Farmer's Market

Reaping rewards

A nursery that started with some tiny sago shoots destined for the trash bin grows into a million-dollar business.

By JANET ZINK
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 11, 2003

RUSKIN -- Thirty years ago, Lee Te Kim was a minimum-wage hired hand working for a company that maintained landscaping at Sun City Center.

Today Kim owns a 90-acre nursery, employs 20 people and has a $2-million contract to landscape public areas at MiraBay, a 750-acre waterfront community under construction in Apollo Beach.

He started his business by collecting king sago palm runners from Sun City Center grounds destined for the trash and taking them home to his 17-acre property in Ruskin. There, he cultivated the palms in pots.

But he had a hard time selling them.

"I got a speaking problem," Kim says by way of explanation. It's a refrain he repeats often in reference to his thick Korean accent.

So Kim, 54, enlisted a friend to sell the plants to area nurseries.

His business took off, and in 1994, he outgrew his home base. He bought 90 acres on U.S. 41 in Ruskin; there he cultivates a multitude of landscape plants, including crotons, Indian hawthorne, bamboo, birds of paradise, crown of thorns and a huge variety of palms.

"I like to grow palm trees," he says. "They never talk back. You have a bug, I spray. You grow, I cut you."

Kim's pride and joy are the sagos, which grow bright green and strong in neat patches throughout his nursery. He picks up a plant by its fronds and shakes it to show that the pot won't drop away from the palm. That means the roots are solid, Kim says.

One secret, Kim says, is the fertilizer. He imports 50-pound bags of slow-release, 18-6-8 foliage food from Japan that cost $50 each. Most fertilizers on the shelves at the local garden shop sell for less than $20 for a 50-pound bag.

"This company, they're not looking for cheap," Kim says of Florikan, makers of the fertilizer that only needs to be applied once a year. "They're looking for good working."

He sprinkles the stuff on top of a layer of dirt before putting the plant and then more dirt into the pots. That keeps the nutrients from being pulled out of the pot along with the weeds.

The other trick is plenty of water.

"You drink, what, tonight? Yes. You'll drink water tomorrow," Kim says.

Plants have the same needs.

Kim sells truckloads of sagos to nurseries and landscapers throughout the southeastern United States.

"They love my sago," he says.

Billy Loper, owner of Sea Island Nursery in Sea Island, Ga., spends nearly $6,000 every two weeks for 50 to 100 sagos from Kim's Nursery. He met Kim at a plant show in Tampa.

"There are people who are cheaper than him, but they're not as good quality," Loper says. "(Kim's sagos) are always disease free, and I know they're going to look good."

In addition to selling landscape plants to retailers, Kim designs and installs ponds and waterfalls, including one four years ago at the Avila home of Tampa Bay Buccaneer Warren Sapp.

Farming, perhaps, is in Kim's blood. He was born in South Korea where his parents tended apple and rice farms. He's visited his family in his native country only three times in the past 30 years. There's no time for such frivolity, Kim says. He works seven days a week.

"No monkeying around," he says.

His son, Dohyung, 24, graduated from Vanderbilt University, and another son, Sangheun, 18, attends Georgia Tech.

"I don't know A-B-C-D lots. . . . I want my children to have a higher education," Kim says.

Kim's wife, Moo Son, lived with the children in Tampa while they were growing up so the boys could attend Jesuit High School. Dohyung plans to go to law school and will help his father with his business by reading contracts and making sure no one takes advantage of Kim because of his limited grasp of the English language.

"I learned the hard way," Kim says.

But he learned.

And now he has a business that's as fruitful as the 90 lush acres where he grows plants that are worth "a lot of dollar," he says. "I can't believe it."

-- Janet Zink can be reached at 661-2441 or jzink@sptimes.com .