Roses are a passion for millions of consumers around the world and they are a critical component of a wholesale florist’s daily business. Roses can represent 30-35 percent of the fresh flower sales in a wholesale house and are the top flower category every month of the year. Our customers use roses in all segments of their business — weddings, funerals, special events, weekly commercial business, and cash-and-carry — and they are all affected by the supply of roses.

Rose breeding is both an art and a science for patient, detail-oriented individuals with a clear view of what is going on in the flower industry. The process of bringing a new rose to market normally takes around five years and crosses are made in the following way.

• Pollen is collected from the stamens, the male part of a flower that consists of the filament and the anther. The process involves removing the anthers from the chosen parent and placing them in a petri dish until they dry sufficiently for the pollen to separate from the rest of the anther.

• Roses are considered the “queen of blooms” and are quite possibly the world’s most popular cut flower.

• Flowers in the Rosa genus belong to the Rosaceae family and include over 100 species and more than 20,000 cultivars. The Rosaceae plant family has a number of flowering and fruit-bearing members, including plums, apricots, peaches and apples.

It’s been an extremely rainy summer with widespread flooding around Lake Wobegon, MN, my fictional hometown on the edge of the prairie. Meanwhile, in my real hometown, our normal June rainfall is 4.25 inches but this year we had 11.36 inches, the wettest month statewide in recorded history. July continued the monsoon trend and I’m contemplating building an ark.

Ready Pac Foods, based in Irwindale, CA, is capitalizing on the soaring popularity of kale with the release of the Ready Pac Baby Kale European Salad Blend.

Jim DiMenna, president of Red Sun Farms, formerly JemD Farms, headquartered in Kingsville, Ontario, will be exhibiting at the PMA Foodservice Conference & Expo in Monterey, CA, on July 25-27 at Booth No. 1. Jim Cathey, sales and sourcing manager for the company, will be attending to represent the company.