By Jennifer Dorsett
Field Editor

Something about the red and green foliage of poinsettias just feels like Christmas. And thanks to growers like Nolan Jeske in New Summerfield, the festive plants are available at many Texas retailers each year.

Jeske, a Cherokee County Farm Bureau board member, has worked in the nursery and greenhouse industry for 30 years—28 of them at the former Color Spot facility in New Summerfield, which was recently purchased by Altman Plants.

“Altman Plants has been a big change for us,” Jeske said about the recent switch in ownership. “It’s been good. They’ve reinvested some money into the facility and installed some new equipment. It’s really made a difference in the attitude of our people here.”

At the New Summerfield nursery, annuals, perennials, succulents and specialty plants are grown by Jeske and a team of workers. They are then shipped to retailers in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri.

From mid-November to mid-December, the nursery will ship nearly one million Texas-grown poinsettias to Walmart and Aldi stores across the state.

That’s a quick sales season for plants that Jeske and his crews began growing only four months earlier.

Plants for the largest finishing pots are started from cuttings placed in rooting medium in late June. The smaller finished pot sizes are started all the way through the beginning of September.

It takes 28 days for roots to develop, according to Jeske. After rooting, the small young plants are transplanted into their final pots, where they will be watered, fertilized, treated for diseases and insects, pruned and tended until they’re fully mature and ready to ship.

During the growing season, the temperature of the greenhouses must be kept at 60 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit. Light exposure must be closely monitored, Jeske said, because day length is what initiates the change in color of the bracts, or modified leaves, from green to red.

Once the plants have reached maturity, they are packaged according to each manufacturer’s specifications. Some retailers only want sparkly metallic “hats,” an industry term for the foil wrapping often seen covering the plastic pots of houseplants.

Others want hats and plastic sleeves around the plants with the bar code and price tag already attached. Some retailers even opt for upscale decorative metal pots. Whatever the purchaser asks for, Altman Plants will deliver.

Workers carefully package each plant by hand, then place them on large metal racks. Once a rack is full, it is covered with plastic wrap and lined up for transport onto waiting semi-trucks.

The Cherokee County location ships about 24 semi-trucks of poinsettias each day. During the holiday season, the facility employs around 250 people.

But it’s not all sunshine and flowers.

Labor shortages, paired with shrinking profit margins and higher input costs, are a familiar refrain to Texas crop farmers.

And it’s a concern for Jeske and other greenhouse growers, as well.

“The amount of labor available and the quality of the labor has really changed from when I got started in this business,” he said. “And the price keeps going up and up for hourly wages. It was around $2.50 back then, and now it’s about $10 an hour. That’s a big difference, but the retail prices of plants haven’t kept up. When I started, there were probably 50 to 75 small greenhouses around the area. Now, there are only a handful left.”

Retailers have consolidated as well, Jeske said. Where there used to be many regional garden centers and nurseries buying smaller lots of plants, the market is now mostly comprised of mass merchandisers. The larger companies can afford to buy bigger quantities but expect bigger discount on pricing, as well.

“It’s hard to make the margins that are needed to keep this greenhouse running,” he said. “There’s a lot of state-of-the-art equipment in here that’s pretty costly. Then if you don’t keep it up and maintain it, well, it’s not useful anymore.”

Despite the challenges, however, there’s no place he’d rather be.

“If you look right here, that’s what I keep coming back for,” Jeske said, gesturing to rows of red, pink and white plants. “Just to see the finished goods, the finished product, and knowing we grew it and seeing it go out the door and just being with all the other people to help produce it.”

And what can you do to keep poinsettias looking their best through the holiday season and into the new year?

Jeske said at all stages in the plant’s life, poinsettias do best in warm locations with bright light and well-drained soil—the same conditions he tries to maintain in the greenhouses.

“Put them in a high-light area and keep them out of the drafts and cold spots in the house,” he said. “If you buy one and it’s in a hat, which doesn’t drain, you’ll pretty much over-water. They don’t like to be sitting in water, so take it out of that hat and set it in a saucer. But mainly, just don’t over-water them, and they should last a long time.”

Click to learn more from Jeske in this Texas Table Top blog post.