MEMBER PROFILE 



Murray Farms Greenhouse 



New Hampshire's Best Kept Gardening Secret. Shhh.... 



Xou pass the displayed trees and 

 greens to a wooden door decorated 

 with a ribboned swag. You nam the 

 knob and enter. 



Inside, the low early-moming mid- 

 December sun comes through two 

 glass overhead doors and tints the 

 checkout counters, a Scotch pine 

 in a stand, some wooden reindeer 

 planters.. ..and beyond this small 

 open area, poinsettias — red, pink, 

 marbled, white — benches oi 

 them — less than there were a few 

 days earlier, but still enough to till 

 four bays of the six-bay house. 

 Customers wander through this 

 vast area, picking the plant they 

 like best. 



The checkout area at Murray Farms 

 was a busy spot that morning: only 

 one of the cash registers was being 

 used, but Barbara and Kathy (two 

 Murray sisters), along with some 

 other help, were bagging poinsettias 

 and filling a van. Dave Murray (a 

 brother), getting ready to make a 

 delivery, stopped to answer the 

 phone. Don (another brother) was 

 beginning to pot up this spring's lily 

 crop: a portable soil bin filled with 

 Metro Mix (Murray Farms uses bulk 

 bags of it) was standing right in the 

 middle of the activity and workers 

 (two uncles and a cousin among 

 them) were clustered around it 

 planting bulbs. And customers 

 were there as well, greeting the 

 various people they knew. All this 

 seemed more busy than confusing, 

 and illustrates the unusual balance 

 between large-scale production and 

 the individual retail customer at 

 today's Murray Farms Greenhouse 

 in Penacook. 



The first Murrays moved to this 

 farm on the Contoocook River in 

 1904. The family dairied for two 

 generations. The third genera- 

 tion — ^Jesse, the father oi the pres- 

 ent generation — turned to chicken 

 farming. He raised chickens until 

 the late fifties, when "the bottom 



18 THE PlaNTSMAN 



tell out of the poultrv' business in 

 New England" 



He didn't know quite what direc- 

 tion to take, but he "tinkered 

 around awhile," and finally cut the 

 roof off a two-story hen house, 

 covered it with mylar, and grew a 

 crop of bedding plants on the top 

 floor in time for Memorial Day. 



Some poinsettias and lilies are 



wholesaled, but 



basically, the statement, 



"We're the largest 



retail greenhouse in 



New Hampshire" is true. 



It seemed to be a wav to go. Other 

 houses were added. In 1963, a 

 home and a dance hall in Concord 

 that needed to be torn down to 

 make way for a road were auctioned 

 off. He got both of those on a high 

 bid of $60 and used the lumber for 

 greenhouse frames. 



At the same time, he bought a 

 25x85 National — "the one with the 

 eaves of curved glass. This was his 

 pet — he treated it like a sports car." 



Even then, it was a family business. 

 "In the early years, all the in-laws 

 used to come over on busy 

 weekends. It was Jesse's business, 

 but he could count on the family's 

 help when needed. An aunt used to 

 prepare noon-time meals for the 

 workers when we were too busy to 

 leave for lunch and Jesse's own 

 father — Lester ("Pop") Murray (he 

 was in his 70's and 80's then) — 

 worked right along with the rest of 

 us." In the late 1970's, although the 

 work force remained pretty much 

 the same, the technical ownership 

 of the business was transferred to 

 Jesse's sons, Don and Dave. 



By 1980 , five finger houses had 

 been built off the former hatchery. 



But the spring of 1984 brought 

 major changes. All five houses 

 were torn down (the National was 

 sold) and the first four bays of a 

 new Nexus gutter-connected house 

 were put up — all between the end 

 of spring sales and the beginning of 

 the fall's poinsettia crop. 



This is the core of the present 

 complex. Today, the Nexus house 

 has six-bays and, extending out at a 

 slight angle from the end of it, 

 there are five 25x120 quonsets. 

 The current total growing area is 

 55,000 square feet. 



The crops are traditional — 

 poinsettias, Easter lilies, boxed 

 annuals plus "lots of everything" in 

 spring, mums grown outside in the 

 fall. Some poinsettias and lilies are 

 wholesaled, but basically, the 

 statement, "We're the largest retail 

 greenhouse in New Hampshire" is 

 true. Visitors are welcome at any 

 time of the year, but the range is 

 specifically open to customers 

 Thanksgiving to Christmas, Easter 

 to the beginning of July, and 

 August 10 through September 20. 



There is some innovation: a few 

 (168) tree poinsettias were grown 

 this year ("start the plant in late 

 May; remove side shoots as it grows; 

 make sure the calcium level is high 

 enough to ensure a strong stem") 

 and sold better than expected. 



But the real experimentation seems 

 to be in how these traditional crops 

 are grown. Annuals are planted in 

 Kord 160 "ten-packs" ("we've used 

 fiber products for twenty years — 

 we've been environmentalists long 

 before it was fashionable"); "the 

 1 60 is Kord's largest market pack 

 and customers seem to go for 

 them." 



Murray Farms has also worked out 

 its own "peninsular modular 

 stackable" benching system. Thie 

 modules are 22" x 6' wooden frames 

 covered with regular 1x2 galvanized 



