The Commercial Production of Seeds of Flowers

HOWARD BODGER.

SEEDS OF some 1,500 varieties of flowers are available to amateur gardeners in the United States. The major part of the acreage on which they are grown is devoted to producing about 750 of them. The value of the seeds is about 2.5 million dollars. Five genera produce seed crops valued at more than 100 thousand dollars each.

The acreage for flower seeds thus comprises small plantings of many crops an acre of this, half an acre of that. By usual farming standards, it is manicured acreage that requires the best level, irrigated land.

The income per acre is two to five times that of beans, for example, but costs of production are correspondingly higher. More than 40 percent of the cost is for field labor, which must be of such manual skill that good work approaches a craft status.

Each species of flower grown for seed has its own planting time, culture, problems of pollination, and harvesting technique, but there is one basic requirement for good seed production: A mild climate with little rain during the growing and harvesting seasons. The United States industry therefore is concentrated in California.

Less favorable conditions result in uncertain and usually lower yields and germination percentages, although colder climates are suitable for some annuals and many perennials. Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Texas, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, and other States produce some seeds of flowers.

To engage in the production outdoors of row-crop flower seeds, by far the largest poundage of the industry, the flower-seed farmer should have ability, prime acreage, a source of skilled labor, and a suitable climate. Greenhouse production is independent of location, having its own "California" climate tailor made, but it is an entirely different business.

The growing of flower seeds in the United States dates from the early 1800's. The experience and planting stock came from Europe at first. The industry was well established in New York State by the time California came into production about 1880, but the advantages of drier climates had shifted most of the production west by the First World War, and the United States became a major producer of flower seeds. By 1949 five firms, all in California, were growing 75.6 percent of the crop value of the Nation.

The structure of the industry is one of farmers selling to wholesalers, who then sell to retailers, since only 6.3 percent of the sales represent retailing by the farmer. The wholesalers themselves, however, are major producers of what they sell. They operate their own farms and contract only in areas or on crops that are not suited to their organization.

The reasons therefor lie in the nature of the crops of flower seeds.

Many of the kinds represent highly hybridized strains, on which elite (or foundation) planting stock must be planted anew each year not crop seed planted back. The wholesaler almost invariably produces this stock himself, on his own farm, which incorporates research breeding work and trial grounds, to keep pace with the rapidly changing technology of the industry.

Elite strains require planning and supervision to insure their pedigree and uniform cultural practices to insure the maximum salable crop. Buyers have specific standards of varietal purity and germination in mind when they buy, which is not on a daily bid basis but on annual contract, usually in advance. The wholesaler has to deliver seed of these standards, grown under his supervision.

GENERALLY SPEAKING, most annuals require as much time between first flowering and good seed production as the), need from planting to the first flush of bloom. Species that can be grown for flower production in short-summer locations almost anywhere in the world are not necessarily seed crops in those locations.

Quick-blooming, tender annuals, such as zinnias, need 6 frost-free months for seed formation, although a light frost does not harm the harvest. Others require 8 to 11 months.

Half-hardy annuals may be started before all danger of frost is past and summer harvested, but even with them the requirement of a long spring season eliminates many hard-winter locations from consideration for reliable production.

Few places in the world have the Mediterranean climate needed to grow the variety of flower crops of a major seed producer. California is high on the list. Planting there is continuous from November to May (one species following another on the schedule), and harvesting extends from June to December. Spring-blooming annuals are usually the first in and off, but stocks, for example, need a season of 11 months.

Rain is beneficial before flowering. Rain later encourages fungi in the seed head and reduces the yield. Rain on the mature seed lowers germination percentages. Nevertheless, most sections of semiarid climate, even in latitudes where frost is not a problem, may not be suitable for seed farms because high summer temperatures also reduce yield of seed of all but a few annuals.

PRODUCTION in California is mainly in the cool Lompoc, Santa Maria, and Salinas Valleys for this reason, but zinnias and others (basically of Central American origin) may be cropped in the Los Angeles area and on the edges of the hot inland valleys.

Biennials and perennials are grown in cold-winter areas for seed production but even they do best in a mild climate. When they are grown in California, they are handled as 2- or 3-year plantings because, without killing frosts, both plants and their diseases are rampant.

All crops in California require extensive irrigation during the summer. A common practice is to withhold the water at the end of the season to encourage rapid and uniform maturing of the seed crop. Ditch irrigation is general. Overhead systems are used seldom.

Flower-seed farming has its special problems, and those who can master them tend to be seed farmers year after year.

The plants usually grow so slowly, for example, that weed control is a major problem. Chemical weedkillers are popular, but the man with a hoe is still the mainstay. Most fields need complete hand weeding three times or more a season; sometimes it is combined with thinning in drilled crops. Petunias and many others usually are transplanted to the field by hand, because mechanical transplanters cannot handle such small, fragile seedlings.

MECHANICAL mixing of harvested plants is prevented by alternating plantings of species to be harvested at different times of the year.

Special field-labeling techniques are used to identify lots going through the cutting and threshing process to avoid seed mixing. Mixed lots are nearly worthless in an industry where high prices are paid only for pedigreed seed.

The many small plots of closely related kinds on one farm mean that one crop may be unintentionally cross-pollinated by another of the same species, rendering the resulting seed virtually useless.

Unintentional fertilization by "foreign" pollen is insidious because there is no visible mixing.

Pollination is, however, what makes the wheels go in the seed business. The high acre yields of sweetpeas in California, for example, are partly due to the constant winds, which jostle the flowers of this strictly self-pollinated species. In most other kinds, self- and cross-pollination are accomplished by insects, which cannot distinguish between several named colors of sweet alyssum, for example, so that such plantings must be isolated from each other. Strict isolation by as much as one-fifth mile sometimes is necessary.

When the grower lays out two fields of different colors or of double- and single-flowered varieties, he must consider the result of a possible cross: Which condition will be dominant in the result? Perhaps he can turn this into an advantage; maybe he will get a new kind of flower or one that the competition cannot reproduce. Hybrid marigolds are an example. All such decisions require the skills of a geneticist.

The emphasis on varietal purity is not solely the concern of flower men in the seed industry, but only they set out deliberately to produce mixed varieties. Only in flower seed can a mixture of colors of one kind be a salable or even highly desirable product. Many times this mixture is blended of named colors in the warehouse, according to formula, but field-grown mixtures are the rule when named colors have not yet been trued up or when there is an advantage to controlled cross-pollination of colors, such as added vigor in the final product.

Because the crop will be sold long before a check sample can be flowered next year, every result of this cross-pollination must be predicted in advance: Does one color outyield the others? Then adjust the planting formula to reflect this. Does a cross between red and white yield all-red, all-white, or some of each (perhaps even intershades)? Then make sure to plant enough of the recessive color to assure many self-pollinations of that color. Does one color mature earlier than another? Then choose the harvesttime carefully, or one color will dominate the mixture because of this factor.

FOOD AND FIBER crops of survival interest to man have been grown for so many centuries that their climatic adaptability is great; even those grown for their seeds produce the same under similar conditions. Flower crops, being primarily of esthetic interest, are latecomers in the selection process and still retain many preferences for a specific environment and no other.

Flower-seed farmers have learned that climates, even microclimates, must be charted carefully. The economic benefit of finding the right location for a crop in California, for example, can easily outweigh the advantage of much lower wages and costs of growers of the same item in other countries.

In the 1940's, for example, the seed yield of larkspur was trebled by moving the crop a distance of 8 miles.

Precipitation in these two places, Lompoc Valley and the adjacent Santa Rosa area, was the same; humidity was a few points drier; and the temperatures perhaps averaged four degrees higher in Santa Rosa. The result was that the new area produces the major part of our larkspur seed. In the competitive flower seed industry, the search for new microclimates is continuous, and wholesalers keep detailed records on each production area, new and old.