September 27, 2006
Dennis Kovar from Attica
Floral & Greenhouses introduced,
Terry Smith, the guest speaker for this weeks program.
Terry is the owner of Rubia Flower Market in West Lafayette and also a wholesale representative of Esmeralda Farms. She explained how cut flowers are grown and shipped.
Esmeralda Farms is one of the premier cut flower suppliers for the United States and cuts approximately 1,000,000 stems of flowers every day. According to Terry and also the company website, "Esmeralda Farms prides itself in its dedication to providing only the highest quality fresh cut flowers. For over 30 years, Esmeralda’s diverse growing regions in Central and South America have enabled it to take advantage of different climatic conditions and soil compositions."
Another main reason for the quality and diverse products is that Esmeralda maintains quality control over the planting, growing, cutting, packing and shipping the many types flowers and bouquets. All are packaged at the farms and shipped to the distribution center in Florida where they are then routed to the customers. Esmeralda Farms owner, Peter Ulrich, has a vast knowledge of flower care and breeding and is admired by Terry for his passion to provide quality flowers. She was very pleased when she had the opportunity to become a wholesale representative for him.
Terry passed around many examples of the bouquets available from Esmeralda Farms and was sure most have seen or purchased many of their floral products at local florist. One of the more interesting points of the presentation was the number of different flowers and bouquets offered by this industry. Many do not think about how huge a business this is in the world.
To read more about the growing, processing and delivery of cut flowers you can visit the Esmeralda Farms website http://www.esmeraldafarms.com There are many, many flower and bouquet photos and also photos of the farms on the website.