This one-woman flower farm in SC is trying something new for Easter

Article originally posted by Deirdre Weaver-Currin at The Post and Courier here.

SUMTER — Erica Goza grew up on a row crop farm in nearby Mayesville — a small SC town with a population that doesn’t break 1,000. The 1930s era farm was worked by her grandmother first, then her father, but she didn’t anticipate laboring on it the way she does today.

“I would have never thought that I would be back here in a farming capacity,” Goza said.

But instead of farming hundreds of acres, she is growing on hundreds of square feet and doing all of the work by hand. And its not vegetables that she’s growing; it’s flowers.

Eight years ago, Goza didn’t know much about flower farms.

She had a small garden with vegetables and flowers when she was living in the Upstate, and when she later returned home to Mayesville, she continued growing her flowers, but she didn’t know that "flower farmer" was a professional title.

It was Goza’s friend, Erin McArthur, who first introduced her to cut flower farming. From there, Branching Out was born.

McArthur calls Branching Out, Goza’s flower farm, a “little pocket of amazing.”

“I still don't know that Erica appreciates how rare what she does is,” McArthur said. “She puts out world-class flowers in Mayesville, South Carolina, and I think that if people knew the quality and the variety that she grows, they would be blown away.”

Goza has been running her flower farm primarily by herself for eight years now.

Each year, she grows a different variety of seasonal flowers, but working in South Carolina’s unpredictable climate has been a trial-and-error process.

She had seen beautiful photos of flowers in places like the Pacific Northwest and areas up North, but she didn’t know if those same flowers could grow in South Carolina’s environment.

“What I learned is that we can grow a lot of the things that they grow — it's just we have to do it in a different time of year,” Goza said.

It was a challenge, she said, to see what would grow in our climate and what wouldn’t. Some flowers have to be grown through the winter because they are unable to handle South Carolina’s humid late spring. Something that may flower in June in Maine would flower in our late March, she said.

All-in-all, being a flower farmer in South Carolina requires a lot of preparation: having equipment like netting for holding plants up during thunderstorms, or planting flowers in succession to ensure that if there’s an event that wipes out one crop, you know there’s another one coming.

Goza has also had to get savvy from a business perspective.

Most recently, she had to “force” tulips for Valentine’s Day, meaning she was able to have the flowers ready before they would usually be.

Flower Farmer Erica Goza stands in front of tulips growing in her enclosed trailer.

Deirdre Weaver-Currin/Staff

This year, Goza is trying something new and hoping to have tulips in time for Easter due to the holiday falling in early April this year.

When forcing tulips, she starts with pre-chilled bulbs. The pre-chilled bulbs have been held in cold storage anywhere between 12 and 16 weeks to be tricked into thinking they’ve experienced winter. Once she gets the bulbs, she plants them in crates, stores them in a walk-in-cooler and lets them form roots for 4 to 6 weeks.

The last phase is bringing the tulips into her enclosed trailer, which she keeps at about 60 to 65 degrees. From there, she can have blooms in anywhere from 20 to 30 days.

The enclosed trailer is also used in colder months for something Goza calls "The Bulb Bar." In these months, Goza transforms her grow trailer into a walk-in set up where customers can bring their own pot or use one of Goza’s to have a paperwhite or amaryllis bulb potted. It’s something bright during an otherwise dreary time of year.

The Bulb Bar is a trailer turned into a bulb potting station in colder months.

Erica Goza/Provided

Though growing the flowers is what Goza enjoys best, arranging bouquets and selling them to the people of Florence, Sumter and Hartsville also has its perks.

“Growing flowers is rewarding for me personally, just to have this thing that I have nurtured and raised and get to enjoy something beautiful,” Goza said. “But then the other thing that is so rewarding is to watch people's response to the flowers.”

To Goza, experiencing a cut flower is different than just seeing it in a photo. The fragrance, the texture of the petal and the movement of the flower is all part of a true experience, she said.

“When people receive them, they just light up,” said Goza.

It’s the whole reason why Branching Out’s tagline is Feel Good Flowers.