Open the Doors to Petal Power

I got to only a few of the stops of Grimsby Open Doors Day on Saturday.  I definitely made it to Van Geest Greenhouses - growers of Gerber flowers for the floral trade. They are located close to the Museum on the western side of town.  I can imagine it would have been farmer fields when they built the greenhouses on Kerman Avenue. The greenhouse dates back to 1890.   This would make it less efficient than today's high-technology operations.  In talking with one of the owners, I found out that their second location is on Seventh Avenue in St. Catharines in a modern facility. That's very close to Brian's Lilycrest Gardens hybridizing field.  It is located on Fifth Avenue. This pretty picture is not the scene that awaited us for Open Doors Grimsby.  I realized it was the setting for a Petals and Plates dinner.  This is an initiative of Flowers Ontario and the Toronto Botanical Gardens.  Gourmet meals from the chef at Grand Oaks were served in 2 greenhouses in Niagara and a third location near Guelph in 2018.  I hope this is something to look forward to in 2019.   You can see that Gerberas are great big daisy flowers - they popular in florist bouquets.  They are showy, long-lasting and come it a lot of colours. In the greenhouse, the plants live about 2 years in pots and continuously bloom.  They are fussy, though, and take a lot of skill to grow. I learned  this when I planted some Gerberas in the garden this year.  I wanted a continuous line of red along the front of the garden bed.  In the shade were Begonias, but they burn in the sun, so I put in Gerberas to keep that line moving.  I knew from last year that they needed a lot of water.  I had them in pots on the outside kitchen windowsill.  Even in the garden I found they needed watering every day.  They wilted quickly whenever water was needed.  And they wanted a lot of fertilizer to ensure a continuous bloom of red flowers. For my colour line next year, I am counting on the red annual Salvia as a good choice. It comes in a brilliant orange-red and is continuously blooming.  That's if I stay with the orange red colour line.