be adjusted depending on what sells and what doesn’t, too. Efforts to make the succulents marketable before they are shipped out matters, too.
“I think [customers] like that we have a lot of retail-ready programs, so [the succulents] are already in a nice bowl,” Keith says. “They like the painted options because it’s something new. They have something new to offer than isn’t out there.”
She adds that Timbuk’s customers — mostly garden centers in the Midwest with others located on the East Coast — are glad to have an alternative to poinsettias for the holidays.
“I love poinsettias,” Keith adds. “But the interest right now is a little bit low, so it does give garden centers something else to offer as a holiday plant.”
Like most of the industry, Jim wants to reach the next generation of consumers that maybe aren’t interested in poinsettias or don’t want plants that require a lot of care. It’s a major reason why Timbuk has committed to succulents and gotten creative with their product line.
“I think the biggest thing on succulents is, the younger generation is afraid of plants because they die, and these don’t die. So, I think that’s a big part of it,” he says. “If we can add a painted succulent where they can buy something that’s cool that the kids can buy and do a paint by plant party and then give it to their mom, you know, and then she sets it on the counter and then four months later, it pretty much goes back to a green plant, it’s a home run.”
How the program will work over the course of the year remains to be seen. Jim says there are projects currently percolating — notably a line of painted succulents that will be colored for some NFL football teams, as well as the Ohio State Buckeyes — that will allow sales to remain consistent during points of the year when holiday-themed succulents won’t be in demand.
On this year’s Cultivate floriculturetours, Jim showcased his succulent brand before it had been fully launched. Looking to get feedback from his peers, he showcased a few different painted succulent options and explained how they were developed. Reaction was mixed at best, but Gibson had the same reasons to believe they should sell as he does now: it’s something different, and if done right, can engage new customers. It’s the same reason some poinsettia growers and breeders have wholly embraced painted options within the past few years.
There’s also the issue of figuring out exactly how many succulents to grow. When the busy spring season hits, it’ll be harder to find and manage space. And because succulents take around 20 weeks to grow, finding that balance will require some trial and error.
“With bedding plants, you can wait [to plan until] maybe two, three months in advance,” Jim says. “For this, you have to be five, six months out. So, it’s a different cycle that way, and it’s a longer crop, an average of a 20-week crop.”
Jim also is aware that trends don’t last forever, and that eventually, innovation will stall out after three or four years. To stay up to date, he takes trips to Europe, visits other stores and takes input from other growers and businesses. Before the succulent program launched, around 30 of Timbuk’s customers visited Granville and gave their input.
While he looks toward Timbuk's future, to find his next Christmas tree and his next succulent, he’s focused on making this project a success.
“We’re really going to work hard on holidays and try to get steady, year-round income,” Gibson says. “And then when you get into spring and summer, we’ll see [how it goes]. But that’s our goal.”
The recently launched Magnum mum line from Dümmen Orange features one of the largest garden mum flowers on the market. With oversized blooms, bright autumnal colors, impressive shelf life, and a well-branched habit, Magnum mums are a no-brainer when it comes to production trials for the 2018 season.
Magnum mums generally follow the same cultural practices that can be applied to the entire Dümmen Orange lineup of garden mums. The detailed, all-encompassing guide can be found under the “Tools for You” section of the Dümmen Orange website. However, there are certain cultural recommendations growers can follow to ensure success, while simultaneously maximizing the size of their Magnum mum flowers.
For more information, visit DummenOrange.com
All Dümmen Orange garden mums perform best under a no-pinch production regimen. However, pinching should never be applied to Magnum as this will flatten the shape and ruin the natural orb growth habit.
It should be noted that the Magnum name applies only to the colossal blooms of these chrysanthemums, but not the vigor. The medium vigor of this series makes it highly flexible in different container sizes; performing well in small 4” (10 cm) containers all the way to premium 12” (30 cm) showcase planters.
A maximum of one week heat delay may occur under extreme circumstances when daytime temperatures consistently hover above 88°F (31°C) and when night temperatures surpass 77°F (25°C).
If night temperatures fall below 57°F (14°C), premature bud-set is likely to occur. Reference the complete culture guide at DummenOrange.com for specific recommendations on how to prevent premature bud set on Magnum mums.
Magnum Pink should not be used in black cloth production, but Magnum Orange performs well with a 6-week shaded response time. Keep in mind that, as with all garden mums, flower size will be maximized if grown under natural season conditions. Magnum Orange has a natural season response time of week 37, which is generally the second or third week in September. Magnum Pink is earlier, with a week 35-36 response time.
The Home Garden Panel splits consumers into two rough categories: diggers and decorators. During spring sales, more shoppers align with the “digger” description: those that appreciate the diversity in selection offered throughout that time of year. During the autumn, however, most consumers purchasing plants fall into the “decorator” category. These consumers want color — lots of it — that lasts as long as possible.
The nearly dahlia-sized flowers of the Magnum series not only provide a dramatic barrage of color at retail, but with proven color retention, they continue to perform for the consumer well after purchase, making return business almost guaranteed.
For specialized cultural recommendations or to organize a free trial order, contact QiuXia Chen, junior potted product manager, at Q.Chen@DummenOrange.com
Platform Genetics, Vineland Research and Innovation Centre’s new spin-off company, performs quick, precise genome editing.
If a breeder wants a different plant characteristic — and fast — they’re in luck. A new company, Platform Genetics has updated a century-old technique to evolve a plant with 21st century efficiency. The company claims to be able to find new variation in a single gene with 99 percent certainty, which can lead to new plant traits such as color, leaf shape, growth habit or aroma.
Although Platform Genetics is a spinoff of the non-profit Vineland Research and Innovation Centre in Lincoln, Ontario, it operates as a for-profit company in offering its patented tool to breeders. Platform Genetics was founded in 2016, and has been operating for much of the second half of 2017, says Dr. Jim Brandle, CEO of Vineland Research and Innovation Centre.
Already, Platform Genetics has paired with breeders who are using the technology, Brandle says. However, the breeders have not yet delivered to market any crops developed via the technology. “In the breeding context, where you’d be in that pipeline, [we are in] the very early days,” he says.
For more than a hundred years, breeders have been treating their seeds to create new traits. Whenever a plant makes new seeds, it naturally creates a few changes to its DNA. Using seed treatments such as UV-light or Ethyl-methanesulfonate (EMS), a plant makes more changes than it usually does, enriching the variation pool found in the batch of seed. If the plant changes the DNA of a gene in just the right way, a new and beneficial trait is born. The technology that Platform Genetics uses is called Deep Variant Scanning (DVS) and it allows quick identification of where thousands of plants have made those changes, and picks out the single plant a breeder is interested in. DVS is different than the well-reported genome editing tool Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) in that DVS does not modify the genome. Platform Genetics’ proprietary technology uses DNA sequencing and computer algorithms to identify changes the plant has made. DVS is quicker than CRISPR, the latter of which takes about 12 to 14 months, Brandle says. Looking to improve disease resistance to powdery mildew in tomato, it took Platform Genetics only two weeks to identify the gene involved in resistance to the disease, and two months to phenotype it.
The technology can aid growers and breeders in many ways, Brandle says. “It’s going to give them the genetic variation they need, when they need it,” he explains. “That genetic variation is the basis of trait development. Many of these traits wouldn’t otherwise be possible. You’d either have to do forward screens, which are inefficient, or they just may not appear spontaneously.”
The DVS technology is also non-GMO, Brandle says. This is beneficial because regulators in Europe, where many breeders are located, have imposed restrictions on the production and transportation of genetically modified seed.
In practice, breeders can make use of the process in various ways. Platform Genetics is in possession of tomato populations, so in the case of tomato, breeders can tell the company what its gene targets are, and it will send a bag of seed back to the breeder. Breeders with their own populations can also send DNA to the company.
Platform Genetics’ technology is primarily useful to breeders, but it may be supported by growers, Brandle says. “We have a lot of public domain breeding programs, particularly in vegetables, as an example,” he says. The company believes it can help growers capture market share by using the technology to create traits consumers want, such as more flavorful tomatoes.
Much of the work that Platform Genetics has done with DVS has been on vegetables, although it has done some work with petunia as well, Brandle says, explaining that ornamental breeders can make abundant use of the technology. Exactly which characteristics a breeder seeks and acquires through DVS, depends on the plant. Taste, for instance, is not a characteristic to be improved upon in an ornamental crop, but color often is.
In any case, the technology usually homes in on a single gene, Brandle says. “The magic is really around DNA sequencing and software to help you find the gene — the plant that has the gene alteration that you’re looking for.”
No matter what business you’re in, December is a good time to reflect on the past year and to look ahead to what’s coming up next. Asking yourself what worked and what didn’t this year, what goals you want to set for 2018 and how you can get better in the next year are some of the ways to do so. Everyone has their method of reflection, too. For me, it typically involves meditation, a pot of herbal tea and an empty notepad. The fewer screens, the better.
This month’s cover story features Timbuk Farms, a Columbus, Ohio-area business many of you may have visited during the Cultivate17 floriculture tours. Led by owner Jim Gibson and his wife LaVonda, Timbuk has taken the opportunity to review its business in the last year and then evolve it into something better. As succulents have become more popular, especially with younger consumers, Timbuk saw an opportunity to add a new revenue stream and build a new succulent brand. It's been less than a year since Timbuk added succulents, but Gibson says the customers already love the new offerings, and despite a few small mistakes along the way, the program is on its way to becoming a consistent source of income.
“We’re really going to work hard on holidays and try to get steady, year-round income,” he says. “And then when you get into spring and summer, we’ll see [how it goes]. But that’s our goal.” You can start reading the story here.
Also in this issue, Dr. Christopher J. Currey writes about how growers can combat liner stretch, John Bartok offers his insight into labor costs and Leslie Halleck explores the do's and don'ts of promoting from within.
Lastly, you may have noticed by now that there is another new face on this column, after my colleague Patrick Williams wrote last month’s letter. But for our next issue, Editor Karen E. Varga will return from her well-deserved sabbatical. In the meantime, you can drop me a line at cmanning@gie.net and reach Patrick at pwilliams@gie.net.
Happy holidays, and may you also get a few well-deserved days off to spend with your friends and family!
216-393-0265 | Twitter: @Manning_GIE
Working with SePRO, growers prevent thrips from sucking up their crops’ cell content.
By the time spring rolls around, Baucom’s Nursery in North Carolina is often battling problematic thrips that come in through its greenhouses’ open vents. Between its two locations in Charlotte and Concord, N.C., the nursery has about 30 acres of undercover production space to defend, says head grower Jeff Watson.
In addition to shrubs, which make up 60 to 70 percent of Baucom’s business, the nursery also produces floriculture crops such as begonias, salvias, vinca and impatiens. Plus, Watson says, “We do a large amount of gerbera daisies, which are probably the most thrip-loving crop out there. We do several hundred thousand gerberas.”
Western flower thrips are the issue at Baucom’s. This is the predominant thrips species that affects greenhouse production, says Dr. Juang-Horng (J.C.) Chong, associate professor and extension specialist at Clemson University. Thrips come in most often through migration from the outside, as at Baucom’s, but they can also infest cuttings and seedlings. For growers who operate greenhouses in the northern part of the country, most thrips in the winter are shipped in through contaminated cuttings and seedlings.
Thrips feed by puncturing cells and sucking up the cell contents, Chong says. “They’ve got this modified mouthpart — what we call a rasping-sucking mouthpart — so they puncture the cell wall, and then suck up all the cell content inside,” he says. “When they remove all the cell content, only cell walls are left behind, resulting in stippling.”
Chong says thrips are particularly problematic on growing terminals such as flower buds and leaf buds because they permanently damage those terminals and prevent them from expanding normally.
Chong’s experience with thrips is primarily in the southern U.S., where thrips generally come into greenhouses from the outside. “For growers in the south or anywhere with an open greenhouse kind of production, they would have to monitor with sticky cards,” he says.
Installing screens could help some growers who have thrips coming in from the outside. However, because thrips are so small, screens would have to be even smaller, Chong says. When screens are too small, they can impede airflow, raise humidity and allow for foliar disease issues.
If growers have cuttings or seedlings infested by thrips, they could perform a general quarantine, Chong says. “They would just take samples to see whether they have thrips on them,” he says. “They could either put sticky cards right among the cuttings themselves, or they can just sacrifice a few of their cuttings and take a look under a microscope or hand lens.”
Chong recommends any grower can benefit from using a hand lens to identify pest and disease issues, and this is something Baucom’s does. Each of Watson’s growers have loupe lenses. “As a matter of fact, [I] just bought some off Amazon that are jeweler’s magnifiers that have lights and everything with them.”
When thrips infest crops, they are hard to manage because they find their way into immature flower buds, Chong says. “If the bud is not opened yet and you apply something over the top of it, when the bud opens, the new tissue are not protected,” he says. “What you end up having to do is keep spraying, do repeated applications, so you can actually provide residual protection to all the newly expanded tissues.”
Through seminars and conversation, Watson has discovered one thrips-fighting trick that works for him: applying brown sugar to his crops. “It’s strange, but believe it or not, it does help draw out the thrips,” he says. He tank-mixes the sucrose-molasses product with insecticides such as Hachi-Hachi SC from SePRO.
Watson says he uses several SePRO products, including Hachi-Hachi SC, Rycar, Akari and Talus. “In the past few years, they’ve come up with some really good chemicals,” Watson says.
Hachi-Hachi SC, in the Insecticide Resistance Action Committee (IRAC) group 21A, stops the production of a chemical inside insects that provides energy to insects. “Probably the easiest way to understand it is, they just run out of juice,” he says.
In the case of chilli thrips, Rycar, in IRAC group 9B interferes with the pests’ nervous systems, Chong says. “One of the ways they feed is to suck up the juice from the plant cell,” he says. “Rycar actually interferes with that process, so they stop the action of the pumping motion, so they cannot suck anymore. In that sense, they basically starve to death.”
Growers should treat thrips whenever they find them, Chong says. “What I usually recommend is, make one or two applications, and then do another scouting or another sampling just to see if you still have a problem,” he says. “If you do, then you may need additional applications as well. As far as the time of the year — Florida, all year long; Canada, you probably are spared in the winter. But it probably is always a good idea to scout for thrips whenever you’ve got crops in a greenhouse.” — Patrick Williams
*Always read and follow label directions. Akari, Hachi-Hachi, Rycar and Talus are registered trademarks of Nichino America, Inc.