When the demand of high quality premium roses shot up, Roseto Group Directors decided to start a farm at high altitude; 2250m in 2011 and called it Sierra Flora. Roseto is their first farm located at rongai at an altitude of 1950m and the third farm is Florenza located at solai, at an altitude of 1700m.
Sierra Flora sits on a 26 hectares piece of land and is among the few flower farms in the country that have invested in a trial site. Before they grow any variety acquired from breeders, it has to go through performance test for 1-2 years to test its productivity, good stem lengths and head size. At the moment there are over 200 varieties of roses from different breeders worldwide which are being tested.
Currently, the company is cultivating more than 15 varieties of premium quality roses, head size 5+ and above and stem lengths of between 50/60/70/80 centimeters which makes the flowers most preferred in the auction market. They have new varieties such as Jolie, Mandala, Venus, Lemonetti dancing cloud and light pink sakazi.
To ensure the high quality premium roses are without damages, they have invested in a cable system which they have installed along their greenhouses. The cable which is more than 3 kilometers long ensures quick means of transport and avoid damages of flower heads, ensuring that flowers reach the pack house intake area in the shortest time possible.
They strictly adhere to procedures related to production as well as post harvest. They have a centralized post harvest system. All the flowers are harvested with proper care and are sized according to length in the greenhouse, wrapped with harvesting nets and transported in clean baskets with clean post harvest solution. Each harvesting net contains 20-30 flowers depending upon sensitivity to damages. The procedure helps them in reducing head damages and broken stems.
“We have a centralized spray system and a fully automated fertigation system. This makes certain that all the required chemicals and nutrients are mixed at their respective places and pumped/sprayed to the greenhouses at the required ratio. We have also incorporated mulching in our farming for all our newly planted area and it helps to suppress weeds, maintain moisture and also control fungal diseases like downy mildew and thrips infestation.
Achieving high quality roses demands good growing practices such as good and timely cultural practices, hygiene monitoring day to day fertigation requirements, timely control of pest and disease and finally harvesting right cut stages of flowers without damages as per the market requirements.
The farm values education, they believe it starts and ends with reading quality books. They purchase books and other learning stationeries and keep on donating them to schools located near the farm.
“Feliz Dia das Mães!” On the second Sunday of May, Brazilians celebrate their mums with lots of different gifts. Even though Mother’s Day is not acknowledged as an official holiday, it is still the second most commercially profitable day. The one day that beats Mother’s Day (commercially) is Christmas.
One day is obviously not enough to celebrate our lovely mums. They deserve to be celebrated – or at least appreciated – on a daily basis. In India, the Hindus tried to find the golden mean by dedicating a 10-day festival to Durga, the goddess of mothers. The festival is known as Durga Puja and is celebrated each October. It is considered both a religious ceremony and a time for families to reunite. They spend weeks preparing food, gathering gifts and decorating their homes for the festival.
In Ethiopia, they celebrate their mothers over a three-day feast called Antrosht. The feast includes a large traditional meal, of which the mothers have the honour to prepare. Ethiopian girls collect ingredients like butter, cheese and vegetables, while boys bring bull or lamb. This Mother’s Day custom takes place mid-fall; at the end of the rainy season.
Flower growers from Kenya have been waiting long for the moment that they could enter the enormous US market with Kenyan grown flowers. Shipping directly to the US market without having to reload the flowers somewhere in Europe, affecting both their freshness and cost price, was simply not possible until now. Since Kenya Airways last October started to operate with direct nonstop flights from Nairobi to New York, the road is paved for direct exports of Kenyan grown fresh flowers to the US market. For this reason a strong Kenyan presence is planned during the upcoming World Floral Expo in Dallas. Over 12 flower growers have booked exhibit space at this year’s edition of WFE.
World Floral Expo is a trade show that offers a platform especially for growers, where they can introduce and present their very best export products to the US flower buyers. “A long term market and therefore much more promising than the Chinese market”. “While US flower production is structurally limited and therefore heavily depending on imports, Chinese flower production is high and growing fast and, although depending on flower imports now, a relatively short term export market for imported flowers”, organizers of WFE commented, when asked about the difference in potential between the US and Chinese markets.
With to date almost 75 exhibiting floral companies from Ecuador, Kenya, Colombia, Holland, Canada, but as well as from the USA itself, it promises to be a very interesting trade show for the flower buyers. A unique chance to see and source fresh flowers grown on different continents, such Africa, European, South America and North America. Besides fresh flowers also many related dry floral products will be on display as well.