BOYDEN—Natural Beauty Growers is planning a bumper crop of vegetable seedlings for its rural Boyden greenhouse this summer.
The greenhouse and plant wholesaler, which grows seedlings and finished plants at three locations in N’West Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, will prioritize growing vegetables in 2021 following last year’s surge in at-home gardening.
“With people going back into gardening, I think that area jumped probably by double-digit percents,” said Jim Schelling, facility manager of Natural Beauty’s 12-acre location between Boyden and Hull. “There were shortages out in the markets to buy pre-grown vegetables or pre-seeded vegetables.”
Natural Beauty sells its products in Home Depots across in Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
Sales of shrubs, flowers and other easy plants for beginning gardeners that Natural Beauty also grows flourished last year as well.
“One of the things that really jumped out to us is when you tell people to stay home, well they tend to want to invest in themselves or what they do,” Schelling said.
The surge continued into early October, past when usual demand for fresh plants dies out. Schelling said he expected to see the demand fall back to normal levels much sooner.
“We just assumed as everything started to open up a little bit more in June that things would kind of go back the other way, but they really didn’t,” he said.
Schelling said there’s no way to know for sure whether the demand for plants, especially vegetables, will stick around in 2021 but Natural Beauty is planting seeds in hopes that it does.
The Boyden greenhouse usually grows varieties of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant and strawberries, which are sold as seedlings in the spring, as well as a few types of herbs. Volume of seedlings will go up this year, and new varieties may be added.
“I’m not sure if we’re going to cut any of our other lines, but we probably won’t increase them just so we can have space for other vegetables,” Schelling said.
Business closures due to COVID-19 last year created upheaval in the home and garden market where Natural Beauty has carved out a niche had other unexpected side effects on the company’s staffing and production last year.
The Boyden greenhouse hires seasonal workers during busy summer months, typically peaking to about 90 employees. Between financial strain and limitations because of COVID-19 restrictions, Natural Beauty had far fewer staff last year.
“We peaked out at 75 and after everything, after all the limitations came down, we went down to about 65,” Schelling said.
Natural Beauty also has greenhouses in Sioux Falls, SD, and Denmark, WI. The Sioux Falls greenhouse had to cut staffing so much they stopped production entirely.
The Boyden greenhouse cut some production back but was able to respond to fluidity in the market throughout the year by holding product in the greenhouses for several weeks before shipping.
“Everything was kind of on hold at that time. We dropped temps in our greenhouse and we were holding product for up to four weeks, product that otherwise would have been shipped.”
Holding product helped the greenhouse reduce “shrink,” or crops that go bad because they matured too soon or too late to be sold. Normally, shipping is structured so far in advance that the greenhouse does not have any flexibility.
“The products either have to be ready or you missed the window,” Schelling said. “This year with everything getting pushed back, there wasn’t that pressure to get the product in stores in time. It was a more, ‘Do you have the product? We’ll take it’ situation.”
Having that kind of market control has been good for the company, particularly while short-handed. Schelling added that staff worked hard and adjusted rapidly to changing circumstances to keep product moving out of the Boyden location.
“To me that’s amazing, watching people when they’re given an opportunity to step up or when they’re given a challenge,” Schelling said. “That’s a fun thing to watch.”
The greenhouse is continuing social distance measures implemented in Boyden last spring, with production lines from planting, watering, shipping and distribution spread out. The first product will be shipped out in March to retailers in Kansas and Missouri. These will be mainly flowers, but vegetables will follow a few months later.
“We have everything is projected for our spring,” Schelling said. “Last year as we were going through, we were cutting that down and cutting numbers of plants. This year we’re going to hopefully stick with our plan.”
