To make life more beautiful

Ms. Phan Thi Thanh stands beside the flowerbeds she personally tends to. Photo: Tuan Anh

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Anyone who has ever traveled along National Highway 37, through Hong Phong commune, will surely be surprised by a field of flowers with many different types and vibrant colors. Many people stop to admire, gaze at, and take pictures in this flower field.

Mr. Nguyen Nhu Tuan (third from the left) from Doan Ket village, Hong Phong commune (Nam Sach district) introduces his family's flower cultivation model to leaders of several provincial departments and agencies.

For over 30 years, Mrs. Thanh has diligently worked in the fields every day tending to her flowers. She says that if she doesn't go to the fields and see how they grow, she can't rest easy. She compares her flower fields to her children, needing daily fertilization, watering, and pest control. She often worries and feels restless when the weather changes. To have such lush flower fields, Mr. Tuan and Mrs. Thanh have to stay up late and wake up early, knowing the characteristics of each type of flower by heart.

Pointing towards the flower fields, Mrs. Thanh introduced, "There are white chrysanthemums, yellow chrysanthemums, gladioli, and lucky bamboo; each flower has several varieties with different colors, shapes, and characteristics. Besides the traditional flowers that have been grown for many years, my husband and I have also sought out and brought some flower varieties from other regions, adapting them to suit the soil and climate of Hai Duong ."

These petunias are grown in the flower garden of Mr. Nguyen Nhu Tuan's family.

One type of flower that almost no family in Hai Duong grows is the lisianthus, but her family has been growing it for the past 5 years.

The plants are not tall, and their stems, leaves, and petals are delicate and easily damaged, so Mrs. Thanh's family prefers to grow them in plastic frames. Around May or June, they place an order for seedlings, after which the nursery owner sows the seeds and grows the seedlings in pots until they are large enough before transferring them to Mrs. Thanh's family. The technique for growing petunias is also more careful than with other types of flowers. As a flower that prefers cool weather, measures must be taken to protect them from the hot sun and rain to minimize damage.

In late March and early April, when lilies bloom, it signals the arrival of summer. However, Mr. Tuan and Mrs. Thanh's family have broken that rule by growing lilies and making them bloom year-round. To achieve this, they have applied several flower cultivation techniques.

After purchasing lily bulbs, they are stored in a cold storage facility at 8 degrees Celsius for two months before being planted. Approximately three months after being planted in the soil, the bulbs will flower. The reason for storing the bulbs in cold storage is to shorten the growth time when planted in the soil and to facilitate flower bud differentiation.

After harvesting, the couple fertilizes the plants, providing nutrients so they can bloom year-round. This type of flower is well-received by customers because of its unique and unusual appearance out of season.

The Chinese honeysuckle has been cultivated by locals for a long time, but only on a small scale, not commercially. Initially, Mr. Tuan only planted a small area to gauge market demand. Seeing that customers were increasingly fond of this flower, not only for decoration but also for use in cooking, he proactively expanded the area to 2 acres, while also providing technical guidance and organizing sales for several households in the village and commune.

Mr. Tuan's family's field is always full of brightly blooming flowers of all kinds.

With the number of households growing the fruit increasing, in October 2024, Mr. Tuan established the Thien Ly Doan Ket Cooperative with 9 members. The products are labeled with traceability tags and are widely sold in supermarkets and convenience stores.

The Chinese honeysuckle is an easy-to-grow plant that doesn't require advanced techniques and is a nutritious food. To encourage more people to grow this plant, Mr. Tuan proactively researched and produced Chinese honeysuckle seedlings.

Mr. Tuan selects robust, disease-free mother plants that are neither too old nor too young to propagate the jasmine vine seedlings. The mother plants only bear flowers until June or July, then stop to focus on harvesting the branches.

The jasmine vine is cut into sections about 1 meter long, each section having 1-2 nodes. These sections are then circled and placed in the ground, preferably in a high area to avoid waterlogging. New branches will sprout from these nodes, and all that's needed is to plant them in the ground, build a trellis for the jasmine to climb, and then you can harvest the flowers. Each year, Mr. Tuan's family supplies 80,000-100,000 jasmine vine seedlings to the nationwide market.

Besides some specific types of flowers, his family also maintains a variety of chrysanthemums, as well as dahlias, peonies, violets, etc. Sharing her love for flowers, Mrs. Thanh said: "You have to truly love flowers to be able to take care of them, stay up late and wake up early, and worry about them. We only need to look at the leaves or flowers to know if they are growing well or if they are infested with pests or diseases, and what kind of pesticides to use."

Failure, but not discouraged.

Cattails are commonly grown in Da Lat due to its cool, temperate climate, but Mr. Tuan and Mrs. Thanh have adapted their techniques to suit the conditions of Hai Duong.

Flower cultivation has been a family tradition passed down through generations in Mrs. Thanh's family.

She was originally from Phu Lien village, in Hong Phong commune – a long-established and famous flower-growing area in Hai Duong province. After marrying Mr. Tuan, she brought the flower-growing trade to Doan Ket village. To develop their family's economy , in addition to rice cultivation, they decided to grow flowers. Initially, they started with a small plot of land growing chrysanthemums for Tet (Lunar New Year) and the full moon festival, but as their quality of life improved and customers paid more attention to their spiritual well-being and regularly bought flowers for decoration, they expanded to include a wider variety of flowers.

To solve the problem of finding land for growing flowers, in addition to buying from neighboring households, the couple also rented abandoned land, then renovated it to suit their needs. They built cold storage to hold flower bulbs or flowers ready for harvest but not yet sold. Compared to other areas, their nursery was carefully constructed with a roofed frame to minimize the impact of the weather.

The biggest challenge for flower growers, including Mr. Tuan and Mrs. Thanh's family, is mastering cultivation techniques, predicting weather conditions, and understanding customer trends in flower selection. To achieve this, they constantly seek out and learn through various means.

Before planting a new type of flower, the couple carefully studied customer preferences, the characteristics of each type of flower, and potential pests and diseases by conducting trial plantings on small areas. They also diligently read information online and visited real-world models of flower farms in other provinces. "However, it's not always possible to apply all that knowledge correctly; we have to adapt it to suit the characteristics of each plant and each stage of growth," Mrs. Thanh affirmed.

Out-of-season lilies

To achieve the success they have today, the couple also had to overcome many failures. These included buying seedlings that didn't bloom or bloomed at the wrong time, and the impact of weather, rain, and storms that stunted the plants or caused widespread damage.

Undeterred, the couple continued to find various ways to overcome difficulties and expand their flower garden. Today, their family owns over 8.5 acres of land dedicated to flower cultivation, yielding billions of dong in profit after deducting expenses. They also employ many workers to care for and harvest the flowers; during the season for harvesting jasmine flowers, they employ 8-10 workers with incomes ranging from 250,000 to 350,000 dong per person per day.

Commenting on the production model of Mr. Tuan and Mrs. Thanh's family, representatives of the Hai Duong Provincial Farmers' Association stated that this is a typical model of the locality in terms of both scale of cultivation and income. They also proactively share their experience with many other farmers to jointly develop the economy and become wealthy on their homeland.

As we parted ways, Mrs. Thanh said she would continue to preserve and develop the flower-growing profession to fully exploit the potential and strengths of the locality, and also to make every home more beautiful.

THANH HA

Source: https://baohaiduong.vn/cho-doi-them-dep-403699.html