The Green Monster and a 5 foot Horizontal Blue Flame

Or Here We Go Again!

It’s tough this time of year. I never liked winter, that’s why I moved to California forty years ago, but there’s always winter, isn’t there? 

The days short, I go to work in the dark and return home in the dark, morning and evening chores are done in the dark.  Moods are dark, the weather dismal.

I was so happy last Friday when at 3:12 am we finally turned the corner and our half of the planet started to turn toward the sun instead of away from it.   Better days are ahead.

It is at this time of no-flowers-anywhere that we dig our begonia crop.  It’s the busy season, the soil and sky dark, wet, and heavy.  Dark, wet and busy, the joy of this season evades me. 

As I write this piece, two days before Christmas, the rain is bucketing down and has been for days. 

The begonias were happily going to sleep in their wet soil, maybe they would have died there, maybe they would have risen next summer and been a glory again, but they are saved from whatever their fate might have been now that they are meeting the Green Monster. When its time has come, The Green Monster is called out. The Green Monster stops only for dark- not rain, not mud. 

The Green Monster

The Green Monster, surrounded by his attendants, moves through the begonia fields

An old piece of agricultural equipment, the Green Monster is not used for any other purpose than to unearth begonia tubers.  The Green Monster is a modified potato digger; the blade passes under the tubers and they are lifted onto a broad chain that jumps a little on a small cam to shake some of the sand off. Then the lumps of soil are unceremoniously dumped into a bin, each with it’s tuber inside, and transported to Moss Landing, where most of the remaining soil is washed off and the begonias are dried, sorted and sold.

The washer dumps lots of recirculated water on the tubers, two settling ponds collect the Marina sand that gets hauled away in summer. And there’s the dryer.  Oh, the dryer.  The dryer is 3 standard shipping containers placed side by side and cut so that a hot wind driven down the center container is divided and driven back up the outer two.  The begonias, wet after being washed, are stacked on pallets and are subjected to this hot wind.

Many years ago the Brown Bulb Ranch dried apple pulp.  There were several companies around here that pressed apple cider and the pulp was recycled, after drying, to various uses.

One of the many burners that dried apple pulp now dries our begonias, supported by a big fan.  It’s magnificent in it is extravagant consumption of natural gas!  See below the video I took today of the begonia dryer.

This will be the thirtieth begonia crop that I have seen harvested, washed, dried, graded, counted, and shipped.

They hired me for just this work.  Thirty years ago I was big, young and strong (now I’m just big).  We used no equipment to unload the begonia boxes that arrived at the Brown Bulb Ranch from the fields; they arrived in wooden boxes on a flat bed truck. We unloaded them and dumped them, one by one, on the washer chain. Keeping track of the varieties by their numbers. We listened to football games on a little black radio that we kept dry.  It rained.

One more time, here we go again.  I wonder if I prayed to one of the ancient gods of agriculture, if they could lift the weight off me during this season and I too could rejoice in colored lights and wrapped packages. 

Turn towards the sun, little blue marble, the light is coming back, we are going to be born again, I am almost sure of it. 


Andy 

What's in a Name

Wholesale vs Retail

Among the many varied tasks I was assigned during my first year working for the Brown Bulb Ranch was covering our logo on shipping boxes.  All our boxes had, reasonably enough, our logo.   We had spray paint that was exactly the color of new cardboard and I would turn our logo boxes into generic boxes. 

This puzzled me at the time.  Wouldn’t we want the recipient of the boxes to know where the begonias came from?   I was informed that, no we did not. 

You see, our customer was a wholesale buyer who sold to the person to whom we were shipping, and our customer (the wholesaler) did not want the recipient to know where the begonias came from.  In that way the wholesaler (our customer) insured that his customer (the recipient) would have to come back to him if he wanted more of those wonderful begonias, he wouldn’t know where else to go.

These days what is called “Branding” is a big deal.  It’s such a big deal that people will pay more for a particular Brand even if there is no inherent value other than the name. T-shirts, shoes, whatever. A maker of tablet computers, for example, is able to demand four times what other tablets sell for because of their brand name. 

But that was not the original purpose of a Brand. Branding is supposed to be an assurance of quality, a “Name”, a reputation you could count on.

Because we considered ourselves to be wholesale and not retail, we were happy to support whomever was selling our product by making them seem like the Big Deal, the Producer, the Great Garden Provider, the Brand Name.    White Flower Farm had our Lace begonias on the cover of their catalog one year (wish I could find it, it’s just here somewhere) where inside we were called “Our California Grower”.  Being anonymous was a customer service.

But, hey!  They sold our begonias; as did Jackson and Perkins, David’s and Royston, Burpie and dozens of others, both high-end, middle of the road and Michigan Bulb.   We were stealth samurai begonia growers.  Egoless and free of the hordes of tourist that were clogging up the greenhouses of Vetterle and Antonelli with their picnics, weddings, and endless photographs.



Vetterle and Reinelt's "Cathedral of Begonias" Photographer Unknown



I used to live in Capitola, on the Old Ranch, and I would walk down to the Begonia Festival every September wearing my Brown Bulb Ranch hat.  Nobody knew who we were.  All the floats in the Nautical Parade are covered with begonias that we provided and nobody knew (these days the organizers are much better at giving us credit than they did then). 

If I mentioned to someone that I grew begonias for a living they would remark “You must work for Antonelli’s” 

“No, I work for Brown’s.”

 Blank look.  Followed by “Who?”

Capitola Begonia Festival 1959. 

Capitola begonia festival Floats2012 Photographer unknown

Capitola Begonia festival float 2012 Photographer unknown

Garden catalogs have pretty much gone away.  We are still a wholesale provider but most of our product goes to the professional grower, not the home gardener.  The professional grower is serviced by a “plant broker”.   The broker is now our customer.  Begonias don’t work very well for industrialized greenhouse operations.  Callas do. Where does that leave our begonia business? 

Needing to modernize you say?

Well, we are trying.  A few years ago we registered a brand name; The Amerihybrid® Begonia (ask for it by name! Accept no subsitute! Tell ‘em Andy sent you!)

Now, you have to admit that our begonia strategy was not without merit.  Of the four families that grew begonias around Capitola, we are the only ones still in business and still growing begonias (even if it is only 30% of what we grew in our heyday.)

Modernize.  These days that means the internet, right. 

There are things you can buy and things you can’t.  Reputation is not something you can buy.  Names however, you sometimes can.  

Antonelli Brothers produced about 3 acres of begonias, I know, I grew them.  We had about 30 acres.  Antonelli Brothers’ annual begonia sales revenue in the year before they closed was about the same as ours for the same year.  I don’t know about you, but that says something to me about the margins inherent in retail versus wholesale.  

Antonelli’s was a three generation family business.  When they were in Capitolia, the tour busses pulled up to their place during the bloom season. A visit to the beach at Capitolia-by-the-Sea was not complete without a visit to the famous Antonelli Begonia Gardens.  They were a Name.



Antonelli's 2009 Catalog.  The last one.



Golden State Bulb Growers now owns all of Antonelli’s begonia mother stock, we own what seed they had on hand when they decided to throw in the towel and some seed we have collected since.  We are, for all intents and purposes, Antonelli Begonias for the 21^st century. 

Maybe that should be our retail brand.  What do you old time (no insult intended) begonia growers think?  Does the name “Antonelli Begonias” still have any cachet?  And if so, should we exploit it?

Retail is supposed to be customer centric.  That’s why retail gets the big markup, to pay for sales and customer support staff.  Wholesale is production centric, we rely on wholesale buyers and brokers to be our sales team and our customer support, that’s why they get to clip the ticket.  Golden State Bulb Growers is a very experienced production grower.  Servicing retail customers is not something we have much experience with… yet.  There is a lot of inertia around here and it is going to take a while to change.  But change is in the air.

Geez this sales stuff baffles me.   I’m gonna go make a few female begonia flowers pregnant. 

-Andy



Antonelli Begonia Gardens in the 60s.  Photographer Unknown





Antonelli Begonia Gardens Capitola California.  Photographer Unknown