Rooted in success

Photo courtesy of Plantpeddler

Matt Foertmeyer, the owner of Foertmeyer & Sons Greenhouse in Delaware, Ohio, first got to know Plantpeddler owner Mike Gooder through AmericanHort. They’ve served on a committee together for the last six years, forming a bond well before they began doing business together.

“I really respect his opinions and the way he approaches greenhouse production,” Foertmeyer says. “And I heard him speak about begonias a few times at Cultivate and behind the scenes. ... He’s so involved in new genetics and what’s coming to the market.”

Foertmeyer & Sons, which grows exclusively for fundraisers, has been purchasing all of its begonia young plant material through Plantpeddler for three years. They serve around 400 schools in five states. At that scale, they need high-quality starts.

“We are trying to find higher-end begonias [for hanging baskets],” Foertmeyer says. “We’re not relying on seed varieties or anything like that, so we’re going to Mike and saying, ‘we want a really nice trailing begonia basket that we can sell at a higher value in our program’ and he’ll have options for us. We get a lot of I´conia from Dümmen Orange through Plantpeddler, as well as some of the Beekenkamp varieties. It’s usually a nice trailing variety that you would definitely be able to charge a premium for.” He adds that they also have a begonia quart program through Plantpeddler.

Compared to other options on the market, Foertmeyer says the quality of material from Plantpeddler is second to none — and it allows them to have a successful, manageable begonia program. Without Plantpeddler, Foertmeyer says they would have needed to expand their growing capacity by adding a propagation house just for rooting begonias.

“Rooting a begonia is not an easy thing,” Foertmeyer says. “It’s definitely something that you have to baby and treat a lot differently than most rooted material that’s out there. We tried to do it ourselves but didn’t have the best luck. That first motivated us to contact Plantpeddler. They are the experts.”

Gooder, Foertmeyer says, is also part of what makes working with Plantpeddler a successful partnership.

“We can go to him and tell him what we’re looking to accomplish and which varieties we want to do and ask him what he thinks,” Foertmeyer says. “He’ll often have recommendations that tweak what we do or give us ideas of things we can combine. It’s really nice to have someone who understands begonias as well as he does that we can rely on.”