・To cut heating cost

By the influence of very expensive fuel, we found big change in young plants and flower bulbs to supply growers.

Young plants of vegetable, like tomato, have been mainly small one in small pot, so far. But now growers prefer big one in 9～10.5 cm big pot to small one, because they can plant them directly into the soil, without growing more by growers.

And also, even in flower bulbs, some importer starts supplying them forcers after defrost and pre-sprout. Such big changes happened to shorten growing period in the greenhouse and to cut heating cost.

・Big change, how to ship flower bulbs to forcers.

Nakamura Noen, one of the biggest importers of lily bulbs in Japan, has started to defrost in their own storage, and make the bulbs sprouted before shipping to customers, in order to shorten growing or heating days in the greenhouses.

They usually import lily bulbs in frozen condition. After they defrost in their own storage, and keep the temperature over 10 ℃, humidity over 90 %, to make the bulbs sprouted 2-5cm, then they ship them to forcers. Hiroshi Nakamura, the president says, “By this way and choice whether NL or SH bulbs, forcers can shorten growing period about 3 weeks, and sometimes he found the difference is almost 1 month in mid-winter.

Forcers can cut heating cost so much.

Now they have 1,500 ㎡ (cool-warm) storage, they will build 1,000 ㎡ new one till next spring, then they can offer such pre-sprout system more smoothly all year round. And they adopt solar system on the roof to make electric power they need by sunshine. So, they need not any additional charge for this special service.

He hopes customers to ship lily flowers continuously even in winter.

Mr. Yoichi Nagai: the chief of flower section, Nagahama branch in JA Kochi city says “We appreciate this service, we can grow Orientals 2.5 times in our forcing season, we used to grow 1.5 times without this service. We can get more sales to mitigate the pain of fuel’s cost up.”