The Citizen, 1988-04-27, Page 17^^Home & Garden ’88
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27, 1988. PAGE 17.
Cash crop of a different color
BY TOBY RAINEY
A pair of lapsed farmers just
south of Londesboro have found a
way to meet the crisis in agriculture
head-on. But they say that their
new venture often requires a
24-hour-per-day watch and can be
as labour-intensive as a barnful of
farrowing sows, although the
atmosphere can be more pleasant.
Shirley and Luke Bouman of RR
1. Londesboro now spend much of
their time picking flowers, lavish
ing care on a cash crop with the
potential of an excellent return,
although in this still-early stage of
the game neither partner has
actually worked out the return-per-
acre or dollars-per-hour figure. At
this stage, they say. the operation
would almost certainly not pay,
especially if more labour outside
the family had to be hired.
The Boumans grow Alstroe-
merias, or “Alstros," as they are
called in the trade - the tall, elegant
flowefs that are one of the hottest
new sensations to hit the high-pay
ing florist business in much of the
western world in recent years.
“People are getting tired of
’mums, and roses don’t last,’’
Luke explains, “but these flowers
have features that make them just
about perfect as cut flowers.’’
Alstros look sort of like a cross
between a lily and an orchid, and
come in a wide variety of pure
colours, from a creamy white
delicately etched with black and
rosy lines, through the yellows and
pinks, to a sumptuous purple. The
long stems and dainty blooms look
fragile, but are actually among the
sturdiest plants florists can work
with, the Boumans say, and will
easily last three weeks in floral
arrangements, or more than four
weeks if they are put in a
refrigerator overnight. Because of
the way the plant is constructed,
with six or eight handsome blooms
held up by a stem which can be up
to four feet long, alstros lend
themselves to a wide variety of
arrangements and are easy to work
with, and florists and customers
alike have greeted them with
enthusiasm.
Originating from a rhizome,
alstroemerias began to be grown
from tissue cultures in Holland six
or seven years ago, where florists
and botanists splice or graft thin
slices of one rhizome to another to
produce the myriadoftypesand
colours the flowers now come in,
according to the Boumans.
Alstros are available to green
houses in Canada and the U.S. only
as started plants, and most are still
imported directly from Holland,
although some are now coming in
from US to buy, and each comes
with its own copyright certificate,
which the purchaser must sign to
guarantee that he won ’ t be temped
to propagate his own cultures from
the imported rhizomes. The cul
tures are jealously guarded, Luke
says, and an inspector can drop in
at any time to check that a grower
has no more than the number of
rhizomes he has paid for.
The Boumans have 600 rhizomes
cash cropping and raiding pigs, but
Luke had to work out as well for a
farmer at Seaforth to make ends
meet, and the time seemed ripe for
the venture. They started in a small
way in thelate summer of 1986.
putting up the first plastic-walled
300-square-foot greenhouse in
the family has gone out of pigs and
now sharecrops their land.
Luke does all the fertilizing and
some of the flower picking before
he leaves for his otherjob in the
mornings, as well as the mainten
ance and upkeep on the facility in
Continued on page 18
Kommunit V
■C’
With four children under the age of five to care for as well as running
the greenhouses, Shirley Bowman needs all the help she can get from
son Bradley, 2.
in each of two 2,400 square foot
greenhouses behind their comfor
table farmhouse on Hullett’s Con
cession 8-9, plus a smaller building
which was built first.
‘ ‘ S hirley always wanted a green
house, but I thought she meant a 4
foot-by-8 foot one to grow bedding
plants, not the 60 by 40 foot ones we
wound up with,’’ Luke jokes. And
while it’s true that Shirley has
alwaysbeeninterestedin going
into bedding plants, it was her
husband’s brother, Ed Bouman,
who manages a 40,000 square foot
greenhouse for Rose-a-Flora of
Dunnville, near Port Colborne,
growing alstroemerias exclusive
ly, who talked them into trying the
popular new flower.
At the time, the Boumans were
August, learning as they went
along, before picking their first
alstro blooms in the spring of 1987.
In the meantime, Luke had sought
out a market, getting two of the
area’s largest flower wholesalers,
Southwestern Floral of Waterloo
and Henry Dekker Ltd. ofStrathroy
to agree to buy all the alstros they
could produce.
And although neither Luke nor
Shirley had had any previous
experience in greenhouse work,
the venture was successful from
the first, and by last summer the
couple had added the two larger
greenhouses, and now have all
three devoted to their new cash
crop. Luke still works out, now as a
sales representative for Far mix
Ltd. livestockfeeds in Mitchell, but
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