Business Spotlight: Grow What You Know

Daniel Jalaly’s gardening and business operations background stems from his time owning a cannabis company in Colorado from 2009-16. When Missouri approved medical marijuana in 2018, he saw it as the perfect opportunity to open a gardening center in Springfield.

Jalaly opened Harvest Grow Supply in 2019 to sell the equipment needed to grow all types of plants using both the hydroponic system and regular soil, including for the budding new industry. Hydroponic gardening is an efficient method that allows plants to grow more quickly and lets owners have more control over their plants’ life by growing in water instead of soil.

“Some people go hydroponics because they like the control and the ability to affect the plant quicker,” says Jalaly. “Whereas other people go with soil, and, to me, soil is generally the easy way because you’re not needing so many parts to do the system.”

Harvest Grow Supply sells gardening supplies for all types of plants, as well as the plants themselves. The more than a thousand gardening products offered include containers, insecticide, fungicide, soil and growing media.

“We sell to anybody and everybody who has something to do with plants,” says Jalaly, adding that the springtime is popular for regular seed-to-sow gardening and for starting raised beds. 

Jalaly says the type of gardening customers do is based on their personal preference. He notes that his team holds the knowledge to help every customer solve the problems they might be having.  His background is mainly in growing cannabis, and, now that it is legal to grow in Missouri, he’s able to help customers with interest in the budding cannabis industry.

Jalaly runs the 6,000-square-foot building at 1332 N Glenstone Ave. along with two employees. In 2021, he opened a second location in Hartville that is no longer in operation.

The knowledge his team holds is integral to sales because it allows them to grow their clientele.

“One of my employees has a degree in horticulture; the other one has been growing since the ’80s at least,” says Jalaly, noting his 12 years of experience. “There’s not many things we run into that we don’t understand.”

Diverse knowledge
Jorgie Peaster, an employee at Harvest Grow Supply since its inception, gained her experience through years of working in greenhouses and a degree in plant sciences from Ozarks Technical Community College. These tools have helped her aid customers on an in-depth basis.

“My degree has helped me identify nutrient deficiencies and fungal and pest issues and help people correct those things with different products in the store,” says Peaster. “We genuinely want to help people figure out their issues and get their maximum yield out of the products they are growing.”

Peaster says their main sellers are non-soil growing media, like orchid bark and mushroom compost blends, as well as soil, because they offer a wide variety of high-quality soil compared to other gardening stores. For hydroponics, they tend to sell a lot of hydroton and clay pebbles.

She also notes that the older generations are starting to gear toward hydroponics to grow all types of plants because it can grow inside year-round and does not require as much strenuous effort as growing in soil outside.

“It conserves water really well and conserves soil, even,” says Peaster. “You change the water once a week and conserve it all week long until the next week.”

Working together
Jalaly has worked with Finley Farms, Springfield Community Gardens and other commercial farms, to name a few.

“We sell to a few smaller commercial farms that are growing lettuces, herbs, vegetables, things of that nature,” says Jalaly. “We also work with Springfield Public Schools with some of their horticulture things.”

Jalaly and his team have aided SPS’ Study Alternative School Garden. Kendall Slaughter, a Farm to School Program specialist with SPS, says he reached out to Jalaly for knowledge about hydroponics systems.

“I reached out to Harvest to see if they could better explain how our systems worked before we attempted to set them up,” says Slaughter. “Daniel and Jorgie came to Study and talked us through how to set up and maintain the systems that had been donated to the program.”

On top of assisting with setup, Jalaly donated a grow light to the EcoLab for the ebb-and-flow system in the classroom. Slaughter says they have also bought different materials for the system through Harvest Grow Supply, such as electric pH testers, hydroton, air pumps and tubing.

The products range greatly in price, with water control products among the costliest and pots and cannabis storage bags among the least expensive. Prices vary greatly, with items like sprouting pots selling for less than a dollar and a tabletop trimmer going for $4,200, and grow lights ranging from a few hundred dollars to just over $1,000.

Harvest Grow Supply also sells and offers delivery. Jalaly says he plans to grow offerings online and in-store with the goal of expanding the company’s local market share.