Hole Digger Discusses Spuria Iris

OK, so I'm told I have to contribute to this blog. I'm told everyone has to. Forget the fact that I am cheap labor. I do most of the digging, planting, potting, spraying, etc. I must admit the wife helps but not with the heavy stuff.

I'm told by the "think tank" that I could write something while I'm on break. Break, what break? So pay no attention to the sentence structure or spelling.

If I could do that I wouldn't be a hole digger!

Today we just received our last shipment of iris from the west coast. Hundreds of Siberian iris and one really different one, Iris Monnieri. It is in the spuria iris family. First described in 1808, it was found growing in Versailles where it was called Iris of Rhodes.

Spuria iris are some of the tallest of iris, up to 4 1/2' originating in the Mediterranean. They are grown in England and California, but rarely seen in New Jersey (yes, they can grow here.) The flower is large and is similar to the Dutch iris but bigger and is a very long lasting cut flower. The plant does well for years and years without dividing.

The work never ends...

John "Hole Digger" Gulish

Small Business Seminar

Greetings from the west coast. Jeremy the marketing director and English major has been eliciting all of us to add contributions to the blog. The real triumph will be when Dad embraces the blog and begins adding planting and growing tips. Of course he may be too important and use Jeremy as his ghost writer, all of the presidential candidates do it, why not him?

I am in Washington state and am a little removed from the physical location of the farm, however I am keeping involved in the business development partly as an interested family member and partly as a real life application of what I am learning in my current MBA program.

With introductions complete, let me get to the heart of my post. I attended a free seminar geared toward small business owners in Washington state this weekend. The Small Business Administration and IRS were there in force with tips as well as a multitude of marketing, IT and consulting firms with advice for the small business owner.

I brought three main point away from the seminar along with numerous ideas to improve the farm and the business with it.

1. Develop a business plan-the business plan is a great management tool to identify company strengths and weaknesses. It help devise ways to address the weaknesses, helps determine your market audience and how to reach them. It also forces a business owner to take a long term financial view of the business.

2. Find out your market niche. Basically what makes your business different than the multitude of other businesses out there. Why are you special. At Pittsgrove we are the only retail peony grower we could find in NJ and we are only aware of a few retail iris farms. Our goal is to make a trip to Pittsgrove Farms an experience unlike any other iris farm in the area through beautiful grounds and unique plant offerings. We believe there is a market for this type of gardening experience in NJ and eastern PA. This is where we need to solicit information from the local gardening community, what are we lacking in NJ and PA. What do you as the gardener want to see and experience at a garden? We are listening and open to a variety of ideas.

3. There is a lot of free and low price help available to the small business owner. The SBA offers free confidential one-on-one counseling to the small business owner. They also have free online tutorials and training and low cost seminars on a multitude of topics. Definitely a great resource to improve operations.

Lots of fun building a new business at least while I am not relying on it for a paycheck it is lots of fun. I understand, it's a bit more stressful once you need that paycheck.

Cinema Botanica (the Cinematic Trailer)

Green Thumb Up For The Farm in Green Village

So following my baptism this Saturday (yes, 28 years late but better late than never) my father and I took a little trip over to The Farm at Green Village. For those of you that don't know, which I imagine is most, Green Village is a tiny little town outside Madison. It is tucked away in countryside that is speckled with multi-million dollar estates.

First off, considering that my father owned a garden center for most of his life, he has the right to be a tough critic. That said, he/we had very few bad things to say about the garden center. You could tell it was early September as the garden center was in a bit of a wind down cycle but nonetheless still had a great variety of plants.

One thing you can appreciate about garden centers in extremely affluent areas in that they have plants that you are rarely ever going to find for sale. Huge pots of elephant ears, rosemary, papyrus and three-foot-tall begonias that aren't going to winter over outside in Zone 6. Fortunately the garden center sells to a clientelle that either has atriums to house these plants for winter or frankly don't mind spending a few hundred dollars to enjoy their plants until winter.

That being said, nothing was cheap at the garden center but I suppose there isn't any need to be - Home Depot and Wal-mart aren't losing any business here. I think the $13,000 fountain and Japanese maples that cost more than my car make their target market tastefully obvious.

One of the biggest compliments to "The Farm" was that we were asked two times within 20 minutes if we needed help. But most impressive was that each salesperson smiled, nodded and simply said, "let me know if you need any help." This to me was the thing they did better than anything else. Unfortunately, I usually find customer service either non-existant or set on making the hard sell.

My father said it simply, "I really have nothing bad to say..."

It Could Be Worse

After a splendid meal under the stars cooked by Jeremy, he convinced me that since this is supposed to be a "family" blog someone other than he should contribute to the writing. So here it goes!

In his previous post Jeremy told of how you don't mess with Mother Nature and our pictures proved how nasty she can sometimes be. Although I lamented the damage done to our vegetable plants and our iris divisions, nothing was harmed that couldn't be remedied. The folks at the Rutgers Snyder Research Farm a mile from here had to cancel their 17th Annual Tomato Tasting set for today after losing about 80% of their crop in the storm. All of you know that Jersey tomatoes reign supreme especially over the hard, mealy poor excuses you get at your local supermarket (vine ripe my eye!). The over 1,000 expected visitors, including yours truly, were sorely disappointed as we all salivated at the thought of tasting over 80 varieties of Jersey's finest.

Just as the Snyder Farm seeks to introduce the public to the unusual in a standard product, we are trying to do the same with our iris, peonies, and day lilies---growing common plants in unusual varieties and rainbow of colors.

We're in the process of planting peonies for the spring in standard and dwarf varieties that won't be found elsewhere except by mail order. The day lilies are already taken care of until spring and after the rest of our iris and peonies are planted within the next few weeks, we can sit back and continue to enjoy our "retirement". That is until Jeremy or Garrett give their parents another assignment!

Growing quicker than we could have imagined

It has been awhile since our last entry but that's because we have been busy. While I was away on business in Dallas John and Cheryl (mom and dad) have been very busy playing in the dirt.

It has been less than a year and things now are starting to feel like they are getting into full swing. The delivery today brought us up to more than 83 varieties of tall bearded iris. The tall bearded are beautiful and are staples to any iris growing operation but we have been focusing on less common varieties like intermediate, dwarf bearded, Japanese, Louisiana and Siberian. From what we can tell there are very few growers in NJ or in the tri-state area for that matter that are growing iris and the ones that are only grow a handful of varieties.

At the same time, we are in the development stage of our Web site. Our Web developer and friend Shawn Murphy showed me his initial design and from what I have seen so far, I am sure it is going to look great. You can see samples of his work at his self-entitled Web site. If anyone has any concepts, ideas, or samples of other Web sites that they have seen that they like, please let us know.

We are compiling some great images for the site. My mom has taken some great shots that I hope you enjoy.

P.S. - Following our I.T. session today my Mom is set to blog. Her insightful entries coming soon.

Mother Nature Always Wins

Fortunately no one was home when the storm hit. In New Jersey, we always think we are safe from just about every kind of natural disaster - no earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, mud slides but every once in a while even we can't escape Mother Nature's wrath.

I guess we aren't the only ones getting the strange weather considering that just two weeks ago tornadoes hit Brooklyn. It took us awhile but finally we have pictures from Friday's hail storm.

I've been wondering, how fast does a piece of ice have to be traveling to put a hole completely through a barely ripe pepper. I've been tempted to take a pepper out of my fridge and start throwing things at it except for 1) I am smart enough to know I have bad aim and I can't throw more than 45 mph and 2) I am pretty sure Christina (my wife) will start to really worry if I am crazy. Seriously, the pepper in the bottom corner of the picture isn't more than four or five inches long and it has a golf ball-sized hole through it - how does that happen?

The power of Mother Nature is pretty unbelievable until you see it firsthand. I remember a few years ago when I was working as a reporter at the Hunterdon County Democrat, my very sceptical assignment editor sent me to check out a guy who swore his property got hit by a tornado. We both rolled our eyes and off I went to what I thought would be a fruitless drive through Clinton Twp.

When I got to the house there must have been a dozen trees laying on the ground. Each tree had trunks that were at least 2-3 ft. around. Some were snapped like match sticks, others were uprooted. It looked like Paul Bunyan had just walked through the backyard in a really bad mood. The storm touched down in a roughly 20 ft. track and then disappeared. The neighbors' properties were untouched and no one else around the country reported anything strange.

The whole things reminds me of the pictures you see of straw stuck in the side of trees during huge tornadoes. Even though the hail storm seems incredible strangers things happen - and apparently happen often (they even have a hotline to report objects that have been carried long distances - not kidding).

Damage report: we won't get to enjoy that many more peppers or tomatoes, we won't get to see our beautiful water lotus bloom this year, the irises will need to be cut back but considering everything, it really isn't a big deal. We were upset to hear our neighbor's who have a hundred acre farm had much more severe damage; they lost almost all their vegetables, watermelon, and orchard crops. Below are some more pictures.

Poor Irises Need a Haircut

Oh No Tomatoes