Article by GROWERTALKS MAGAZINE

Press Room

	This California vegetable transplant producer sees a future in florist-quality pot plants It started with the tag. It was hanging on a pot mum at the Royal Van Zanten greenhouse during the California Pack Trials. The tag had the comfortable, classic look of a vintage fruit-crate label. The colors were bright and bold: a deep- green forest, a rich-green and chartreuse field, a red barn and silo. And zooming across the blue and white sky was a Buck Rogers-style rocket ship. The word "Rocket" was emblazoned across the top like a red and yellow lightning bolt, with the word "Farms" in black at the bottom. Who is Rocket Farms? And how is it that we've never heard of them, especially when they've got the coolest tag we've seen in ages and they grow pot mums good enough to be featured at Pack Trials? Time for a greenhouse visit, which we arranged with Sergio Silva, president of Rocket Farms' parent company, Growers Transplanting Inc. A native of Mexico, Sergio has been with GTI since its inception 22 years ago, when he started out as a laborer. Today, he's president and the man charged with finding Rocket Farms' place in the pot plant market.
	It really started with vegetables Rocket Farms is one of many California nursery businesses with a background in vegetables or cut flowers hoping to carve a niche in a new market. But unlike growers who are eyeing trendy spring annuals or perennials, Rocket Farms is gaining a following for what many would consider an old-fashioned product: florist-quality potted plants such as mums, cyclamen, kalanchoes, gerbera, calla lilies and poinsettias. What makes Sergio think Rocket Farms can be successful in a market that, frankly, has been flat, and is dominated by a handful of well-established national players, such as Nurserymen's Exchange, Bay City Flower Company, Clearwater, Milgro, White's Nursery, Kurt Weiss and Burnaby Lakes? "They're very, very strong," Sergio admits of his competition. But then he adds, "We don't want to compete with them. We don't want to fight their fight. We really want to find a specific market for our product. One way to do it is to do what a lot of the big growers don't want to do, like disbudding (of pot mums). We still grow the very old mums, the big-flowered mums, disbudded. "I'm probably foolish, but I've always believed that if you do something great and something unique, there's a place for you in the market," he says. "I think that we have accomplished the quality. Now we need to find out where we go from here." While the Rocket Farms tag attracted us, it was poinsettias that attracted Rocket Farms? first customers. And the poinsettias started with vegetables. Vegetable transplants, that is, from Growers Transplanting in Salinas, one of many central California companies that specialize in producing young plants for the state's vegetable industry. GTI got its start by offering the farmers a twist: They'd not only grow the young plants for them, they'd plant them, too, using an automatic field planter of their own design. Today, GTI produces nearly a billion vegetable seedlings a year. The vegetable young plant business is seasonal, however, running from December through August. That meant their greenhouses were mostly empty during the fall and early winter, and employees were idle or laid off. Sometime in the mid 1980s, Sunnyside Nursery (now a Color Spot company) approached GTI with the idea of contract growing poinsettias. Sergio says they had no concept of poinsettias, but the timing was perfect. "To get into poinsettias was an easy decision on our part," he recalls. "We figured if we start our poinsettias in August and deliver them in December, we could maintain our employees, our growers and so forth." The poinsettia business proved to be successful, and when their relationship with Sunnyside ended, GTI continued selling poinsettias through several California brokers, which allowed them to focus on production without having to invest in a sales force for a once-a-year crop. While he wouldn't reveal production numbers, Sergio says they're one of the top three poinsettia producers in the state. Now to the cool tag. It was about 10 years ago when the company decided it needed a name and logo for their poinsettias. The name "Rocket Farms" combines the company's agricultural roots with their philosophy of innovation. Charles Kosmont, the company's chairman, came up with the artful design. "We wanted it to be something different," Sergio explained when we complimented him on the logo. "We wanted to keep it close to the farming community. If you look at the tag, it does have a field, a barn, a silo. Then it has a rocket going to the future. The idea was that we're growers, we're farmers. Yet within that, things are changing very fast, like a rocket."
	Going it alone The biggest change came three years ago when GTI decided to make Rocket Farms a stand-alone, year-round pot plant business. Sergio reasoned that as the state's population boomed, so too would the demand for holiday crops. Plus, he'd been watching the growth of big players in the area such as Clearwater, Bay City and Nurserymen's. His first thought was to contract grow for them, as he had done with poinsettias. "Most of them turned me down," Sergio says. "So then I figured we'd do it on our own." The results speak for themselves. A walk through Rocket Farms' 200,000 sq. ft. of color production, housed in an old carnation range (poinsettias are produced throughout Grower Transplanting's 2.3 million sq. ft. under cover at five locations), reveals wide spacing, bright light (courtesy of DynaGlas glazing) and attention to detail that only a passionate grower can give (that's Maria Gutierrez, with 20 years experience at Sunnyside and Color Spot). What's most amazing is that their pot mums have three cuttings per pot, yet they're more full and lush than most growers' five-cutting pots. Kalanchoes get three cuttings per 6 1/2-in. pot, which creates a full, sturdy plant that's not tippy or top-heavy. And as Sergio pointed out earlier, they still disbud many of their mums; the disbudding obviously has been done by caring hands. Sergio was right: They have accomplished the quality. Now his challenge is to find the niche for Maria's thoughts: "to create awareness in a market that clearly shows demand for our quality, value-added products and at a competitive price," he says. The "rocket" side of the Rocket Farms' tag is expressed by Sergio's enthusiasm for automation. He quickly shoots down the myth that California is a land of cheap and plentiful labor. He's not afraid to invest in labor-saving systems, because he knows that's the only way to combat low prices. "The only way that we can survive and this is the biggest investment the people who really believe in this industry have to make a change and automate their greenhouses," he says. "That means the system you have today, you have to change. Who's willing to take a couple of million and say, "I believe in the potted plant industry, and I'm willing to invest money in my greenhouse to automate so I can survive" Whoever does that will survive." But don't look for that investment to happen overnight at Rocket Farms. Sergio says they plan to stay small, stay quiet, watch the competition and evaluate the market. He's patient and in no hurry to expand. "We're trying to create an appetite among buyers to get flowers from us. I think that's a good situation to be in, [to] have new buyers coming to you saying 'I want some of your product.' I can see the opportunity for maybe getting more money for it."
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