MIDDLETOWN, Md. (AP) - The story of the biggest change in the Gude family’s 126-year-old farm begins with failure.
Middletown farmer Larry Gude is the fourth-generation owner of the Gude family’s business, which, until recently, was flowers. Adolph Gude and his brother, William, started Gude Brothers Company in 1889 in Washington, selling flowers from a horse-drawn cart.
They moved the farm four times, finally settling about 30 years ago in Middletown. Their 67,500 square-foot greenhouse space housed everything from Gerbera daisies to poinsettias to marigolds.
But when the recession hit more than seven years ago, demand for ornamental plants slowed. Larry Gude said there was a surplus of greenhouse space in the United States, and not enough plant buyers.
“We started failing and struggling, and we didn’t know what to do,” he said.
Farther south, in Adamstown, Steve Black’s ornamental tree farm was going through its own rough patch.
Just before the recession, the ornamental tree market was “rocket hot,” he said.
“People are putting trees in the ground like there’s no tomorrow, and then the bottom drops out on demand,” he said.
At the time, Black was just getting started with his farm. Nursery owners who profited from the real estate bubble persuaded him to get into the business, but as soon as his trees were big enough to sell, the recession hit.
“When I put a tree in the ground, it’s there for, on average, six years. So it’s pretty impossible for me to adjust to things like a sudden recession,” he said.
So Black focused on sustainable technology, and Gude switched to salad greens.
A friend at Big City Farms, an urban farming company based in Baltimore, turned Gude on to food production. That meant changing the soil he used, the chemicals he sprayed, the way he sold his product, and the way he thought about farming.
Instead of selling flowers wholesale, he’s able to sell food to consumers through restaurants like Lee Delauter & Sons in Middletown and distributors like South Mountain Creamery. Instead of selling plants in their pots, he and his five staff members pluck the edible parts and leave the rest to grow back. And instead of creating a sterile environment that flowers would thrive in, he uses compost.
“I eat this stuff too, and I love it,” Gude said, standing in one of his four zoned greenhouses with row after row of leafy greens atop rich black compost. “I was never a salad guy until I did this.”
Both Gude and Black’s businesses benefit from specializing in high-quality trees or plants, rather than a high quantity.
“If I was saying, ’Gee whiz, I want to grow lettuce to sell in the big box stores,’ like we did poinsettias and Gerbera daisies, there’s no way I could compete on that level,” Gude said.
Black said there are generally two schools of thought on operating a field nursery, like his wholesale tree production business in Adamstown. Growers can focus on quantity, as Christmas tree plantations do.
“There’s a whole huge crowd of people who want that, and that isn’t what I wanted to do,” Black said. He follows the second school of thought.
“I wanted to produce a high-quality tree for people who are willing to pay for a high-quality tree,” he said.
That means pruning his trees “religiously,” once a year for most species and sometimes two or three times a year for others. But when he started his farm about a decade ago, he also wanted to take a fresh look at the science of growing.
“There are lots of nurseries that do things the way their great-great grandfather did,” Black said.
Unfortunately, that means cutting-edge research doesn’t get used. He collaborates with scientists at the University of Maryland Extension, who are at his farm on a weekly basis working on various projects.
“The science of growing plants is progressing so (quickly) that most of it doesn’t get adopted,” Black said.
Growing a higher-quality tree at a lower expense requires putting new research to work. One of the newer tricks of the trade is a more efficient irrigation system.
Raemelton Farm has miles of tubes for drip irrigation up and down each row of trees. In 2008, Black started working with Extension researchers to develop a sensor that detects moisture in the soil. The irrigation system is automated and waters the trees only when necessary.
“It turns out that most of this stuff that I was trying to adopt … all falls under the topic of sustainability,” Black said.
His goal for the farm is continuous improvement - not only for his trees, but for the water and soil quality on his property.
“The dollars and cents of it is really easy for me to justify,” he said.
Since he invests in production, he believes buyers will choose his higher-quality trees, but education is a large part of the selling process. At Potomac Garden Center in Urbana or American Plant in Montgomery County, where his trees are sold, Black said one of the selling points is that tree’s story.
“People are concerned about where stuff comes from, how it’s made,” he said. “It’s no longer acceptable to just treat the production of a tree … as though it’s behind some dark curtain somewhere.”
That mindset is part of a changing culture that Gude also sees from his vantage point.
“The culture’s changing towards a lot more environmentally sensitive, a lot more naturally grown food,” he said.
Over a century after his great-grandfather started the business, Gude considered what Adolph and William would think of Gude Brothers Greenhouse if they could see it now.
“They would probably think that I’m crazy,” Gude said, “because food’s a tough business. However, when we’re emphasizing fresh, local, natural - that’s where it makes sense.”
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Information from: The Frederick (Md.) News-Post, https://www.fredericknewspost.com
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