In addition to surveying growers who produced poinsettias this past season, Greenhouse Grower connected with a handful of growers who at one time produced poinsettias yet no longer do. We asked growers why they stopped producing them. We received a variety of responses, but a number of growers cite competition or the availability abundance as key reasons why they don’t produce their own or deal with the crop at all.
“We can buy them for less money from Canadian growers, plus they deliver on a weekly basis,” says Jerry Rosso, owner of Washington state’s Rosso Gardens.
Adds Mark Ruibal, a grower-retailer at Ruibal Plants of Texas: “Availabilities from other experienced growers close to us make it easier to buy them in. We never grew them and have heard horror stories.”
Grower-retailers like Ruibal probably won’t take on poinsettia production anytime soon, either. When we asked the non-poinsettia producers if they would consider growing poinsettias in 2012, 88 percent said no.
Some of these growers are, however, producing other winter holiday crops, some of which include Christmas cactus, cineraria, cyclamen, primrose and rosemary.