Plant City Farm Grows 2 Million Marigolds for Day of the Dead

Sánchez Farm in Plant City will produce roughly 2 million cempasúchil marigolds this season, a crop that spans seven acres and draws buyers from three states. The harvest weighs between 16 and 24 metric tons, based on estimates from Carlos López, who has run sales at the farm since 2021.

Carolina López and her husband, Fidel Sánchez, planted their first acre of the Mexican marigold in 2019. That first year, half the seedlings died. The couple used savings to buy the seed and learned how to prepare furrows, adjust irrigation, and tend the plants. The first sales season came in 2020. Carolina López loaded a pickup with cut flowers and sold out by around 9 a.m. She repeated the run until three truckloads were gone.

The farm now sells wholesale to buyers in Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, with Atlanta taking the largest share, according to Carolina López. During the season, about 60 people work the property, most of them Hispanic, Carlos López said. He said the crew supports one another through the busiest days.

Fidel Sánchez turned the flower sale into a festival. The farm grounds now hold handicraft stalls, food vendors, horse exhibitions, jaripeo rodeo, and traditional dance performances. Families from Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador come for the flowers and stay for the rest. Iván Pliego, the Mexican consul in Orlando, visited the farm this month and said the site keeps Mexican memory alive in Florida. "It is a devotion to the memory of those who came before us, remembering them and keeping them present in our minds and in our hearts," Pliego said.

Cultivation starts in August, four months before the flowers are cut. The family conditions the soil, installs and upgrades irrigation, sows seed, and applies fertilizer. Nov. 1 and 2 mark the dates when families in Mexico place marigolds on ofrendas for the dead, a practice Carolina López learned from her grandparents. She said the orange color is the light that guides returning spirits back to their families.

Preparations for next season begin after this harvest closes.