ALDEN, N.Y. — Take a peek inside Mitchell Greenhouses on West Main Street in Alden, and you'll see a sea of red, pink, and cream — and plenty of swirled and speckled poinsettias too.
"Means Christmas is coming," laughs owner Fred Mitchell.
He started his business 54 years ago with a single 14' by 36' greenhouse. Now he's up to a couple hundred thousand square feet of space, and this time of year, it's almost all filled with poinsettias. He started growing them 45 years ago.
"I wanted to keep my employees year-round. If we didn't grow poinsettias and garden mums, they'd be here for the spring, and the next year I would be looking for new employees," said Mitchell.
It takes a lot of work to get to this point in the growing season. They start with about 250,000 cuttings in the late spring and early summer. Once those take root, they're grouped together in various sizes of pots. They have 40 different varieties.
"I like the ones that are different. The mutants if you will," said George Mitchell, Fred's son. "Poinsettias are perhaps the most labor-intensive and temperamental plants we grow. They're prone to disease and prone to pests. Over the years we've learned how to manage those things."
Though a symbol of the holiday season, they're actual tropical plants native to Central and South America. They like warmer temperatures and drier soil.
"You're definitely keeping your fingers crossed the whole time because you can get a plant 80 or 90 percent of the way there, and if you overwater it one time, you can kill it," said George Mitchell.
Their business does wholesale and retail. They will sell more than 100,000 plants over the next week or so and do daily deliveries through mid-December.
"Our distribution area runs from Watertown to Binghamton, across Pennsylvania to Erie, and to Western New York," said Fred Mitchell. "We sell to garden centers. We sell to stores. We sell to churches, and we sell to plant sales. School sales and Boy Scouts and things like that."
A final push comes right before Christmas.
"The absolute best part is to clean up when the crop is done. You spend six months looking at them, and you're happy to see empty benches because it means you succeeded," said George Mitchell.