Midwest adventures

On a Monday evening, my plane touched down in Omaha, Neb. And when I got to my hotel, just two miles away, I was in Iowa. I was very confused until further review of a map showed me how tightly interconnected Iowa and Nebraska are in that location.

This was the start of a two-day road trip to visit nurseries, greenhouses, garden centers and educational institutions throughout Nebraska and Iowa and learn what they’re doing that’s moving the industry forward.

Stop 1: Papio Valley Nursery Inc. Papillion, Neb.
On a beautiful Tuesday morning, I got an early start with my tour guide, Don Josko of BFG. We headed out at 7:30 a.m. and drove to our first stop — Papio Valley Nursery in Papillion, Neb. There, I met Alan Weiss, president, and learned about his business.

The land where his nursery sits was his grandfather’s, who farmed the ground and started Weiss with vegetable gardening when he was just 5 years old. Weiss went on to do accounting for a year in college but his love was planting and propagating, so he discovered he wanted to do this.

“I was working for a retail place, and on weekends I’d plant and propagate,” he says. “That’s my love. I discovered I wanted to do that.”

He started the nursery in the fall of 1998 predominantly as a perennial grower and has expanded and grown and changed into primarily supplying landscapers, which accounts for about 90 percent of his business. One of his biggest competitive advantages is preparing orders in advance to save customers time. In fact, 70 percent of orders are done in advance, and a lot of his customers have said they have to wait a lot longer at the competition.

Another advantage that his nursery has is that it uses air-pruning systems, which allow the roots to grow better and not wrap around the inside of the containers.

“It’s all about the roots,” he says. “Everything is pointing back to the roots. We don’t have circling roots that will strangle the tree, and with how slow trees grow, that’s a winner.”

He’s also challenged by not having a full-time sales team.

“Selling product can be tough,” Weiss says. “I can grow a lot, but getting it sold is tough.”

He’d like to have a dedicated sales person, but he recognizes the expense involved with that, especially to hire someone who’s really good. Instead, he and his wife and their three kids and a small staff run the business. When he looks to add to his staff, he’s very diligent about taking the time to hire the right person.

“Finding good people is tough,” he says. “We screen a little more tightly and look at their past with other business owners — that’s important.”

As customers pull in and head out with their orders, we say our goodbyes so he can get back to running the business and hit the road.

Stop 2: Metropolitan Community College Omaha, Neb.
Our next stop took us into Omaha for a very short stop with Todd Morrissey at Metropolitan Community College. There, he showed us the culinary arts garden, where the students grow their own vegetables.

The staff also showed us the aquaponics system the college has set up and how that plays a role in educating the next generation. Once you enter the greenhouse, individual-sized aquaponics tanks are set up so each student can try their hand at it themselves.

It’s encouraging to see educational institutions embracing technology and promoting horticulture programs both within the obvious programs but even within other elements of the college.

Stop 3: Mulhall’s Omaha, Neb.
From Metro Tech, we headed to Mulhall’s Garden Center, also in Omaha. Mulhall’s is a 55-year-old business that’s being run by the second-generation of the Mulhall family, and is currently bringing the third generation into the mix.

There we met with J. Sio Guie, the grower and production manager who didn’t grow up in the industry but learned the business from the ground up.

The garden center grows almost all of the products it sells, and Guie says one of the challenges he faces is growing different crops with different needs.

“Sometimes it feels like we’re just reacting,” he says. “What grower is not a control freak? But you have to be.”

He says it’s also a challenge balancing the offerings to the customers. It’s good to offer options but not so many that they can’t make decisions, and the same with variety.

“We want to stay on the cutting edge but not overwhelm them and have them leave empty-handed,” he says.

Another growing challenge is on the nursery side. Because Nebraska was hit hard with the drought this year, water was a huge issue, pumping almost 600,000 gallons of water into one of its major fields a day.

“The result of this year’s drought will trickle down in the next couple years,” Guie says. “Pests hone in on stressed trees.”

On the retail side, Mulhall’s puts a lot of effort into marketing, especially signage. It also offers seminars and has guarantees on its plants to encourage customers to not give up on plants if they die.

The biggest overall challenge he faces though is finding good labor.

“There’s no lack of applicants, but it’s hard to find skilled workers and hard workers,” he says. “The next generation wants high pay, lots of vacation and [only] 40 hours a week.”

Stop 4: Bluebird Nursery Inc. Clarkson, Neb.
From Mulhall’s we had a little bit longer of a trip to make to head out to Clarkson, Neb., to visit one of the largest perennial producers in the Midwest — Bluebird Nursery. Once we arrived, I met Tom Hamernik, the operations manager, and Rod Ackerman, the co-head grower, and received a tour of their operations.

Tom Hamernik, left, and Rod Ackerman, right, of Bluebird Nursery

One of the big things they highlighted was their chokeberries, which are growing in popularity because they have great properties for diabetics and they’re high in antioxidants. On top of that, they can grow them well in Nebraska, and blueberries can’t. They also showed me their ornamental grass production and their succulents. Hamernik said succulents have been resurging, and Bluebird grows 185 different kinds from little to huge. The nursery also grows, at any one time, 1,500 different herbs.

They also highlighted their high pressure fog system, which maintains the humidity without creating droplets, and thus prevents disease from forming on the plants.

Bluebird Nursery primarily sells to independent garden centers and other producers. In many years, they also sell to landscapers, but Hamernik said that was leaner this year. Additionally, he says they typically pick up a couple hundred new customers every year.

Moving forward, he says that energy will be one of the biggest challenges the industry faces.

“Right now, the market is readjusting itself,” Hamernik says. “What’s the new normal going to be?”

For example, Bluebird is at about 65 percent of where it was in 2004, and many other operations have gone out of business, so he wonders if customers will be satisfied with more regional supply versus local supply.

“It’s going to be an interesting five to 10 years,” he says.

Stop 5: Rhoadside Blooming House Cherokee, Iowa
After parting ways at Bluebird, we headed out, passing through Dodge, Neb., which brought on many jokes about getting out of Dodge. We eventually finished the long trek over to Rhoadside Blooming House, where we meet the Beier family and receive a tour of their greenhouses, garden center and floral operations, as well as their home.

John and Donna Beier are the husband and wife ownership team, and the family bought the business about nine years ago and has transformed it while also significantly growing it. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a bad plant at their operations, which explains the growth. And a huge reason why you can’t find a bad plant is because John Beier is a meticulous grower, and he’s teaching his daughter, Kristen, all of his ways so she can continue on the family tradition.

They’ve incorporated all of their daughters into the family business to train the next generation. Each young woman has worked in different capacities within the operations, and they’ve also created outdoor gardens and had each daughter design and plant her own garden upon her high school graduation.

Over chips and queso and Mexican fare that evening, the family and I discussed the challenges they face in running the business. Like others along our trip and throughout the industry, John Beier said one of the challenges he faces is finding people who are willing to work hard. But he’s also excited that he’s able to train his daughter and know that she wants to continue the family business.

Long after the sun sets, we part ways and head off into the night to get closer to our starting point the next day. We find our way to the hotel around 9:30 and prepare for another day of visits tomorrow.

Stop 6: New Hampton High School New Hampton, Iowa
In the morning we hit the road not quite as early as the day before and let the corn and soybean fields stretch out before us as we make our way to New Hampton, Iowa. There we pull up to park by the local high school’s football field, but I’m surprised to find two greenhouses close by, including a hoophouse actually just yards away from the football field.

There, we meet Jim Russ, an agriculture education instructor, who talks to us about the initiatives he’s doing with the greenhouses and his students. He explains that the greenhouses have sparked interest not just from the students but also from the community, which asks for tours when they stroll in for football games, and even students are now asking if the tomatoes in the school cafeteria salad bar were grown in the greenhouse outside.

“The kids ask if it came from here,” he says. “If it came from here, they eat it. They put signs up in the salad bar and make announcements about it.”

Additionally, in his first year, the school sold $1,800 worth of mums that the students grew.

“When they come in, they’re engaged,” Russ says of his students and their involvement with the greenhouses.

One of his main goals is to show students the career possibilities that agriculture can give them and show them how agriculture affects areas they wouldn’t normally think of, such as how soy is produced to create and sell soy candles.

“When they start hearing all these other things that fit in with it, they say, ‘Oh, I didn’t think of that,” Russ says. “It’s fun to get them thinking about those other opportunities.”

Stop 7: Goode Greenhouses Inc. Des Moines, Iowa
After leaving New Hampton, we have a three-hour drive ahead of us to head down to Des Moines, Iowa, to visit Goode Greenhouses. There, I’m introduced to Jim and John Goode and learn that the company started in 1905 and the two represent the third and fourth generation of ownership. Both grew up in the family business, and John Goode says he couldn’t think of doing anything else or letting the business fail. The fifth generation — now children — is already taking an interest in the business.

“My five-year-old loves the transplanter,” John Goode says. “[He says,] Dad, when do we get to plant again?”

While it’s remarkable that they’ve grown the business this long — most family businesses don’t make it past the third generation — what makes it that much more impressive is the fact that a straight-line wind wiped them out in 1995. It took two seasons to rebuild, but here they are, back and growing every year since.

Jim Goode spoke about the challenges the business faces, including labor, immigration and EPA regulations, as well as issues with the Farm Bill as it relates to kids not being able to work in the family business at young ages. He doesn’t like all the regulations.

“More people get killed in Chicago than they do on a farm,” he says. “Leave us alone.”

Despite those challenges on the horizon, both Goodes recognize that they’re grateful to be a part of a family business and have such a strong network internally because they see other operations struggling.

Jim Goode says, “The guy that doesn’t have family coming up is going to have a hard time retiring and getting money out of it.”

We said our goodbyes while admiring their beautiful mums and started the 2.5-hour drive back to Omaha, with a stop in Elk Horn, Iowa, for dinner at The Danish Inn and an outside glance at the town’s real Danish windmill. Refueled for the rest of the trip, we drove off, quite literally, into a gorgeous Midwestern sunset of bright yellow and orange that faded into purple before finally falling dark. After 1,029.4 miles of driving across two states, I was exhausted, but meeting everyone and seeing the consistent struggles — labor and sales — and the unique ones to each business showed that while each operation faces its share of challenges, everyone is determined to improve, try new things, train the next generation and make sure the industry — not just their individual businesses — move forward in a positive direction.