From the Fields - Mel Resendiz

By Mel Resendiz , San Diego County cut flower farmer 

We grow different varieties of proteas. We’ve been doing this for 23 years. It’s been difficult for a few years, but this year, finally, we got some rain.

The storms really helped. Some areas were damaged, but mostly the water just went down into the creek. This is the first year that I’m seeing water running in the creek the whole year round.

We didn’t have that many hot days. It was cool and kind of drizzly early in the mornings. With the tropical weather, there were some issues with mildew in some of the flowers. Other than that, it has been pretty good.

I’ve had a very good market the last three years, so I’ve been doing pretty good. The prices are holding up. There’s been more demand in the domestic markets, so we don’t need to export as many flowers to other countries.

The busiest season for us is Valentine’s Day all the way to Mother’s Day. Right now, it’s not as busy. We’re harvesting some of our Special Pink Ice, which is a variety of protea. The plants started producing a month ago, and they’re going to go for another six weeks.

It’s a lot of work. We have to harvest every other day, back and forth in the hills, in order to get a good flower crop. If we don’t harvest every other day, there’s a lot of yellowjackets and insects that get into the flowers. The flowers might end up looking nice on the outside, but the insides are damaged.

Some of the difficulties we’ve had have been with finding labor. I think that’s the main thing. And everything is so expensive. Minimum wage went up. Water rates went up. When you’re adding up all those things, it’s hard to operate. We have to work three times harder in order to do what we did before.