Trần Quốc Dũng, a chrysanthemum grower in Ninh Giang Ward, Khánh Hoà Province, takes care of his garden. Photo tienphong.vn

KHÁNH HOÀ - Chrysanthemum growers in Khánh Hoà central coastal province’s Ninh Giang Ward are worried about lower demand due to the impact of the pandemic.

There are less than two months until the new Lunar New Year, yet flower gardens in Ninh Giang Ward of Ninh Hòa Town, the chrysanthemum capital of Khánh Hòa, are still quiet with no traders arriving.

Ninh Giang's gardens annually provide hundreds of thousands of flower pots for the southern provinces for Tết.

This year's pandemic has left many local flower growers not daring to plant flowers for the Tết Holiday, with a few households planting on a small area about half the size of previous years.

Lương Thị Mỹ Vệ, 42, said she rented a slot of land in Phong Châu, Ninh Giang Ward to grow the flowers.

“Every year, my family grows from 500 to 600 pots of flowers, but this year due to the pandemic, I only dared to plant 200 pots,” she said. “Chrysanthemum growing is the traditional job of my family so I still want to follow it.”

She said that this year the costs of flower pots, seeds and fertilizer had all increased.

“There was a time when my whole flower garden was infected with leaf disease, so the cost of the drug was also much more expensive than usual,” said Vệ.

“From the beginning of the flower growing season, I was afraid that COVID-19 would affect demand, now I am even more worried because the pandemic situation is still complicated.”

By this time last year, there were traders coming to the garden to make a deposit, this year she has not received any phone calls from traders.

Different from many local flower growers, Trần Quốc Dũng, 55, said this year he had planted 1,500 flower pots, an increase of 300 pots compared to last year.

“I saw the outbreak of COVID-19 at the beginning of the flower growing season, I thought that by the end of the year the pandemic would be under control,” he said.

“But with only two months for Tết to come, I am really worried about flower consumption.”

He spent about VNĐ80 million for the chrysanthemum garden. “Every day I go to the garden to take care of the flowers, I can only pray that from now until Tết, the pandemic situation gets under control so that local growers and I can sell all our flowers.

Phan Sang, chairman of the Ninh Giang Ward Farmers Association, said that this year, there had only been 90 flower-growing households, and 25,000 pots of flower, a reduction of 57 households and 125,000 pots against last year.

“Although the number of flowers is not much, HCM City market is the main market. Due to the serious impact of the pandemic on the transport of goods and services, the sellers will face difficulties,” Sang said.

Huỳnh Chiếm Đạt, vice chairman of the Ninh Giang People's Committee, said that in the worst scenario flowers would not be transported to HCM City, and local authorities would try their best to promote the flowers on the mass media to help growers sell across the whole province.

In 2017, the National Office of Intellectual Property granted a certificate for the "Ninh Giang Chrysanthemum" trademark. VNS