Who in the world is going to buy tomato plants?
One day, after Len and Doris had been running the store for a while, Ronnie stopped by with a product idea that would change the course of the business. “I remember Dad pulled up in his Farm Bureau company car. He always had a company car. He got a new one every so many years,” Len explained. “He opened up the trunk and pulled out 4-packs of tomato plants. I remember thinking to myself... “Who in the world is going to buy these tomato plants?”
Ronnie put a 50¢ price sticker on each pack and set them out on the porch. “I mean to tell you, we sold them like (snaps fingers) right away,” laughed Len. His customer’s interest in plants was a welcome surprise for Len. He and his Dad had always maintained a big garden, growing flowers and vegetables.
For Ronnie, it was another benefit from his Farm Bureau connections. “Dad loved to talk to people about everything. While he was selling insurance to one of his customers, they must have gotten talking about tomatoes. I’m sure that led to them talking about what a great idea it would be to sell them at the store,” Len recalls. "That's how it all started. We built one table for the tomatoes. Then one table led to two tables, and so on.”
Shortly thereafter, about 1988, Doris decided she was ready to retire, so Len bought her out. And the garden side of the business continued to expand. “We had built a little makeshift greenhouse over the south side of the store,” said Len. “We started putting plants in there, but it was small and we outgrew it in a year. So, then we built a pretty big greenhouse down below the store and put in a big shade area for perennials. All along, we were just dabbling, but it was fun.”
The best growers
From the beginning, Len wanted to find the best suppliers possible. “I just wanted to have it grown good. If I had to go pick it up, I knew what I wanted,” said Len. “It's not rocket science. You can go up to a plant. If it doesn't look good, you don't buy it.”
Ronnie’s Farm Bureau sales took him all over Central Virginia and into the Valley. “He’d tell people about the garden store and they would suggest potential growers he should talk to,” said Len. “Dad found most of our local growers, like Ebenezer Heights in Culpeper (which is now Windmill Heights). And he found Spring Gardens over in the Valley, who I buy from to this day.”
One long time grower, Ray Shank of Strawberry Acres, would stop by The Corner Store with his trailer loaded with plants. Selecting the plants he knew his customers would like, Len would load up the greenhouse. It wasn’t long that Len was able to buy all his plants from local suppliers, which he sees as a real benefit to his customers.
“Local growers take pride in their plants,” Len explains. “One of my growers said the big box stores want plants ready for market in four to five weeks. She won’t sell to them because she wants the plants to have eight weeks so they have a better root system.”
Local growers also plant the varieties that are more likely to do well in Central Virginia. “Often our growers will test varieties in their own gardens before they put it into production,” explains Len. “They tell me they won’t sell something unless they would grow it themselves. That’s what we want to offer our customers.”
Next time: Moving Day 2000
See Corner Store History: Part 1