Poinsettia woes challenge college Ag students
One of the healthier poinsettia plants on display Saturday awaits the start of the annual fundraiser for the University of Hawaii Maui College’s Agriculture and Natural Resources Department.
Story and Photos
by Matthew Thayer
Walking a tightrope between feast and famine with every crop, farmers are some of the biggest gamblers on Earth.
There are no guarantees of a return when they lay down their money for seed and supplies. Nor when they put their hearts into planting and caring for whatever crop they are growing. If all goes well, the harvest comes in and they turn a profit. Maybe not as much as the middlemen and sellers down the road, but enough to get by. The gamble is that a single miscue or cruel twist of fate can mean the loss of all or most of that investment in money, hope and effort.
University of Hawaii Maui College (UHMC) Agriculture and Natural Resources students learned this lesson the hard way with this year's annual poinsettia-growing project. An assortment of challenges—ranging from insects and break-ins to a wonky irrigation system and holes in the greenhouse's roof—made the project to turn seeds into finished commercial products difficult from the start.
A sparse selection of spindly, marked-down poinsettia plants is what is left after the first wave of customers at the annual holiday plant sale.
The annual sale that culminates the project kicked off Thursday and concluded Saturday morning. While the fundraiser has always been one of the island's secret hacks to scoring the holiday season's biggest and healthiest poinsettia plants, this year's offering did not match those standards.
"Our greenhouse has been damaged by wind and other things," said Agriculture Department Lecturer Amy Cartwright. "We have a lot of holes that are letting in the insects. The wind blew over plants a lot, so you'd find them on the ground. So, we have had issues with whitefly and wind, and our irrigation system was being finicky."
A week before the sale, she said, disaster struck.
UHMC Lecturer Amy Cartwright tapes an updated price list to a greenhouse table Saturday. Four-inch potted plants were going for $6 and six-inch pots for $7.
"We show up after one day and nothing had been watered. And that's what happened with all of these. They were beautiful and then last week there's just no water. After one day."
Proceeds from the sale are traditionally pumped back into the Agriculture Department to support its programs and students. Along with poinsettias, this year’s sale also featured native plants and value-added products, such as bottles of student-processed honey. Saturday's event was part of a big day on campus, with the annual Maui Comic Con and UHMC Art Department Ceramics Sale also being held.
A morning rush of customers passes through the greenhouse after the gate is opened to start Saturday's public sale.
Unwilling to give up after their crop took its big hit, Agriculture Department staff, students and volunteers did their best with what was left.
"We started in the thousands," Cartwright said. "But it ended up with about 200 plants for each variety we planted." (About 1,200 spindly, heavily pruned plants.)
Agriculture and Natural Resources Program Coordinator Mach Fukada said the problems and the scramble to rebound provided valuable lessons.
"That's why this is for the students, they got to see the reality," Fukada said. "Everybody comes into ag with, as (former department head) Ann Emmsley would always say, 'rainbows and bluebirds and unicorns.' You think, oh yes, it's all sunshine and whatever, and they don't ever see the gritty underbelly. Oh man, failure is always an option. That is the reality. It is better for students to fail here than to fail on their own, and after they have invested lots of money and they're in the hole and losing. This is the perfect place."
Fukada said it is all about taking those lessons and moving forward.
"Failure is an opportunity to learn. In the real world, failure means: ‘oh, you lost money and now you're broke ass.’ That's the reality."
Second-year agriculture student Shauna Beaulieu puts a paper collar around a poinsettia plant for a customer Saturday.
Second-year agriculture student Shauna Beaulieu was part of the friendly crew helping customers in the greenhouse Saturday. A line of about 45 people streamed through the gate the moment it opened. One table held a cluster of pink poinsettias that seemed to have come through the many trials a bit healthier than their red and white cousins. Those were scooped up fast. Customers then began sorting through what was left.
"There were challenges the whole year," Beaulieu said. "We had to just maintain. It was learning about challenges and how to overcome. I think we cleaned it up pretty good."
UH-Maui junior Dylan Thompson wheels a cart of poinsettia plants to the checkout lane for a customer. Holes in the agriculture program's greenhouse roof and walls are visible in the background.
Kihei shopper Kathy Harman said she hits the sale every year.
"I want to support the school because they do a wonderful job," Harman said. "You want to support the school and support the community."
Fukada said the department hopes to "reskin" the greenhouse and redo the irrigation system soon. It also needs to fix its tractor, which was damaged by vandals who cut the diesel fuel line trying to steal what they probably thought was gasoline.
"We've had problems with people breaking in," Fukada said. "They cut the fuel line on the tractor and we have not been able to get that fixed."
The sale’s most presentable plants line the fronts of greenhouse tables before it opens to the public Saturday.
Cartwright said community members wishing to help the Agriculture Department could consider volunteering to help improve and clear outdoor farm field areas on the campus where native plants are to be planted. It could also use help collecting native seeds and planting them. She said the department is offering a tuition-free class next semester titled Weed Science, which will delve into the island's most problematic invasive plant species.
She said setbacks will not spell the end of the annual holiday plant sale.
"Hopefully we can get the greenhouse fixed and we can get the poinsettias looking great again," she said.