Imagine stepping outside the back door and into a paradise of blueberries in pots, strawberries hanging from baskets, fruit trees in the yard surrounded by unusual plants like morel mushrooms, goji berries and quince. This is the kind of paradise consumers dream of, a space that’s beautiful and productive, a space where they can grow their own food.
Consumer demand continues to grow for edibles. Since the pandemic, more people have become interested in growing edibles such as berries, fruit trees, citrus and other unusual crops beyond traditional annual vegetable gardens.
“Something that we’ve been tracking for a while is a trend that we call the garden of abundance,” says Katie Tamony, chief marketing officer at Monrovia. “It’s an idea that people want to have a garden or landscape that isn’t just beautiful but productive, and that is mixing beautiful edible shrubs and trees in the landscape, not just for their fruit, but also for their beauty.”
A huge surge of new gardeners entered the horticulture industry during the pandemic. Now, nurseries have an opportunity to keep those new gardeners interested. “I think edible crops are a lot of times people’s first step into plants and into growing their own plants,” says Kristen Pullen, Bushel and Berry brand manager at Star Roses and Plants.
Owners of Raintree Nursery James and Rye Owen discovered that edibles are one of the most trend resistant areas in the nursery world. “Things come in and out of style, but it’s pretty rare for edibles to not be in demand,” James says. “It seems to be a pretty stable side of the business compared to some things.”
“Edibles always will adhere to a group of people who like the functionality of it,” Rye says. “There’s a level of gratification with edibles, and I think there’s a connectedness with edibles that you sometimes don’t have in ornamental. In ornamental, there’s kind of a sit back, observe and enjoy, but with edibles, there’s a lot more of a relationship and invitation to participate with the plant and with the growing.”
Deciding where to start
When deciding what edibles to invest in, growers should consider the type of crops they currently grow and pick something that is closely related to that crop cycle. If a nursery is growing longer term crops such as ornamental shrubs and trees, edible shrubs and trees will fit their growing schedules, and they could implement an edible program without massive changes to the way they’re already doing things.
“I think most edibles are pretty straight forward and use similar soil and fertility practices as other crops,” Tamony says. “It’s important to look for something that would have the same soil and growing needs as something that you’re already doing. … Pomegranates and some of the figs are pretty straight forward, so that might be where I’d start.”
Also, deciding what edibles to invest in depends on the location. Growers should understand their region, scan the environment and learn what kind of edibles consumers want. Certain plants can be grown easily just based on the region.
“There’s a lot of places in the United States where if you grow a peach, you literally don’t have to do anything, and it’ll be totally fine and easy to grow,” James says. “But here [in Washington], there’s a whole program that you have to follow to avoid peach leaf curl. It’s a once-a-month maintenance plan.”
Understanding the requirements, crop timing and managing pollination and production are some of the challenges faced when growing edibles. Growers must manage the healthy growth of the plant and the stage in its production while ensuring each plant meets all the requirements.
“We’re trying to time up the shipping season, when it’s going out to customers and when it’s the appropriate time for the plant to be going out,” Rye says. “We’re making sure it’s not in the high production phase when it’s getting shipped out, and that it’s reserving a lot of its energy in its root base and staying healthy during transit.”
Shipping requirements can be more restrictive with edibles than with other plants, as some states require specific certifications or inspections in order to protect their local industry. There are also different requirements for the types of insecticides that can be used for specific plants, all of which can be found online and on insecticide labels.
“You must stay current on any state that you’re selling in, and if the plant that you’re selling was grown in a different state and brought to your state, that affects where you can sell it,” James says. … “There’s a certification process that [growers] go through to make sure their grapes are certified each year to go into California, and there’s an entirely different one for other states. Almost all plants are forbidden somewhere.”
Tamony explained that one challenge of edibles is growing the plants to a standard they would consider normal for an ornamental plant – bushy and full. A lot of edibles, particularly blueberries, have only one or two branches rather than a full bushy plant with nice branching and structure. “We grow a lot of our blueberries with tissue culture and micropropagation, so we can get the very best plant and replicate it,” Tamony says.
Edibles are susceptible to similar pests and diseases as ornamental plants. There are the typical sucking pests such as aphids and mites that feed on new growth, and those can be managed with preventative sprays that are registered for use on edibles. There are very few new pests which an experienced ornamental grower will encounter when adding edibles to their production.
“I think the materials that [growers] may have available to control the pest and diseases might be more limited for edible crops because those products have to be registered for use on edibles,” Tamony says. “So, it’s not really the pest that might be different, but what you can use against them might be different.”
At Raintree Nursery, James and Rye have seen success controlling pests using beneficial predator bugs. They don’t have to spray for insects because the predator insect program has worked well for them.
Unusual crops
Raintree Nursery has been around for 50 years, and they’ve mostly focused on edible perennials, especially unusual ones from around the world. Throughout the 70s and 80s, the previous owner brought scionwood from what he called story trees. It could be an apple tree from a state in France that has limited access to the public or a specific hunza apricot that an ethnic group is searching for and it’s hard to find.
“We like to grow things that you never see in stores like mulberries or thimbleberries,” James says. “We have many growers who help us with the basic stuff like apples and pears.”
Raintree Nursery chooses to focus on more hard-to-get varieties of grafted persimmons, wasabi and edible perennials that are not commonly used in commercial settings because they want to give people an opportunity to eat unusual crops that aren’t found in stores, and they discovered that there’s always a demand for unusual things.
“People should know that there’s large elasticity in the market as far as price,” James says. “Our nursery is only 20 acres inside the fence, but we can do a pretty significant amount of revenue off of these edibles just because they are more rare and more expensive. If you have something rare, even a small version of it can sell for a decent price.”
Online edible nurseries have grown in popularity, and as more nurseries transition from catalogs to online formats, growers have more options to make room for different plants in their inventories. Raintree Nursery sells their edibles directly to the customer both through their website and by partnering with Bower and Branch, a network that connects family-owned growers with companies that sell plants online.
“We’re putting some of our specific Raintree-grown edible plants on their platforms, and we’re going to sell some of their other grower-grown products on our site as well,” James says.
“It makes you stronger as an individual grower and as an individual nursery,” Rye says. “They have connections to growers and nurseries nationwide, especially in a more competitive online market.”
Raintree Nursery sent out a catalog for many decades, and eventually the cost for shipping them became too high. By going completely online, it made it easier for them to do inventory and manage their business. They feel that the online platform allows them to provide an unlimited amount of information on each plant and improve the customer’s experience.
With the big boom in unusual edibles, for the first time, the majority of Raintree Nursery’s customer base is made up of millennials. “This younger generation is very interested in food,” James says. “They approach food differently than baby boomers, and a lot of them want odd stuff. They actually want to grow a Szechuan pepper to get their own peppercorns to grind because they were foodies first and now they’re getting into plants.”
Raintree has seen a large number of sales in their unusual edibles, instantly selling out of plants such as medlars, Cosmic Crisp apples or gooseberries. They formerly had to give away these plants because no one had heard of them.
“I think there’s a drive for things that people didn’t know existed, and there’s sort of this excitement that they’ve discovered a new fruit,” Rye says.
“We don’t see as many people who bought 40 acres of land and want to put in 200 trees in an orchard,” James says. “That seemed to be popular 10-20 years ago, but definitely the surge has been in people who are intentionally buying something for a reason.
Berries
Monrovia is looking for berries that can be grown more easily by homeowners in a variety of ways, berries that are compact, thornless and tolerate warmer climates. “On the berry side, look for innovation,” Tamony says. “If you are going to grow berries, look for ones that require lower chill or have really beautiful foliage. Look for other attributes beyond the basics to make it worth it.”
Through breeding development, Monrovia has seen blueberries that don’t require as many chill hours, and one of Monrovia’s top selling edibles is the Bountiful Blue blueberry. These berries have a lot of fall color when not fruiting and only require 150-200 chill hours.
“We’ve added Bountiful Delight blueberry, which is more of a southern blueberry,” Tamony says. “It can tolerate warmer climates, and I think that’s been really interesting. We have the Superlicious blackberry that’s a great edible that can be in a container. It can be around your living space, and it’s easy to grow if you have kids because it’s thornless.”
In Star Roses and Plants’ Bushel and Berry brand, there are blueberries, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries. Their goal with the brand is to offer edible plants that have ornamental features and are well-suited for containers and compact spaces.
“Our Pink Icing blueberry has pink new growth in spring with white flowers,” Pullen says. “Then it has the berry season in the summer and really nice fall color in the fall, so there are added benefits besides eating the plant. … Because we’ve seen a rise in the ‘grow your own food’ trend, there’s definitely a rise in container gardening. Consumers are looking for a more compact plant that they can grow even if they’re in an apartment.”
They recently added strawberries for hanging baskets. This innovation allows consumers to free up patio space and to think about designing spaces vertically.
There’s demand for it
The Bushel and Berry brand started around 2015, and they’ve seen a steady increase of about 20% in the program each year. They typically sell between 1.5 to 2.5 million units, and they’ve sold out of the brand in each of the past three years.
Recently, Monrovia has seen interest in warmer climate crops and edibles such as figs, citrus and kiwi.
“I would encourage other nurseries to grow edibles because it’s great to diversify your selection,” Tamony says.
James and Rye have noticed that many edible nursery owners are looking to retire. The majority of these nurseries were started 40-50 years ago, and their founders are ready to pass their businesses on.
“We encourage any grower in their 20s, 30s or 40s to get into growing edibles,” Rye says. “If younger growers don’t step in and start growing edibles, we are going to lose a lot of unique varieties. Our access to these unique fruits, even some of the more common fruits, are going to be negatively impacted if people don’t step into the industry... There’s definitely a business opportunity for edible growers. Start by connecting with your local edible nursery and find out what they need grown for them.”
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