5th Februrary 2015
Hydrangea Wholesaler
Te Matai Road, Te Puke
What an interesting and inspirational woman Bev is. Bev is nearly 70 and started her hydrangea business 14 years ago from scratch, as her retirement plan. Her original plants came from hydrangea expert Glen Church in New Plymouth, and nowadays she shares plants with other local growers. She now has 1700 plants, and exports around the world to Japan, Hong Kong, Dubai, USA and Canada. She is a very hard worker and for 6 months of the year, December to May it's picking time, they work 12 hour days 6 to 7 days a week. At the end of the season, June / july they spend about 4 weeks pruning then have a well earned holiday. Bev has a few people including her daughter to help and up until recently even her 85 year old mother lent a hand.
Bev exports 99.9% of her flowers. She sells her flowers in 3 forms, 'fresh,' 'light antique' or full antique. Most of them are 'fresh' which means 80% of the petals are out. 'Light antique' is they have partially started to change colour with tints of green starting to form on the petals. Then 'full antique' where the flower head has completely changed colour to mottled green, red, pink tones. It takes about a month for the flower head to get to full antique stage.
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| 'Fresh', 'Light Antique' and 'Full Antique' flower heads |
Hydrangeas originated from Asia in a coastal environment with sea mist. So Bev has hers under shade cloth, as they do not like to much full sun. She has some of her plants in bags, as it is the only way to control the colour. They are drip feed for 5 mins, about 200 mls each time, 4 times a day with a feed mixture to keep the colour correct. Even if a little bit of root comes out and gets into the ground the colour can change. They last 8 - 9 years in pots. The earth planted ones have slow release fertiliser planted with them, but she does not have so much control over the colour of these ones.
Pruning is a bit complicated as it depends on how much flower and size you want. When picking cut 4 to 6 nodules up from the base. When pruning take a third off, and every now and again cut them back hard, right to the base. Winter is the time to prune them hard, its best to wait for the sap to be down in the base of the plant, so when the plant is looking quite died off. They can handle rough treatment and to split them up Bev takes to them with an axe!
Bev's tips on growing and picking hydrangeas are:
- Planted under deciduous trees is perfect as they like the winter sun.
- Not too much sun, lots of water even on there leaves.
- White ones go blue if in acidic soil.
- Too much super phosphate can kill the plant.
- Hydrangeas do not like to be in a warm sunny spot in your house so place them some where cool.
- Best to pick hydrangeas when they are fully open and hardening off, which is when all the petals and the main
'real' flower are fully open. (There is a 'real' flower in the centre of the head and the rest of the petals are
actually leaves).
- Antiqued ones will last in a vase for weeks and if you let them dry out they can be used as dried arrangements.
Donna
