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His toil in the field tames wildflowers
By DAN DeWITT SPRING LAKE -- Joe Melton sat on the kind of wheeled plastic stool used by backyard gardeners. His garden, though, covers 7 acres on the floor of a valley just north of the Pasco County line. Each of the 42 rows of flowers is 200 yards long. Keeping them free of weeds can be discouraging. "One thing you don't want to do when you're weeding is look up," said Melton, 37. Melton of Dade City is a pioneer in a business that is as tricky as it sounds -- domesticating wildflowers -- and faces obstacles a groundbreaker might expect. Melton had to invent most of his cultivating techniques, including the placement of thousands of feet of ground cloth to catch the seeds. His war against weeds is eternal. One compensation is that he has helped created one of the most beautiful spots in the county -- a lavender carpet spread beneath green hills, grazing cows and big oaks. Another is that his job is basically to transfer this beauty to roadsides throughout the state. The Florida Department of Transportation has bought every pound of seed he has produced so far and is encouraging production from Melton and the half-dozen other wildflower seed farmers in the state. That is because flowers taken from Florida stock -- true wildflowers -- grow better in this climate than more highly cultivated, imported varieties. "The ones I received from Holland, France and Germany basically lasted for about two years on the roadside," said William Moriaty, the roadside vegetation coordinator for the DOT office in Tampa. "The more naturalized populations . . . bloom very plentifully, and once it's there, it's usually there for life." Moriaty would like to see the roads here look like the ones in Texas, which has planted wildflowers on its highways since the mid 1960s, when the program was initiated by Lady Bird Johnson, the wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Moriaty favors phlox, he said, mostly because the public tends to favor them. People tend to regard some wildflowers, such as the yellow tickseed that thrives around retention ponds, as weeds that need mowing, Moriaty said. "But they see the phlox and say, 'Look at that. It's so beautiful. I've got to write Uncle Joe in Altoona.' " Hernando County, especially along State Road 50 near Interstate 75, has some of the most spectacular displays of natural phlox in the state, Moriaty said, though experts disagree exactly how natural they are. The variety that grows here is called Phlox drummondii, after British naturalist Thomas Drummond, who documented its wild growth in Texas in the 1830s. Jeff Norcini, an associate professor of environmental horticulture at the University of Florida, thinks the variety is also native to Florida because of its abundance and a lack of evidence that it was widely planted. Others believe the variety here is merely acclimated -- the descendant of flowers planted decades ago that were most suited to Florida's heat and sandy soil. In support of this view, Melton said, is a story he recently heard from a local woman, who said her Girl Scout troop made a project of planting phlox along State Road 50 in the 1970s. Phlox thrive in Hernando partly because the DOT workers in this area know how to maintain them; most importantly, they refrain from mowing them until the blooms have disappeared, which allows for natural reseeding. "The attitude up there is, 'You touch the wildflowers, and I'll bust both your legs,' " Moriaty said. Whatever their original source, the vigor of these stands made them an obvious source of seeds when Melton began to think about growing wildflowers in 1996. The collection methods, however, were anything but obvious. He and Moriaty first attempted to harvest seeds from the flowers using a lawn mower with a bag attachment to catch the clippings. The yield was 60 pounds of thatch and 1 pound of seed, said Moriaty, who includes a picture of that operation in a slide show he presents to gardening groups. "I call it 'Dumb and Dumber,' " he said. In 1998, with the state's permission, Melton pulled phlox from the roadside. That also looked peculiar, said Melton's brother-in-law, Dale Cash, 37. "People were saying, 'What is Joe doing by the side of the road picking flowers?' " Cash said. But the seeds he collected by drying those flowers -- 5 pounds -- was enough to plant a patch of phlox the next fall. By replanting the seeds in successive years, Melton eventually had enough seed to cover 7 acres of pasture owned by his family, which runs one of the largest farming operations in Hernando. He also planted coreopsis and Indian blanket last year, though he has abandoned them because of the bigger market for phlox and the extreme difficulty of harvesting other varieties. Seeds from tickseed, for example, are too light to separate from the husks. "It's like harvesting dandruff," said Cash, who works with Melton. The basic problem with harvesting phlox seeds, Melton said, is that they mature and drop over a period of several weeks. He had to develop his own solutions to that and other phases of cultivation because the large commercial nurseries -- including the giant Wildseed Farms in Texas -- regard their methods as trade secrets. "There is a lot of proprietary information out there. They aren't going to tell anybody," Norcini said. The techniques used in Florida "are based on what Joe and others are doing. He's one of our top growers. He's been very innovative," Norcini said. The 6-foot-wide strips of porous ground cloth he has placed between the rows retard weed growth, Melton said, and catch the seed heads after the pods explode. "It's like popcorn popping," Cash said. Melton or Cash gather the seeds with a large gasoline-powered vacuum cleaner. They dry and sift the seeds to purify them. Last year, their best ever, they sold 240 pounds of seed to the state for between $30 and $50 a pound. The harvest will be smaller this year for a few reasons, Melton said. He did not fertilize the field, because he was told that artificially nourished plants grow larger but produce fewer blossoms. That has not proved to be true, he said. Also, Cash was able to put more hours in last year because he was temporarily laid off from his job as a railroad mechanic. Now, he is back to working full time. The biggest challenge Melton faces is to reduce the work required to increase his profit margin. "This way works, but it's very labor-intensive," he said. He has been leery of applying herbicides to the weeds, because of the fear that they will destroy the stock of phlox that he worked so hard to establish. But he is now to the point where he has no choice, he said. "Paying somebody $6 or $7 per hour -- that's $50 per row -- I can't do that with the yield I'm expecting this year. I'm going to have to experiment with herbicide." Obstacles also remain at the state level. Moriaty said he would be willing to pay premium prices for Florida-grown wildflowers because he is convinced they grow better than imports. But he needs scientific documentation to prove it. Norcini said he has not been able to provide it, partly because Florida farmers were not able to produce the additional seed for him to experiment with last year. But Norcini also said the market for native wildflowers is just starting to be established. Besides roadsides, it could be used by mining companies that are reclaiming old pits. Homeowners and businesses could replace lawns with environmentally friendly meadows that require less water and mowing. "There's definitely money to be made," Norcini said. -- Dan DeWitt covers the environment, politics and the city of Brooksville. He can be reached at 754-6116. Send e-mail to dewitt@sptimes.com
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