Gerbera
& Roses growing article October 2007
Fluoride damage on gerbera flowers;
With the high fluoride level in mains water
in Australia, the gerbera flower could get blackening on the tips of the
petals. The best way to avoid damage from fluoride is to put the gerberas
after harvesting on rain water (or bore water) and advice your buyers of the
possible damage caused by fluoride. There are also devices which could remove
the fluoride from the mains water
Water with added chlorine or flower
preservative and clean buckets is essential to avoid clogged stems and bent
necks due to bacteria growth.
Coco peat;
Over the last few months I have been in
contact with quite a few gerbera and rose growers who had trouble with their
coco peat, overall the growth from the start was not as good as normal. With
coco peat it’s very important that it is treated before the growers received
the coco peat on their farm (flushed out salt & adds nutrients).
A few tips to improve coco peat quality;
· Buy from well known suppliers, paying a
bit more for quality coco peat could avoid a lot of trouble.
· Make the coco peat wet with the normal
fertilizer solution plus extra Calcium nitrate.
· When you wet the coco peat don’t recycle
the drain water, this to avoid the excess salt and fine coco peat coming in
your irrigation system.
· Don’t store the coco peat too long, but
make sure that you have the coco peat on your farm a few weeks before you
receive the plants. To often growers are not ready when the plants are
scheduled to be delivered.
· If you receive the coco peat early enough
you could take a sample and send it to a laboratory to get it tested to see if
it has the right balance of nutrients. If this is not the case you could add
extra nutrients when you wet the coco peat.
Cost of producing flowers;
The costs of producing flowers are going up
each year (labour, gas, materials, etc.) but the price of the flowers stay
nearly the same. Because of the cost increases the last 2-3 years has been a
hard time for flower growers to keep their margin per M2 the same. When you
have many workers on your farm it’s sometimes difficult to exactly know what
is spent on labour. In Holland nearly every grower work out their cost per M2,
this is done by registration of the hours worked per handling, e.g. picking,
bunching, crop maintenances, spraying,…. Then divide the number of hours
worked per handling by the number of processed flowers, by doing this you find
out if and where handling could be done more efficiently.
The best thing to do is to start with a few
handlings and add a few more when everybody is used to it, make an A4 paper
for each worker and let them fill in the hours worked per day on each
handling. By the end of the week you worked out the hours spend per handling
and display this information (graphic) in the canteen / rest area, after a few
weeks / months you will see a line which tell the employee’s how fast things
are done.
It’s also good to have a look how the
flowers are transported to the shed, to reduce labour cost the flowers have to
be touched as minimum as possible because each handling cost time and also
avoid damaging the flowers.
White wash greenhouse;
This year there are more growers using white
wash on their greenhouse, even when they have moveable screens. The advantage
of white wash is that it keeps the temperature in the greenhouse lower and as
a result of that the humidity will be higher, this will give longer stems and
bigger flowers. It will also improve the working conditions for the workers
especially with very hot days; they will get more done because of the cooler
climate in the greenhouse.
Note;
just make sure that you adjust your watering settings, with the white wash on
the greenhouse you take 30-40% of the light away which means the plants need
less water. If you have screens in you greenhouse, the light level to close
the screens have to put higher.
**Although we trust that this information could
be of considerable help to the success of the crop, we cannot accept any
liability for the results of your crop. All the information in this growing
newsletter is without committing ourselves.
This article is written by Job Roskam of Roskam
Young Plants Pty Ltd. and also published in the Australian flower industry magazine.
