Gardening Tips

At that time you can decide whether or not you should quit growing cuttings, since you have all you need,or maybe you like to sell some of your cuttings to a wholesale grower.

Let's discuss how easy it is to start a business selling lining out stock. That’s what nurserymen call the
little plants that they buy to plant out in the field or in containers. Lining out stock, or liners for
short.
“Nurserymen buy plants?” You might be asking.
Yes they do. Nurserymen probably buy more plants than any other group of people in the country.

Why would they buy them if they know how to grow them?
Because sometimes they can’t grow them fast enough to keep up with the demand.

Or maybe they
would like to grow a certain variety of plant, but can’t grow it themselves because they don’t have any
place to get several thousand cuttings.

So what they do is buy in rooted cuttings, plant them in the field or in containers, and then they either grow them on to sell, or they grow them on and just keep
them around a year or two longer so they can take cuttings from them.

Then once they have a supply of their own plants they can sell the ones they bought in, that are now
landscape size. Does this make sense?

Let’s say that Mary the nursery owner buys 1,000 Variegated Weigela rooted cuttings @ 50¢ each. She
plants them in the field in the early spring and they take off growing like crazy.

That summer she goes
out and takes 3 cuttings from each plant (They need pruning away, right?).
She sticks those 3,000 cuttings under intermittent mist and in about 5 weeks she has 3,000 rooted
cuttings that she can plant out that fall, and she does just that. The following summer she can get
about 6,000 cuttings from the original 1000 plants that she bought, plus another 9,000 cuttings from
the 3,000 she planted out last fall.
That’s a total of 12,000 cuttings.

She continues to plant her rooted cuttings out in the field and keeps taking cuttings from them until
she has all she wants to grow. From then on she can take as many cuttings as she needs from the
plants that she has in the field.

By now the original 1,000 plants that she bought @ 50¢ each are large enough to dig and sell, and
they are worth $10.00 to $15.00 each wholesale. That’s $8,000 from a $500 investment, plus she can
produce as many variegated weigela as she wants without buying any more cuttings.
Does it really happen this way? Yes it does.

I was recently talking to a friend who grows and sells all
kinds of plants and he told me that he has been buying Dwarf Alberta Spruce cuttings and growing
them on and selling them. He doesn’t even root any himself, he just buys 5,000 every year, pots them
up and sells them wholesale. How many other nurseryman across the country do you suppose do
that?

To get started you can either buy a stock plant or two, or buy several hundred cuttings of the variety
that you would like to sell. Instead of planting them out in the field, I would plant them in beds. Make
each bed 4’ wide so you can reach the center to weed and take cuttings, and place the plants in the
bed 10” apart.
As long as you keep taking cuttings the plants will remain fairly small, and compact. Then after a two
or three years dig them up, put them in pots and sell them. By then you will have thousands more
coming on that you can take cuttings from. Start out slow until you know what there is a market for.

Michael J. McGroarty is the author of this article. Visit his most interesting website, Free Plants and sign up for his excellent gardening newsletter.

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How To Keep Your Geraniums For Next Spring

In the fall when moving your geraniums indoor, first prune them gently, taking sad looking leaves and flowers off (yes, even if it hurts).

Then, keep trimming the new growth all the way to spring in order to stop the plant to weaken too much.

All you will have to do in the spring will be to cut the stems back to three (3) undeveloped buds above the woody base and place them in a bright, but not too sunny spot.

When the weather turns warm enough, bring them outdoor and enjoy them all summer again and repeat the same procedure in the fall. This way you will always have free flowers to pretty up your summer garden.

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