Texas Floral raises the bar for fresh cuts

In a small North Texas town you’ll find fresh cut lilies with flowers as big as dinner plates and stems with diameters as big around as your finger. It sounds like a fable, but six months after its first sale, Texas Floral’s specialty cuts have stirred up quite a buzz among retailers and consumers.

Jason Meyer and Peter Thaman-Bigsby founded Texas Floral in 2006 after packing up their families and moving from California.

The two met in high school in Carpinteria, Calif., and remained friends during college. They took different career paths -- Jason became a chiropractor and Peter became an architect. Later, Peter became a greenhouse grower in Paso Robles, Calif.

Jason’s wife is from Bridgeport, Texas, and they frequently traveled to the Lone Star State. After one such vacation, Jason and his family were pulling into Southern California in their motor home.

“I saw the smog, I saw all the traffic, and I decided, ‘We’re moving to Texas,’” Jason said.

So he called his buddy Peter and asked if he wanted to start a greenhouse in Texas.

“I was growing in Southern California at the time, and the quality of (domestically-grown) cut flowers was waning because of increased pressure from South American-grown flowers,” Peter said. “I jumped at the chance to start my own greenhouse.”

Jason and Peter broke ground on a 15,000-square-foot Nexus greenhouse in April 2006 on 10 acres in Azle, Texas, located just west of Fort Worth. The partners made their first sale in December 2006 and Texas Floral was at full production by March 2007.

Quality assurance

The pair set out to grow high-quality specialty cuts with some standards in the product mix. The Texas market certainly wasn’t flooded with homegrown product, Jason said.

Peter was determined to “bring the standards up” from what many large cut growers were producing in the United States.

“When South American flowers entered the marketplace, the large growers began sacrificing quality for volume,” Peter said. “For us, it’s about growing a real high-quality product. Consistent quality solidifies the business.”

Currently, Texas Floral produces greenhouse crops of cut Oriental and Asiatic lilies and tulips.

The company imports all of its bulbs from the Netherlands. Bulbs are planted weekly and flowers are cut daily.

Bulbs are kept at 48°F for 21 days prior to planting, also called pre-rooting.

“You need a lot of cooler space for pre-rooting, but you get a superior product,” Peter said.

Bulbs are planted in raised boxes filled with coconut coir. The coir is not reused for planting bulbs in the boxes, but mulched into nearby fields that are used for the outdoor production of cut sunflowers.

“Some growers reuse coir and heat sterilize it, but that affects the quality and the size of the root system,” Peter said.

The bulb crops are not treated with insecticides or fungicides. By starting out with a “clean” greenhouse, insect predators from outside the greenhouse establish a large population and control aphids. Instead of using fungicides, Peter monitors and controls the greenhouse environment.

Peter also possesses strict grading standards, “sometimes too strict for me,” Jason said with a wink. He’s in charge of finances.

“We’ve had excellent response from our customers,” said Denise Stevens, Peter’s wife and production assistant. “Many of them say, ‘We’ve never seen quality like this before in Texas.’”

Climate challenges

Growing cut bulb crops in Texas has been challenging, Jason said. The partners looked at climate data, which showed high and low temperatures were similar to those in Southern California. But once they moved here, they learned the timing of those temperatures is much different between the two regions.

“In Southern California it may get down to 18°F, but it only stays that way for a few minutes. In Texas it could stay 18°F for two days. That has a serious effect on the lilies,” Jason said.

And don’t forget about the bright hot summers.

“The temperature extremes make it difficult to grow cuts in Texas. It will take some time to acclimate,” Jason said.

With a tag line of “Texas Grown Cut Flowers,” offering locally grown product is a big part of their marketing campaign. Texas Floral also stamps its products with the Go Texan logo. Go Texan is a comprehensive marketing program for Texas-produced products.

The company sells direct to florists, through wholesale firms, and to grocery chains. Its consumer Web sites -- www.dailycut.com and www.stargazerlilies.com -- are a California-based subsidiary.

Texas Floral broke ground in May on an 18,000-sqauare-foot Nexus gutter-connected house. Jason and Peter plan to have 4 acres under cover by the end of 2008. New products in the pipeline include fresh cut gerberas, peonies, dahlias, asters and tuber roses.

For more: Texas Floral, (817) 237-4858; jason@texasfloral.us.

Efficient greenhouse needed for cut lily production

Texas Floral co-founder Peter Thaman-Bigsby is a greenhouse grower and an architect. He borrowed from his knowledge of both fields to design the company’s 15,000-square-foot Nexus greenhouse. It’s equipped with heat retention curtains, automated irrigation, weather stations, a 12-foot gutter height and a 30-foot roof peak.

“Lilies are a cool-weather crop, so we must keep the heat off of them. That’s the reason for the high roof and the curtains,” he said.

He plans to add an energy efficient boiler for heat later this year.

Weather stations inside and outside the greenhouse measure the vapor pressure gradient, which helps maintain “perfect soil moisture.”

“Lilies won’t grow well with erratic watering,” he said.

The house also is engineered for 120 mph winds, which can occur in North Texas in the form of tornadoes or straight-line winds.

“Greenhouse cut production is the most capital-intensive agriculture there is, and it’s very risky,” he said.

Texas Floral welcomes natural predators

Production manager and co-owner Peter Thaman-Bigsby doesn’t use pesticides or fungicides on his cut flower crops. When he first planted cut lilies in his Texas greenhouse, it didn’t take the aphids long to show up for a free meal. But following right behind the aphids was the predatory wasp Encarsia formosa.

The predators weren’t purchased from an insectary, but came in naturally.

 “If you start out not using insecticides, the predators will come in and stay,” he said. “You have to have a threshold in terms of pests. It’s about balance and manageability.”

Texas Floral

Founded: By Peter Thaman-Bigsby and Jason Meyer in 2006.

Location: Azle, Texas.

Size: 10 acres with 15,000 square feet under cover. Another 18,000 square feet of greenhouse is under construction. Texas Floral plans to have 4 acres under cover by the end of 2008.

Crops: Specialty cuts, including Casa Blanca and Sorbonne lilies.

Customer base: Wholesalers, florists, grocery chains in Texas, and nationwide delivery to consumers through Internet distribution.

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- Kelli Rodda