By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Stutzmans Greenhouse and Garden Centers around Kansas, including in Great Bend, will soon come to life for the spring and summer planting seasons. But the plants do not just magically appear. Each Wednesday, Stutzmans is featured on KSN's Good Day Kansas program. Ben Miller, owner of Stutzmans, said it has been a good venue to show the public what his company is about.
"Most people, as they get to a store, really have no idea what the process was to get that plant to that growth and that look," he said. "We took the opportunity to take people behind the scenes and actually show that process: how we prune, how we trim, how we plant to really get to the final product as we ship it out to the stores."
Miller's cousin started Stutzmans in 1956. Miller and his wife got out of the dairy industry in 1980 and began working for the cousin. They purchased the company in 1985.
"It's been a journey," Miller said. "A lot of our growth through the 80s and 90s was through wholesale, shipping all over the central part of the country. In about 2001, we started branching out into our own additional retail garden centers, what we refer to as 'season garden centers.' We're open primarily from April through October. We often say 'freeze to freeze.' It has totally revolutionized our company. We're strictly retail and really focused on that now with no wholesale whatsoever."
Stutzmans now operates 11 garden centers in a 70-mile radius with stores in Great Bend, Salina, Newton, Pratt, and Sedgwick and Reno Counties. They go as far west as Dodge City. But everything begins at the home base in Pleasantview, five miles west of Hutchinson. Many of the plants in the regional garden centers got their start in the eight acres of greenhouse space in Pleasantview.
"After a spring season, we bring in all the managers from all the locations, and we literally sit down for about two days and go line-item by line-item and determine what we're going to grow in numbers the following year," Miller said.
The group also looks at new plant materials and how genetics will help those plants perform in the various Kansas weather conditions. The company strives to live up to its motto, "Stutzmans expects success."
"It's really important that we have what will perform well for our customers," said Miller. "That is the lifeblood of what makes everything happen for us."
Ahead of spring, seeds are planted in plug trays, with each tray containing 288 plugs. A seeder drops the seed in, and when the plant is large enough, it is transplanted into a container for resale. The trick is not planting everything at once.
"Most everything, except for perennials, would be multiple plantings so we have fresh material coming through about June 1," Miller said. "As we get into late June and July, we transition into what we often refer to as our 'heat-loving plant material.' It's not that we don't have some of those varieties in spring, but it's totally focused on plant material that really will perform in our Kansas heat."
Once ready to be transplanted, the seedlings are put into six packs or pots for transport to the garden centers. That used to be done by hand. Stutzmans recently purchased a Dutch-engineered robot that can now do the work more efficiently, increasing production from 300 flats by hand per hour to more than 700 in some instances.
"It literally extracts the seedling plug from a tray that was seeded and grown in that tiny plug, pops it out," Miller said. "then plants it out into the finished container, which may either be a six-pack flat of annuals, or we often also go into a four-and-a-half inch material, which is more of your premium annuals to produce vegetative cuttings."
The latest problem is what to do with all the extra flats coming down the line.
"We literally get trains of carts with product waiting to get laid down in the greenhouse," Miller said. "We have a few things we need to work out in that whole process, but we're really ecstatic with what we're seeing at this point."
Nothing at Stutzmans is a small operation. Patio plants are produced from cuttings and placed into 12 and 14-inch pots. Stutzmans will distribute approximately 35,000 of those plants to its garden centers each year. The number grows to approximately 50,000 for Mother's Day planters.
Stutzmans will host an open house and tours of its Pleasantview facility on April 6 from 9 a.m. to noon. Manager Jason French also hits the airwaves on Eagle Radio each Saturday morning for the Stutzmans Home and Garden Show. Listeners can take a picture of plants and send their queries to [email protected] for French to answer live on air.
Stutzmans Garden Center in Salina is in its final year at the corner of Ninth and Cloud Street. According to Stutzmans Marketing Manager, Krystofer Rosiere next year's Salina Garden Center will be located at the Salina Central Mall, in the old JCPenney parking lot.