From the Fields - Jon Reelhorn

By Jon Reelhorn, Fresno County nursery grower

This is our peak season for harvest in the nursery landscape, the greenhouse, where plants are in bloom. Customers are in nursery garden centers. People are in their yards. Our peak season in the Central Valley starts about Feb. 15 and goes till about June 1. We do half our business in three months. It’s an important time for us.

We’re a medium-sized grower. We sell to independent garden centers and small chains, so a lot of our plants are done on speculation. Last year, it rained all March, so we got a very slow start. This year, we’ve had good weather, and consumers still want the product. I wish we would’ve been more aggressive going into spring. Last fall, I was cutting back 10% or 20%. This spring, it looks like we could have used more plants. It’s a good problem to have.

When people were staying home during the pandemic, our business skyrocketed because people worked in their yards. While it has declined, we gained millions of gardeners. In that respect, it’s still strong. We feel fortunate that people value plants in their yards and their communities.

Color is what sells. Homeowners love color. They love roses, flowering trees and perennial flowers. That’s typically where we focus. We do a lot of roses. We do David Austin roses, which is an English garden rose. It’s very popular. We’re going to grow what people buy. If they want a fuchsia, which is a water-loving plant, we’ll still grow that. But we grow a lot more drought-tolerant, low water-use plants.

Fruit trees, berries and edibles have been great. Lots of the perennial flowers that we grow, lots of pollinator- and bee-friendly plants are absolutely popular. The butterfly weeds are very user friendly. That’s a good market for us, as are artichoke plants, strawberry plants, berry plants and all types of pomegranates and fruit trees. In California, those products are generally still a strong market.