Perhaps you are not particularly interested in making money from selling potted plants, bulbs, or seeds. Still, you want a self-supporting or profit-making greenhouse. A number of hybridizers use their greenhouses to hasten the growth of many plants, including iris, hemerocallis, and roses. Others devote their houses to the propagation of dahlias. Still others find a greenhouse ideal for promoting the growth of young evergreens which will eventually be sold for landscaping.

If you don’t sell all of the annuals started in your greenhouse, why not set them out in the garden and grow them for cut flowers? Leftover tomato plants can also be handled profitably. A roadside proprietor near us sets his in neat rows out in the garden. When the tomatoes ripen he puts up this sign:

Tomatoes-Vine Ripened

YOU PICK ‘EM

50 per bushel

With no more work than the original planting, and some weeding and watering, this grower realizes hundreds of dollars every

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Chromosomes and colchicine

All plants bear within their cells microscopic substances called chromosomes. These, along with other elements, determine such characteristics as height, contour, flowers, foliage, fruit, and roots, as well as the degree of hardiness of the variety. (For a detailed report on chromosomes see, Chromosome Atlas of Flowering Plants by C. D. Darlington and A. P. Wylie.)

Through the use of the drug colchicine it is possible to alter chromosome numbers, thereby creating new types of plants. Apply the colchicine solution directly to the growing tip of the plant. The changes which occur will show as the plant matures. These may be desirable developments such as a change to thicker stems and larger flowers, which we find in the Supreme types of African violets and in such garden plants as the Tetra snapdragons.

Colchicine can be purchased at drugstores and some seed stores, or directly from Romaine B. Ware, Canby, Oregon. If you procure it from

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My first step in marketing a new plant is to write to a firm of my choice asking if they would be interested in handling my plant. I always enclose with my letter a stamped, self-addressed envelope and a picture of the plant. If you have a colored picture, it will show the plant to best advantage, but a black-and-white photo is better than nothing. If the firm’s reply expresses interest, I next send them some of the flowers and leaves. These are wrapped carefully, enclosed in a plastic bag, and dispatched via airmail.

If you have commercial dealers in your city, you may not have to look far for a market for your new plants. Why not call on some of them, carrying with you a potted plant or two? These concerns are always on the lookout for good new salable material.

Here are points to consider when you contemplate marketing a new plant.

1. Will the plant be useful over a wide area, or will it be

restricted by climate?

2. Is this plant a definite

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Here is a situation that you may have to meet. You have a plant you want to cross with another, but the early-flowering one threatens to be devoid of bloom before the second plant comes into flower. You can deal with this by storing pollen for a few days in a cool, dry room. I have kept amaryllis and gloxinia pollen for 5 days in a drugstore vial kept in the refrigerator.

A surer method is this:

1. Place several grains of calcium chloride in a glass vial.

2. Make a wad of non-waxed paper and stuff it in the vial

directly above the calcium chloride.

3. Wrap the pollen in plain, non-waxed paper.

4. Place the pollen packet in the vial on top of the wad of

paper, thus preventing direct contact with the chemical.

5. Store in a refrigerator.

Although you need but a few granules of calcium chloride, you may have to purchase it in half-pound lots. The cost however is low, about 75 cents for this amount. Pollen thus stored keeps

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The mechanics of hybridizing are simple, as I have shown in the chapters on special plants. Apply the powdery pollen from one plant (the staminate or male parent) to another, the mother or pistilate parent. The plant receiving the pollen will (if the pollination is successful) be the seed-bearing parent.

For your first work in plant breeding, you will probably select closely related plants, merely crossing them for a change in flower color or foliage form. As you advance, however, you may go a step further and select plants that are not so closely related. Here you must be prepared for meager success at the outset and perhaps for quite a while, but if you do develop intergeneric crosses, you generally have something very new indeed in the plant world.

Some flowers have the ability to self-pollinate. To safeguard against this, prepare your seed-bearing parent by cutting off petals and pollen-bearing anthers-the process known as emasculation. For success, you should know

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Hybridizing, or plant breeding, offers many profit-making opportunities to the new as well as the experienced grower. It is in this field that your greenhouse is most essential-an indispensable time- and money-saver for you. Many of the varieties you originate will appeal to the “dessert market”-collectors and other gardeners who, unmindful of cost, want to have the latest thing. You will find some of these customers in your vicinity, but you may have to rely mainly on mail-order sales.

Commercial men who stock new and different plants may provide an outlet for your hybrids. Still another possibility is supplying smaller dealers with stock on terms whereby you receive a percentage of sales.

My Greenhouse-Grown Hybrids

I have developed a number of unusual hybrids-gloxinias, African violets, and amaryllis-but my most salable plants are my gloxineras. These are intergeneric crosses between rech-steinerias and sinningias. But I don’t spend nearly as

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How to Color Flowers

For special occasions such as Valentine’s Day or St. Patrick’s Day, or to pick up a definite color scheme, you may have to color flowers red, green, blue, or some other color. You can do this by adding a dye to the water and leaving the flowers in the water for 24 or more hours. Then there’s a liquid dye for dipping them, and a colored dust for dusting them, both methods giving instantaneous color. A new aerosol spray can be used on all flowers, fresh or dried, to give them the color your customer wants. This spray is not harmful to petals or foliage.

If you want to brighten up leaves, use one of the colorless sprays such as Plant Shine. This gives the foliage of cut flowers or house plants a good sheen.

Display Windows

If your shop is large enough to have a display window, keep it interesting with well-designed arrangements and corsages, pot plants, and accessories. Try to have a theme. And especially try to arrange

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Flower arranging and designing will help you make more profit from your greenhouse. Some of the flowers and foliage you use can be grown in your greenhouse or gardenother material will have to be purchasedpreferably from a wholesaler, if one is accessible to you. New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Decoration Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are the big holidays when cut flowers, arrangements, accessories, greens, and corsages are in greatest demand. But there is also year-round trade for birthdays, parties, showers, weddings, and funerals. And there are other special days, and weeksFather’s Day, Halloween, Fourth of July, St. Patrick’s Day, Secretarial Week, and Sweetest Day (proclaimed sometime in mid-October). Your local Chamber of Commerce can fill you in on these dates.

If you have never made floral arrangements or corsages, it will pay you to take a course, locally or by mail. You might also do apprentice work at a local

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An Illinois enthusiast grows orchids to make use of the blank and too often useless wall of his attached-to-the-home greenhouse. He fastens l1/2-inch galvanized mesh to the wall with expansion bolts. He pierces pieces of oak bark and inserts galvanized wire hangers to suit each piece of bark. These bits of wire are bent and hooked. Their small size permits him to hang them as close to or as far from the wall as is necessary. Pots can also be hung like this with little difficulty.

The Rehs of Illinois, whose Fiberglas greenhouse is described on page 40, grow many plants, but their profit-maker is orchids at wholesale. They sell cut flowers and plants to local florists in the St. Louis area, and they do all the work themselves caring for approximately 4,000 plants. Since these plants are for resale only, they avoid having to collect the state sales tax and make a monthly report on it. In the local market their home-grown orchids bring 50 cents more per blossom than shipped-in orchids.

With

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Dendrobium

Dendrobiums are epiphytes, producing their 3-inch flowers in pairs or triplets. The flowers have firm substance, are easy to ship, and will keep a long time in storage. The plants grow rather tall and must be staked. Give them full light, keep them warm and humid during the summer, cooler and drier in the winter. Dendrobiums come in white, orchid, purple, red, and orange.

Species Dendrobium nobile produces white-petaled, amethyst-tipped flowers; D. album, white; D. Colmanianum, large white with a yellow marking (disk) on the lip; D. aureum has yellow sepals and petals, and Arundel is yellow.

Laelia

Laelias, originating in Mexico, are a delightful group of fall-and winter-flowering orchids, closely related to cattleyas. Give them strong light and a 60- to 65-degree temperature. This plant is often used to cross-pollinate cattleyas.

Laelia anceps, with yellow-marked, red flowers, is a favorite; L. alba is white with a yellow marking on the

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