VALENTINE’S Day is next week and flower shops are currently hyped especially in ordering more flowers from their sources and storing the flowers properly to keep them fresh.
Local flowers sold in Davao City are usually grown in Calinan district or in Buda (Bukidnon-Davao) border where the temperature is a lot colder and fit for flower cultivation.
According to a sales staff of a flower shop in Bankerohan, they have a number of local flowers such as mums, orchids, chrysanthemum, and roses. As they do not have the flower preservation facilities such as chillers, they make sure that the flowers are delivered to the clients immediately after arranging them.
For Valentine’s Day, their pink and red flowers orders are properly stored and taken care of. A dozen roses that will be requested for bouquet arrangement will cost P800, with the customers’ choice of flowers and their colors.
Not only do their flowers are arranged for lovers on Valentine’s Day but also for “korona” intended for wakes and burials. Their “korona” or flower arrangement in stands range from P2,500 to P3,000.
In an interview with Peter Naurice Pegarro, owner of FG Davao-Flowers Gift Delivery, their local flowers are ordered from Bukidnon and Calinan as well.
But as for their imported flowers such as Ecuadorian roses, Cabbage roses, Peonies, Paper roses, and Lilium, they source it out from China, Ecuador, and Holland.
Because of this, keeping a flower shop business is no joke as one has to keep the plants as alive as it can get even though it came from the other side of the world. As for Pegarro, they treat their flower with a special liquid formula to make sure to lengthen the life of the flowers.
They also keep them in chillers, the stem of the flowers dipped in waters with special plant life-lengthening formula. He said it, together with proper storage in accurate temperature, helps the flowers last for weeks.
Keeping a picked flowers life to last longer than it should requires great skill as well as sensitivity to what the plant or the particular flower needs.
In Pegarro’s 10 years in the industry, he had learned the proper and the best way of handling these imported flowers to keep them looking alive and as though freshly picked from the farm when it arrives to the customers.