From Our Farm High In The Andes To You: To most people, Valentine’s Day is one day out of the year in mid-February where loved ones shower each other with gifts and treats as a means of expressing their care and affection for one another. The holiday is not exclusive to the U.S., it’s celebrated across the globe by millions of people – you can just imagine the chocolate consumption on this one day! Chocolates, of course, are not the only treats that people love to give away on this holiday; for those of us in the floral industry, we know this far too well. People love giving away FLOWERS, especially roses, which make up approximately 84% of all flowers purchased![1] According to a survey conducted by Statista, flowers are within the top 3 gifts people purchase for V-Day2, placing them higher than romantic dinners, wine, and even jewelry[2]. Does this surprise you? If you’re a florist or designer, probably not. You know first-hand the craze that Valentine’s Day creates, especially when that lost boyfriend who waited too long to buy his girlfriend a present waltzes into your shop and now needs the perfect arrangement to woo his girlfriend and impress her coworkers. Floral professionals know that Valentine’s Day is not just a one-day ordeal. Retailers spend weeks planning out arrangements, logistics, and floral acquisition. For flower farms however, Valentine’s Day planning takes up most of the year!
Valentine’s Day is an exceedingly important holiday to virtually every single one of our customers so taking the right steps to ensure we obtain the absolute best quality products is essential. We recognize that the roses we produce reach more than just the wholesaler or the florist. Valentine’s Day flowers bring joy to people’s day, they spread love amongst friends, lovers, and families – this is ultimately what matters on February 14th. Here are just some of the things Rosaprima does to deliver the most iconic roses from our farm all the way to your heart.
Preparation for the big day is essential to the process of getting beautiful roses into our customers’ hands, but the task is no small endeavor. While Valentine’s Day is on the 14th of February, our farm begins to groom plants months in advance, as early as July of the previous year. That’s seven months before the actual holiday! First, the soil will be disinfected and refreshed by using sustainable agronomic methods, after which the plant beds will be divided and set-up for optimum plant growth. Roses of course are produced year-round, but since there is such a high demand for them on Valentine’s Day our farm must perform what is called a “pinch.” The Valentine’s Day “pinch” is essentially a pruning process whereby a stem that has grown thick enough is cut at the middle (at the intersection between the stem and a mature leaf) to promote a new growth at the shoot. This method will cause our plants to produce at least 50% more stems compared to what they would on a normal schedule. The growth however is not immediate. Roses, like most plants, follow a steady life cycle and can take roughly 90 days to reach peak production levels. Therefore, our farm is careful and meticulous about timing the “pinch” exactly right; by the end of October or beginning of November our farm will have completed a thorough “pinch” process on hundreds of plants. Timing is not the only factor farms have to take into consideration, they also must pay close attention to weather patterns, especially rain and cooler temperatures as these are crucial elements that influence the timing of bloom and production of the roses. All variables considered, (if they are favorable), we will have a major spike in production just around the middle of January and right on time for our cut which will happen about a month before the holiday. By this time our farm has been working diligently and tirelessly to make sure there is a seamless follow-through of this whole process. On average our team will have worked nearly 49,000 hours of overtime, all with the goal of getting that majestic Rosaprima rose into shops and warehouses across the globe.
What comes next is a whole production on its own. Once the roses are cut, they are sent to our post-harvests for assessment and packaging. What ensues is a bit of a calculated chaos; millions of stems are examined and filtered through our facilities where only the very best stems will be selected for shipping. Hundreds of members of the post-harvest team literally work overnight (for several nights) to ensure that every stem is processed and properly managed so that they may ship out successfully to our customers. Finally, our roses are later transported to freight companies where they will then be shipped to over 30,000 different cities all over the world. Within a window of about two weeks, we will have shipped nearly 6.4 million stems of roses and land in the hands of over 25,000 florists who will go on to create incredible Valentine’s Day arrangements and installments. Getting to witness the creations that these talented individuals conjure up validates our efforts and commitment to human ingenuity and passion for beauty – now that is hard work paid off!
The road to Valentine’s Day is long and meticulous, but it does come with great rewards. We know that every detail we consider makes a difference for our customers on arguably the biggest and most important holiday of the year. Giving our customers the confidence that when they open a box of Rosaprima roses they won’t have to worry about the quality, or the consistency of the product is what keeps us motivated and focused. Our goal is to leverage the partnerships we hold with so many amazing floral professionals, and that means doing everything we can to help them succeed… because the only thing that our customers should have to worry about on Valentine’s Day is getting those roses into their client’s hands, and that’s it! We truly embrace the notion that our roses get to be used on a day where the most amazing feeling on earth is celebrated, LOVE! The journey from our farm to your hearts is without a doubt one worth taking on.
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[1] About Flowers. “Valentine’s Day Floral Statistics.” AboutFlowers, Society of American Florists, 2019, https://safnow.org/aboutflowers/holidays-occasions/valentines-day/valentines-day-floral-statistics/.
[2] Martin Armstrong. “The Most Popular Valentine’s Gifts in the U.S.” Statista, Statista, 14 Feb 2017, https://www.statista.com/chart/8061/the-most-popular-valentines-day-gifts-in-the-us/