At the moment, the Ecuadorian flower market is experiencing a supply decrease of red varieties of roses, especially of the explorer variety. Explorer has long gained and still holds the lead in popularity among the red varieties of Ecuadorian roses. Explorer has also become a basic must-have position when placing orders for St.Valentine's Day, especially for customers from European countries. If previously, for instance, most customers from Spain and Italy bought freedom as a red rose, then over the past 14-15 months almost everyone has switched to explorer, creating additional demand for this variety. Along with that, a number of farms previously focused on customers from Eastern Europe, frightened by the dramatic drop in orders as a result of the Russian war against Ukraine, uprooted a significant amount of the explorer variety, thus reducing its production.

In October-November in preparation for the flower holiday season most Ecuadorian growers annually prune their roses, or pinch. So called 'pinching out' technique or pruning the main stem of a plant to encourage new branches to grow from lower down the stem, which allows the farms to have the harvest increase for the holiday supply. Red and white varieties are pruned to a greater extent, as they are most in demand during the holidays. However, this approach to organizing production entails some disadvantages, especially for more delicate varieties of roses, which include explorer. The explorer variety does not respond well to pruning. Subsequently, the stability of production is often disrupted and a large number of blind shoots (stems without buds) appear. As a result, production may decline.

Some farms still abandon the practice of pruning in order to maintain plant health and stable production cycles. Agronomists of these farms are only trying to “adjust” the necessary production cycles so that a natural harvest surge falls on holiday deliveries. As a rule, such farms have approximately the same volume of flowers throughout the year and their product has more stable quality parameters.

Now it is quite clear which producers and how they approach the issue of pruning in anticipation of getting more stems for the holiday season. Since most farms still prune, you can see less and less of the explorer variety in the supply on the free market, and, as a result, a significant increase in prices for it.

We encourage our customers to place orders in advance. Having a large base of supplier farms, we are more likely to find the items you need.

For those customers who also buy flowers on our web platform of daily on-line offers, we advise you to start purchasing from 7.00 am Ecuadorian time. It is necessary to add that farms are currently poor at negotiating Explorer prices and prefer to sell to the customer who pays the indicated price immediately. In addition, farms confirm explorer along with regular colored varieties, in most cases in a 1:1 ratio. Therefore, when requesting explorer on the web site, be sure to request a colored rose from the same farm. This significantly increases the chances of explorer being confirmed by the farm.

In addition, in such a market situation, we suggest paying attention to other red varieties (freedom, red panther, fortune etc), that are present in the farms’ offers at lower prices and are confirmed without varieties going as a bundle products.