- Onion Growers Try Small Crop of Tulips on Muck Land
- By Brittney Jerred
New York Correspondent
- The onions on the outer rim of Vincent Fiorini’s muck farm in Oswego County, N.Y., don’t look like the onions in the rich, black center rows. The stalks come up short and the bulbs are small. The dry, clay-like soil around the cusp of the farm won’t let the plant dig deep like it needs to. Though what amounts to about five acres of his 25-acre farm may not be ideal ground for root vegetables anymore, it is perfect for flowers.
The notion to make the best use out of that land by planting flower bulbs, mainly tulips and alliums, has taken hold. Four farmers, as part of an experimental program led by Jan van der Heide, a Cornell Cooperative Extension agent of Oswego County, have bulbs in the ground and expect to see bright, vibrant blossoms make their way through the soil this spring.
Growing the flowers, they realize, is only half the battle. Selling and marketing them is the other challenge. So van der Heide applied for a grant through Grow New York to take the farmers to Holland to let them see how other flower farmers are making their living. Cornell was awarded $13,000 to facilitate a 10-day excursion to the flower capital of the world. In January four farmers, accompanied by van der Heide, took an all-expense paid trip to tour the flower industry, from bulb planting and harvesting to selling flowers at auctions. “Farmers learn from talking to other farmers,” van der Heide said. “They have to see how it’s being done.”
Ideal Land
Muck is dried swamp land. The soil is black and is rich in carbon and other nutrients. The land is always changing. “You lose muck at one inch per year. The soil becomes less fertile,” van der Heide said. The outer portion of the muck is light and sandy colored. “It’s good ground but it doesn’t hold the water like it used to,” van der Heide said.
Though not ideal for onions, the heavy, dense soil produced the nicest bulbs that experts at the Cornell bulb program have ever seen last year. They were more resistant to disease and the flowers that blossomed were true-to-type colors.
Quality, not quantity, is the niche van der Heide is encouraging the farmers to strive for. Rather than overproducing and relying on brokers to sell their product, the farmers can market and sell the flowers themselves on a small scale in a colorful, graphic package that can carry a message.
“With proper marketing, they should be able to do well,” van der Heide said. Farmers don’t have to have 20 acres of flowers to impress onlookers. One acre can delight people so why not invite tourists who come to visit DestiNY, which will be the largest mall in America when it opens in 2006, 25miles south of Oswego County farmers.
“You could have a dazzling display and invite large groups of tourists on busses,” van der Heide said. “You can delight people with a huge display of color. Botanical gardens are a huge draw for tourists.”
Equipment is similar
While in Holland, the farmers saw that the equipment they use for flowers isn’t that different from the equipment used for onion and potato production. With slight modifications, the same graters and planters could be used.
Dick DeGraff, one of the farmers who went to Holland, likes the idea of adding flowers to his mix of fruits and vegetables. His main source of income is a CSA (community supported agriculture) operation that delivers groceries to close to 200 families in the area once a week. People subscribe and pay up front. He does most of his harvesting by hand on his 10 acres of land in Pulaski, N.Y. Labor is a big concern for DeGraff. He grows about a half-acre of shallots and the same harvesting equipment could be used for bulb flowers.
If he could buy the equipment he saw in Holland, the flowers are just one more reason that would make purchasing the equipment worthwhile. The flower sales could also be a nice source of cash for the farmers as they wait for their main crops to be sold much later in the year. Two of the farmers who went to Holland are also part of the New York Bold Onion company, which was formed in 2000. Onions are harvested in late summer in New York.
Van der Heide was also instrumental in getting that project started. He urged farmers to band together to market a quality cooking onion. Since there are only 14 farmers in the onion corporation, they can only produce so many onions. So they’ve concentrated their marketing efforts on flavor and their onions can be found in supermarkets in the Northeast.
They’re applying the same principals to the flowers. They can’t compete with Holland in the world’s largest flower market but they can compete with the local Kmart or Wal-Mart.
This spring the group plans to work with Oswego County Soil and Water Conservation on a tulip fundraiser. They hope sales will spur local interest in homegrown flowers. Growers who went to Holland were Dennis Ferlito, Bob Arland, Dick DeGraff and Fiorini.
