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Published: August 9th 2023
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standing in a Hypericum fieldWe left early for Tuesday’s adventure. Esteban got permission to let us visit where he works. Where he works it is very difficult to get in so we felt very special. He has a Bachelor degree in agriculture and a masters in business. He started this job 3 months ago. Previously he worked for farms that only grew roses. In his new position he is in charge of innovation and finding and testing new varieties of flowers. His specialization is in collection and testing of the new varieties. The farm we are visiting today is the largest flower farm in Ecuador and is 97 hectors. There are 400 employees at this farm and they grow a variety of flowers like calla lilies, rice flowers, eringyum, lisianthus, and much more. This farm has around 200 greenhouses and is only 2 years old. The company has 12 smaller farms in. There are 60 farms in Columbia and some in Italy. In total the company has 2000 hectors of land growing flowers. Here in Ecuador, if a company has more than 25 employees, they are required to feed them breakfast and lunch and these are not just small meals. They need the workers to
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calla lillies in one of the massive greenhouses have the strength to do the manual jobs. The company also has a soccer field and its own team. Everyone we met was so so friendly.
The day was very breezy and often times, the air was filled with blowing sand. The first area we visited was where they test the cut flowers for diseases. They store the flowers in water with the disease and evaluate how long they last and what effects are produced. They do a lot of testing on the different varieties to determine the best flowers to produce.
The first field we visited was eringyum, it is a smaller greenish blub. We watched the workers cut the stems, clean off the leaves and it seemed they did it all in one stroke. Esteban said the workers are specialized in one or two of the varieties so they are very skilled and fast. It takes 13 weeks for the flowers to grow and here in Ecuador the stems are longer and the bulbs are larger than the ones grown in Columbia and all other areas of the world.
The next area we visited was where they grow lilies.
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Susan standing next to the long stem roses These greenhouses are huge and Esteban says the workers will cut and pack up an entire greenhouse in one day. Lillies take 11 weeks to grow and they are mostly sent to the US and Europe. Everything that is planted has already been sold.
Then we came to the green house with the calla lilies. One portion of the green house was sat aside for testing. They were testing varieties with the farms in Columbia to determine which ones are best. So far, the flowers in Ecuador have more flowers, longer stems and are of better quality but the trials are ongoing. They experiment with everything from the level of the beds to special kinds of irrigation. Calla lilies don’t need greenhouses at all but this greenhouse was still full of them. These flowers took around 7 weeks to grow.
We came to a field and I said roses, no these are lisianthus which are an alternative to roses. They are difficult to grow tall and other farms cannot do it. At the end of the harvest for bulb plants, they capture the bulbs and store them in cold storage. These can survive for
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Holding a Galapagos turtle years.
The greenhouses are covered with different types of fabrics and plastics to simulate the light needed for each plant. Some greenhouses also have lights inside so that during the night the plants continue to have light and warmth.
We came to a field of hypericum. These flowers are like a berry. The flowers and berries are very colorful like the colors of fall Merigolds.
Our next field was where they grow sunflowers. These require about an 8-week growth cycle. They need lots of management. They use hormones to keep the stems smaller. Long stems like we grow at home are not good for arrangements. They want to them to grow to a maximum of 90 cm. The field we saw was just about ready to bloom. Twice a day they cull some of the leaves so that the sun can get to the roots of the stems. When it is close to harvest, they walk the fields 4 times a day and cut the flowers at the perfect time.
Esteban then told us that they hand plant around 10 million plants each week. Wow, wow.
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where they test the flowers against diseases We then went to the facility that packaged the cut flowers from the field. They separated and graded them and cleaned up the stems. These were put in boxes and crates and then moved to cold storage. Cold, yes around 40 degrees. Esteban showed us the labels on the crates. It has a bar code that contains information such as which field or greenhouse it was grown in, when was it planted and cut, who cut it, who cleaned it, … so that they can track the entire process.
The flowers leave cold storage when they are need for the bouquets or to ship just that variety. We went to the bouquet area and saw a variety of the bouquets they were currently working on. They have a calendar that shows the major holidays and flower growing information so that the bouquet department can determine which type of bouquets to produce.
Finally, we went to the design area. We weren’t allowed to take pictures in here. There were two floral designers that came up with the bouquet arrangements - which flowers were the focus and which ones were secondary to give the bouquets
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claire and Esteban, Ellen, and Simone in a Eringyum field the colors needed. Then there was an area where professional photographesr took pictures of the bouquets for the catalogs.
As we left the manager of the bouquet making area brought each of us one of the bouquets. We switched cars with Esteban and then headed to the rose farm where he used to work. On the way, we stopped at a road side stand where Ellen bought fruit and 500 avocados. She will pick up the avocados another day. The cost was around $.29 an avocado.
At the rose farm we got a tour of their facility. The reception area contained many vases of the colored roses. We then went into the greenhouse where they were testing all varieties of roses and trying to create new ones. There were more colors than I’d ever seen. These are the long stem roses like we get in the states. The ones we get probably come from one of the many rose farms in Ecuador. They do genetic testing to come up with all kinds of varieties and the new plants are then grafted onto the existing plants to see how they grow. I’m still amazed at
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Esteban showing us part of the cleaned product just cut. all the different varieties we saw.
We then left and we went back to the farm so we could change cars. On the way we stopped and ate a lunch at local restaurant. Susan had a chicken soup and I had a potato soup. Both were good and very filling. Beside the restaurant they had a turtle from the Galapagos and we both got to hold it. When e arrived back at the farm, Esteban said he got permission to take us to the outdoor calla lily area. He had never been there before. It was a huge field full of all colors of the calla lilies. We took a bunch more pictures. They also used steam in a part of the field to sterilize the plants. It looks like smoke.
Afterwards, we changed cars and headed back to the house. A bit later we went to the SuperMaxi (local grocery store). It was fun walking the aisles and seeing the prices and varieties. US products were expensive but local products were cheap. We did find Smithfield products (Keri). Eggs and margarine are not refrigerated and are on just a
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Lillies - an entire greenhouse filled with them regular shelf. They had a huge variety of frozen concentrate juices in bags. I would love to have that in the states. I bought a bottle of an Ecuadorian Pinot Noir wine for Tom and Susan bought a few items too.
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