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Author: Neal

Shedding some light on sunflower grower Elm Family Flowers in Lancaster County

Posted on by Neal
Daniel Lepp of Elm Family Flowers shows the height his sunflowers will reach by harvest time.

The promise of summer warmth and sunshine arrives in early spring at a 20-acre farm in the village of Penryn, Lancaster County.

It comes in a five-gallon plastic bucket via a package-delivery service. The bucket contains 100,000 seeds that will provide locally grown sunflowers to Royer’s customers from June to October.

“One seed equals one flower,” said Daniel Lapp, the owner of Elm Family Flowers.

Approximately a dozen years ago, Lapp called Royer’s CEO Tom Royer in search of a customer and has been supplying Royer’s stores ever since. The hybrid seed Lapp uses produces beautiful flowers that are also pollenless, which means they won’t leave a mess in someone’s home or draw insects.

Not only do sunflowers have a solar-like appearance, but they actually turn toward the sun while growing, a process known as heliotropism. It’s little wonder, then, that no other flower is more closely linked to summer.

It’s a vibe that customers also want in the doldrums of winter, which is why Royer’s offers sunflowers year-round, both loose and in 15 to 20 arrangements. Lapp harvests until the first frost in October, at which point Royer’s turns to a grower in Peru to fill its need until the next spring.

While the South American sunflowers are of high quality, it takes five or six days for a shipment to arrive. By contrast, Lapp is 20 minutes from Royer’s in Lebanon, shortening the amount of time from farm to customer and all but eliminating travel-related duress for the flowers.

“It’s very convenient,” Royer said. “They last a long time.”

In fact, Lapp’s sunflowers can provide customers with two to three weeks of enjoyment.

But growing sunflowers, like any crop, is wrought with plenty of challenges, mostly having to do with the variable of weather. Going into any growing season Lapp knows that 40 percent of his seeds are unlikely to germinate.

April 15 is associated with Tax Day, but it’s also a benchmark for Lapp’s farm: It’s when his first weekly sunflower planting begins. Six weeks in, this year’s first crop was rising in four rows of green splendor. But the second planting was yielding little.

Biggest challenge

“I probably didn’t even have 1 percent of them come up,” Lapp said, blaming cold, wet weather.

“Here’s the third (planting),” he continued, moving to his right. “This wider one is the fourth one. Here’s the fifth one; that’s coming up. The sixth one here practically didn’t come up at all yet because we didn’t have any rain.”

Lapp’s teen-age son James was working on the seventh planting under bright sunshine on a day when the high temperature was expected to reach the low 80s without precipitation.

“He’s trying to plant them a little deeper right now because it’s so dry,” Lapp said. 

If spring can prove too cold or too wet, summer can deliver too much heat and too little rain. Germination is his biggest challenge, Lapp said, followed by the risk of cool, wet weather making the plants susceptible to a fungus called botrytis.

The farm (it also grows vegetables and is certified organic) grows sunflowers on one and a half to two acres. A walk-behind precision seeder opens the soil, plants a seed and covers it.

Lapp with the precision seeder used to plant 100,000 seeds in a growing season.

The goal is to plant the seeds a half-inch deep, but that will be adjusted to one inch in the summer if necessary to protect the seed against heat and get it closer to moisture.

But Lapp must be careful not to put the seed too deep in the ground as a heavy rain can pack the soil so hard that the seed can’t come up. Heavy rain followed by sunshine can turn the soil into a crust.

If germination is light, those seeds that do come up tend to be taller with thicker stems because they have more room to grow.

“Which sometimes a bunch of five you can’t even hold in one hand, which isn’t ideal,” Lapp said.

Wetter weather produces taller, fatter stems; if the weather is drier, stems are shorter and thinner. Thick stems can take up too much space in a bouquet, and the flowers can get too big.

A stem with a half-inch diameter is ideal, Lapp said. For Royer’s, his only sunflower customer, he bands them in bunches of five, 12 to 15 bunches to a bucket.

Germination and weather also determine the quantity of the crop.

Harvest time

 “Once we’re harvesting, I report to (Tom Royer) every week to give him an idea what I’m going to have the next week,” Lapp said.

As much as they try to coordinate supply and demand, Lapp said Royer’s has accommodated fluctuations.

“Tom’s been really good at moving them,” Lapp said. “If we get a flush of them, he’ll try to run a sale or a special” to help move the excess inventory.

Come harvest time, Lapp first strips the mature plants of their leaves. Then he cuts the stems with a sickle until he has five in one hand.

If sunflowers are an embodiment of sunshine, banding them is a time for his son to shine.

“James is pretty good with the harvesting part of it,” Lapp said against the backdrop of the clicking precision seeder, which James is operating.

“He’s figured out a way to get that rubber band on his hand before he reaches for the sunflowers,” Lapp said.

Father and son pile the banded sunflowers in the paths between each planting until they are finished with each harvest.

The sunflowers will be moved to buckets filled with water until later that day or the next one when Royer’s makes one of its three weekly pickups throughout the season.

Let’s look behind the scenes and in the tool box at a flower shop

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Flowers are beautiful all on their own, but it takes talent, dedication and resources to hand-craft an eye-catching, long-lasting floral arrangement and deliver it to a recipient’s home or place of work.

In its newsletter, the Royer’s Flowers & Gifts Kids Club regularly showcases the tools and tricks of the trade that our florists draw upon to do the very best work for our customers.

We’ve compiled some of them below. We hope you enjoy this behind-the-scenes look into the dynamic nature of a flower shop.

Apron

Superman wears a red cape on his back. Royer’s Flowers designers have something similar, except they wear it on the front.

It’s an apron, and its pockets hold all the tools they need to be floral super heroes: a knife to cut flowers; scissors to cut thicker stems or ribbon; calculator to add flower prices; pen/pencil to take notes from a customer; highlighter to mark special delivery times and other can’t-miss information; permanent marker to identify the contents of boxes before they are packed away; even a mini-screwdriver in case something needs tightening.

Aprons are embroidered with the Royer’s Flowers logo and have a place for a name tag so customers can identify the designer and how long he or she has been with the company.

Tape Grid

The tape at the top of these vases looks like a game of tic-tac-toe, doesn’t it? It’s a tape grid, and it helps us space flower stems evenly. It also provides support to the stems so they stand tall and look their best.

Tape

We use three types of tape depending on the color of the container: clear tape for glass, white tape for white containers, and green tape for baskets and other dark non-glass containers.

The reason for the different colors is that we want our customers to focus on their beautiful flowers and not the tape.

Floral Foam

Those green blocks in the photo are called floral foam. The foam holds cut flower stems in place to make arrangements look pretty. It also holds water so the flowers last as long as possible.

Scissors

If you use scissors for craft projects at school or home, you might have a future working in a flower shop! We use several different types of scissors in our stores. Some are just for cutting flowers, some are made to cut thicker stems such as evergreens or lemon leaf, and others are just for cutting ribbon. We never use ribbon scissors on flowers because the blades would get dull and wouldn’t cut the fabric straight.

No matter what you do with scissors, it’s always important to use them safely.

Uniforms

If you play soccer or baseball or another sport for a team, then you probably wear a uniform. Maybe it includes a shirt with your team’s name on front and your number on the back.

Royer’s employees are part of a team, too. They might not be kicking or throwing balls, but they are constantly in motion. They practice how to make beautiful arrangements so they are ready for their big games, such as Valentine’s Day or Christmas.

They wear uniforms, too. They wear the Royer’s logo on their shirts because it helps to make each employee feel and work like part of a unified team. It also makes it easy for customers to know who they can ask for help.

Plastic Wrap

When we sell flowers, we put them in pretty plastic wrap. It’s kind of like when you wear a coat or sweater: the wrap helps keep the flowers warm and protects them from the wind when they go outside. The wrap also makes the flowers look extra special, like a gift. 

Delivery Vans/Drivers

Our delivery vans and the men and women who drive them are crucial to the success of our business.

Once one of our designers creates a gorgeous flower arrangement, it’s up to our drivers to deliver them safely and on time. Of course, the flowers have to look as good as they did when they left the store, which can be a big challenge when it’s really hot or cold or stormy.

Our drivers might be the only Royer’s Flowers employee that customers see if they ordered over the phone or online. So we have to hire people who are safe drivers but also happy and friendly and keep their uniforms and vans clean because they represent our company.

Drivers have a lot of responsibility, but they also have the good fortune to deliver presents of flowers to people.

Royer’s and robots: donation supports Girls Who Code club at Berks County elementary school

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Girls Who Code students Kayla Morris, left, and Maggie Liriano, fourth-graders at Mifflin Park Elementary in Berks County.

Maggie Liriano was initially inspired by the robots she saw on television shows.

“I was like, that’s so cool, I want one of my own,” the fourth-grader at Mifflin Park Elementary School in Berks County said. “So I made one of cardboard when I was little, and I would dress like a robot. I’ve always asked my mom, can we get an actual robot?

“She said, ‘When you grow up, maybe you can make your own.’ “

Liriano may not have to wait that long. She got hands-on experience with a robot this year as one of the 23 third- and fourth-grade girls who participated in the school’s new Girls Who Code club.

Royer’s Flowers & Gifts, which has three Berks County stores, donated $1,050 to help the club purchase six robots and a floor mat used in competitions.

Girls Who Code is an international nonprofit organization working to close the gender gap in technology. Since its launch in 2012, Girls Who Code has served 500,000 students through in-person and virtual programming.

Mark Engle, center, accepting a donation to pay for robots from Tom Royer, left, and Geoff Royer.

At Mifflin Park in Shillington, the Girls Who Code club developed under Mark Engle, the school’s innovation and gifted teacher.

His science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, room is alive with curious children, two chirping parakeets, a turtle, rabbit, hedgehog and fish.

It’s a beehive of activity, literally, although the one in the room is only for observation. There’s another one on the school’s “green” roof from which Engle harvests honey.

The innovation curriculum covers engineering, coding and robotics, and the scientific process and environmental standards.

Girl empowerment and coding

Kayla Morris, another fourth-grader and the daughter of an engineer, enjoyed coding in Engle’s class. She signed up for Girls Who Code as a “cool after-school thing,” she said.

Although Engle had similarly modest expectations for the club, they were exceeded quickly.

“I figured kids are going to come for a couple hours, we’re going to have some fun, and then it will be over,” he said. The reality was that the club, which met from October through Valentine’s Day, held twice as many sessions as initially scheduled, and some of the girls worked on projects on their own.

Girls Who Code has its own curriculum that promotes girl empowerment and coding. Engle said he “turned it up a notch” by entering the students into a robot competition, which promoted problem solving, innovation and teamwork.

Students can make these robots dance, light up and even speak Spanish.

The rechargeable robots are known as Dash. Imagine four teal balls, three on the bottom that act as wheels and one on the top that serves as a head with a big eyeball. Dash is approximately six inches tall.

One of the appeals of Dash is that students can give the robot a personality, from changing the color of its blinking lights to recording sounds for it to utter to making it dance. Some students made helmets for their robots from styrofoam cups normally used for serving macaroni and cheese in the school cafeteria.

“They can make it speak Spanish,” Engle said, eliciting laughter from club members Liriano and Morris, “although Mr. Engle never understood what it was saying because I don’t speak Spanish, but the robot clearly does.”

Using a touch screen on a pad, students can string together block code to, for instance, direct the distance that Dash travels, dictate turns and the robot’s speed.

Saturn and Jupiter

The competition comprised five challenges involving simulated visits to nine planets, such as negotiating the robot around the rings of Saturn. Students had to find a way to hook a magnet to their robots to retrieve washers, which played the role of Jupiter’s icy moons.

“They realize very quickly,” Engle said, “I did this but the magnet’s too high, it’s not picking anything up. Or I’m moving too fast. And so they not only had to do the coding problem-solving, but also what they made and would it be an effective use.”

Clearly, the lessons they have learned have inspired the students. Liriano and another classmate raised their hands to present their robots at a community event. Morris went with her family to a Girls Who Code event in New York City.

And more opportunities await as they move up to Governor Mifflin Intermediate School next year.

Liriano was incredulous to learn that Engle runs a co-ed club at the intermediate school that actually does make a robot.

“You do?” she said.

“Just made your day, Mags,” Engle said with a laugh.

Meanwhile, Engle anticipates doubling the number of participants in Girls Who Code in the coming school year.

Living with flowers results in ‘significant decrease’ in stress levels and improved moods: study

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Working, commuting, paying bills, and tending to family demands.
If there’s too much on your to-do list, you might want to scrap it altogether and start over with a single item: get flowers.

Research from the University of North Florida revealed that the presence of flowers can reduce stress, according to the Society of American Florists, of which Royer’s is a member.

“The findings show that people who lived with flowers in their homes for just a few days reported a significant decrease in their levels of stress and improvements in their moods.”

One-third of people are stressed every day; women are particularly affected, with one in four of them experiencing stress multiple times daily.

“Our findings are important from a public health perspective,” said lead researcher Erin Largo-Wight, associate professor in the university’s department of public health, “because adding flowers to reduce stress does not require tremendous effort to generate a meaningful effect.”

Helpful Tips

The Society of American Florists offered these tips for using flowers “to help relax and rewind”:

  • Experience flowers: Walk into your local florist and take a look around. Just the sight and smell of the natural beauty of flowers will put you at ease. Ask your florist to show you what’s in the cooler so you can learn about new varieties, colors and design styles.
  • Find peace: If you are having a bad day when it seems like nothing is going right, try flowers in soothing, tranquil colors, such as blues, lavenders and pale greens. Place a small arrangement on your nightstand or in your bathroom, so you can experience the stress-relieving benefits of flowers right before you go to bed, and right when you get up to start your day.
  • Help others: Sometimes the best way to relieve stress and the pressures of the day, is to do something nice for someone else. Here’s an idea: Go to your florist and buy two bouquets. Keep one for yourself, then take the other bouquet and “petal it forward” to a stranger on the street. You’ll be amazed at the reaction to your random act of kindness.
  • Give yourself some joy: One great way to reconnect with joy and feel less stressed is to surround yourself with simple things that make you feel happy and loved, like a colorful bunch of flowers or a blooming plant. Flowers have the power to open hearts, and when your heart is open you are more likely to focus on the positive points in your day.
  • Be a friend: Do you have a friend or loved one who could use a boost? Have flowers delivered unexpectedly to their door, and watch their ordinary day become extraordinary. It will make you smile, too.
  • Color your world: Color therapists say colors really do affect our moods. The happiest color? Orange. It promotes optimism, enthusiasm, and a sense of uplift. Choose orange flowers — roses, gerberas, lilies, ranunculus, alstroemeria, tulips — to put on your kitchen counter or your work desk, and see your mood soar.
  • Pepper your house with small doses of calm: When bringing home flowers from your florist, have a couple of small vases and containers available so you can place a few flowers in different parts of your living space. You’ll be amazed how many small arrangements you can get out of a single bunch of flowers, and you’ll have constant reminders to “stop and smell the flowers.”

The 2018 research from the University of North Florida builds on other university studies suggesting that flowers can help make people happy, strengthen feelings of compassion, foster creativity and boost energy.

Royer’s Kids Club hosting free St. Patrick’s Day event March 11 in all stores

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Participants will make this arrangement featuring daisy poms.

For the first time since the pandemic began, Royer’s Flowers & Gifts will host a free kids club event in all stores at 2 p.m. March 11.

Children ages 5 to 12 will have an opportunity to make a St. Patrick’s Day arrangement with white and yellow daisy pom pons, leatherleaf fern, baby’s breath and a glitter shamrock stick-in.

Registration is required by contacting your nearest store.

Lebanon-based Royer’s operates 15 stores in Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Lancaster, Lebanon and York counties. Sister company Stephenson’s Flowers & Gifts has one Harrisburg store.

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Here’s how to get a week or more out of your Valentine’s Day roses

Posted on by Neal

Valentine’s Day often is described as the flower industry’s version of the Super Bowl.

It’s the No. 1 holiday for florists, similar in size to the Christmas season but playing out in a much shorter schedule.

In 2022, 22 percent of Americans bought fresh flowers or plants as gifts for Valentine’s Day, according to the Society of American Florists. Roses comprised 83 percent of those purchases, with red roses the top seller by far.

Just as the victorious football team’s most devoted fans will celebrate for days after the big game, the recipient of Valentine’s Day roses reasonably can expect to get a week or longer out of them by taking some simple steps.

KEEP ROSES COOL

Keep them away from a heat source, such as a vent or direct sunlight. While you are sleeping, you can place them in an unheated room or garage before putting them back on display in the morning.

KEEP ROSES WATERED

If roses arrive in a vase:

  • They will use more water than you think, so add water pretty much daily.
  • If after five days or so the water is getting dirty, pull the roses out, re-cut the stems and put them back in the vase with fresh water. Add a packet of floral preservative, available from your florist.
  • If the water is relatively clean, leave it alone as it will have some preservative left in it.

If roses arrive loose or in a box:

  • If the roses came with tubes on the stems, remove the tubes and re-cut the stems about 1 inch from the bottom. It is best to cut at an angle, which creates more surface area for water intake.
  • Place the roses in a vase with water that is room temperature to a little warm.
  • Add floral preservative to the water; you should have received a packet with the delivery.
  • Only change the water if it becomes noticeably dirty.

IF ROSES DON’T OPEN

  • Within a day or two, your roses should begin to open. If not, remove them from the vase, re-cut the stems at an angle, and return them to the vase.
  • If they still do not begin to open, re-cut the stems but this time also float the flowers in a bath of water for an hour or two to rehydrate them. Then return them to the vase. Most times, this will bring the roses around.

In one significant way, the Valentine’s Day/Super Bowl analogy falls short of the goal line.

Because unlike the football game, the best outcome for Valentine’s Day is when everyone – florist, giver and recipient alike – emerges a winner because those beautiful flowers lasted so long.

To make your Christmas wreath last longer, hairspray is a perfect holiday hack

Posted on by Neal
You can seal in the wreath’s moisture with hairspray.

For the holidays, the song says, you can’t beat home sweet home.

But while the sunshine of a friendly gaze can warm your heart, home also is where you can find practical solutions to Christmas complications.

Take hairspray, for instance.

You can spray it on nail polish to make it dry faster as you get ready for the office party, or on wrapped presents to make them glossy and stand out.

Our favorite holiday hack, however, is the power and punch hairspray can give to your Christmas wreath.

A wreath’s round shape and evergreen composition are why it is a symbol of eternal life. Evergreen trees have long been revered for their ability to survive winter.

Of course, even a fresh wreath will become dry over time. A cut Christmas tree will lose needles, but you can slow the process by giving it daily drinks of water.

That’s not possible with a wreath. Instead, you can seal in the wreath’s moisture with hairspray. It acts like glue and holds the needles on.

For best results and to avoid messes, spray the wreath outdoors before you hang it on a door, window or wall. Hang it on the outside of a door (it can get cooked if placed behind glass) and out of direct sunlight.

If you want to be happy in a million ways, the song says, for the holidays you can’t beat home sweet home.

Or hairspray.

Royer’s presents American Red Cross with 3,600 cards for area service members and veterans

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  • Royer’s stores collected cards and coloring pages throughout November.
  • This year marked Royer’s 10th year with Holidays for Heroes.
  • Barry Spengler, Royer’s chief administrative officer, and Lisa Landis, communications and marketing director, American Red Cross.

Among the 450 coloring pages submitted were many downloaded from Royer’s Flowers & Gifts’ website and some created from scratch.

“Thank you for your service,” read one handwritten page adorned with hearts and flowers.

And then there were the printed holiday cards, numbering more than 3,600.

On Tuesday, Royer’s presented the cards and coloring pages to the American Red Cross for distribution to area service members and veterans.

Royer’s, which has participated in the Red Cross “Holidays for Heroes” program for a decade, collected the cards from the public in each of its stores throughout November.

Royer’s Flowers donates $11,400 to six area women’s causes

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Royer’s Flowers & Gifts has donated $11,400 to six organizations in support of women’s causes.

Family-owned Royer’s earmarks $10 from every sale of its Admiration arrangement for these donations.

This year’s recipients and the amount of their awards: Pennsylvania Breast Cancer Coalition, $2,500; YWCA York, $2,500; Water Street Mission, Lancaster, $2,500;

Women in Need Inc., Chambersburg, $1,500; Girls Who Code Central PA, $1,350; Girls Who Code Berks County, $1,050.

“This year, Royer’s is celebrating the 85th anniversary of our founding by my grandmother Hannah Royer,” said Tom Royer, president and CEO of Royer’s Flowers. “Mom Royer, as she was known, is our daily inspiration and a symbol of the importance and value of empowering girls and women.

“Our loyal customers make these contributions possible, for which we are grateful. Congratulations to this year’s recipients for the meaningful work they do.”

Royer’s Flowers thanking veterans Nov. 11 with free red, white and blue bouquets

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Royer’s Flowers & Gifts will show its appreciation to military veterans by giving them free patriotic bouquets on Nov. 11.

The bouquets – featuring a red carnation, a white carnation and a blue bow – will be available in-store only at each of Royer’s 16 locations in Berks, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Lancaster, Lebanon and York counties.

“We’re grateful for the dedication and sacrifice of the men and women who have served in the U.S. armed forces,” said Tom Royer, president and CEO of family-owned Royer’s. “It’s our honor to recognize veterans in this way.”

Non-veterans may purchase the bouquets for $2.20 each.

For more information about Royer’s, including store addresses and hours, visit royers.com.