These days, the flower-growing villages in the province rush to busy season preparing new flowers for market during Lunar New Year - Year of the Goat 2015. However, flower cultivators are worried by the rising material prices and erratic weather changes.
Flower villages in service
These days, if someone had visited Ba Dinh village of flowers at Thai Hoa Ward, Tan Uyen Town, they would have found lively atmosphere of people preparing to seed the flower plants. In each area of each flower planters is covered by hundreds of large and small pots aligned in rows. Each person holds on to their jobs of preparing seeds, ash, and baskets to keep up with sowing season schedule. Ms. Pham Thi Lu, the owner of Muoi Thien Flower Garden at Ba Dinh quarter, said: "Different types of flowers require different sowing time and basket use. Through this fifteenth day of lunar October (i.e lunar October 15) I will fetch some Sa Dec-originated daisies from Binh Chanh of Ho Chi Minh City to grow and following up on lunar October 23 would be chrysanthemum for lunar December 23 farewell to the kitchen god. Lunar October 28 would be our final day for flower seedling."
Flower village of Thai Hoa in Tan Uyen Town in the full bloom. In pictures: Ms. Phan Thi Lu is preparing varieties of flowers for Tet.In this photo, Mrs. Phan Thi Lu is preparing seedlings for Tet holiday.Photo: P. Le
Lu revealed the new breed of daisies giving bigger and longer lasting blooms. In service of seedlings to farmers planting flowers of this year, her family seeded from 70-80 thousand seedling of marigolds with average price of VND 120,000 for 1 thousand seedlings.In addition, she could sell out about 10 thousand seedlings of cockcomb and more than 2,000 sunflower seedlings for sowing. For this flower festival season, she intends to sow 50 thousands of flower seedlings of various kinds such as marigolds, cockcombs, sunflowers, lilies, and cotton flowers and deliver 400 thousand seedlings to the provinces. Sharing her experience of flower planting, Lu said: "It is of much hardship for sowing daisies. The right choice of breeds is partial victory as the 3 factors of water, fertilizers, and caring should coin in for the success. To be successful with this career, the planters must know how to prevent pests by preparing soil and administering fertilizers to ensure nutrients for the plants to develop, then, we should pay attention to draining in the prolonged raining days or create humidity in sunny days. Only by such procedures could we develop new seedlings eligible for selling out."
Mr. Chau Van Tam, Chair of the Thai Hoa Ward Farmers' Association said that lunar December 25 to 28 all the flowers for sale would be put in pots. Annually, the hustle buying and selling in the locality creates Tet atmosphere of prosperity and reunion.
Looking forward to good weather
Floriculture is not as leisure as we might think as we must know how to make things work. However, this profession is largely dependent on weather, whose slightest changes could affect quality of the flowers and the crop yields. Lu shared that floriculture needs mastering technique of cultivation and care in good weather to win high yields.However, it is too early to talk about the outcome at the moment of the year. This year eyed prolonged rains, creating higher humidity than previous years and more risks of pests and fungus.
"I'm afraid the quality of flowers would not be as good as last year. Because, for daisies alone, heavy rains can bound their roots undermining their development," said Lu. Holding the same fear as Lu, many flower planters in Thai Hoa Ward confronted unusual weather affecting bloom timing for the holiday. For this year, better weather conditions are hopefully bring up a holiday of prosperity.
Reported by P. Le - X. Thi – Translated by Vi Bao
