Recently, Heeman put a video of their housing greenhouse on their Facebook page. Click here to view the video.
New greenhouse to meet demand
The demand for housing tropical plants increased drastically over the last few years. "We started with a couple of plants from friends, which we put in a corner of our greenhouse. They told their friends about this possibility, and these friends told their friends and so on. Demand grew organically based on word-of-mouth and more plants kept coming in. People drive from all over the area, even up to four hours away to bring us their plants," says Heeman. The demand kept rising, and so did the number of overwintering plants in Heeman's greenhouse. Therefore, they decided to create more space and added another greenhouse in 2010. "This 20,000 sq ft sized greenhouse is isolated from our production stock and dedicated to overwintering tropical plants and is equipped with modern technology, like in-floor heating and environmental controls," says Heeman.
All kind of plants
This new greenhouse enables them to house all kind of plants. "The plants range from small 12 inch hibiscus all the way up 6 meter high orange, lemon and palm trees." According to Heeman people are very careful with their plants and especially when they are larger and rare. "People have invested their time and effort into raising these plants, they form a relationship with them. Some plants have names given by their owners and people will visit weekly to check up on them," says Heeman. The diversity of plants has grown over the years. "Increasingly we see rarer and more plants from all over the globe. I think that as people travel, they see unique plants and want to grow them at home to remind them of their travels. Of course, most aren't hardy in our Canadian winters; that's where we come in," says Heeman.
Administration
In the greenhouse, Heeman overwinters 2,400 plants between October and the end of May. "Locating all the plants when their owners come to pick them up became a challenge so we created a computer program to barcode and map out each plant's location in the greenhouse to find them quickly." According to Heeman, administering this program has grown to be a full time job for a staff member. Additionally they've added another position to prune, water and care for the plants.
Risky
According to Heeman, plant-sitting is definitely not a service that every greenhouse can or would want to offer. "It involves some risks. Tropical plants for example bring tropical diseases. So, to decrease the risk of bringing in a disease, we carefully check all the plants that are entering the greenhouse and the tropical plants are grown in a separate greenhouse, isolated from the rest of the plants in production here. Besides that, understanding your costs, especially heating in a winter as cold as ours, can be important to know when pricing the service to ensure it's profitable," says Heeman.
Heeman's
Heeman's is a family business that was established in 1963. It was founded by Bill & Susan Heeman, Will's grandparents, after they emigrated from the Netherlands to Canada. They operate 4 acres of greenhouse and 65 acres of field-grown strawberries along with their 450 acre cash crop farm. They were awarded a Premier's Award for Agri-Food Innovation in 2013 for their plant babysitting service.
For more information
Heeman's
Will Heeman
Email: [email protected]
www.heeman.ca
