Archive for August, 2010

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 season from materials which otherwise he might discard.

Herbs and other specialty plants also have a good profit potential.

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 a drugstore, use it as a 0.1 or 0.2 per cent solution (1/5 gram in 100 cubic centimeters of water). Your druggist will help you with these measurements. If you are mathematically inclined, convert cubic centimeters into fluid ounces by multiplying the number of cubic centimeters by 0.03381382.

Mutations

Mutations (or sports) are natural changes in plant structure. They occur with fair regularity, but most of them are not improvements over the parent plant. Occasionally, however, some definitely desirable mutation may appear on a plant in your greenhouse. You can propagate from this sport by cuttings (and sometimes by seed) and grow the progeny to flowering stage to really determine the value and the permanence of its novel characteristics.

Keep an alert eye on new foliage and flower growths. Some of them may be mutants valuable enough to be of interest to commercial dealers. Such dealers may want to buy the variety outright or, if you have propagated it, they may want to buy all the stock you have. Mutations in African violets are quite common and many of our best varieties have been discovered as mutants, then propagated, named, and sold. Daylily and marigold hybridizers are constantly searching for the near-white or pure white flower. Some expert hybridizers feel that the pure white varieties of these two garden plants, if and when they finally appear, will be produced as mutants.

Plant Selection

Plant selection merely entails selection over a period of years of the best plants in any given lot. These are self-pollinated or propagated in other ways, and their offspring grown on. Nothing new, other than the possibility of a mutant, is likely to arise, but through conscientious selection-keeping the best and disposing of the poorer, weaker ones-you can develop an outstanding collection of best-in-their-class plants.

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 improvement over existing varie

ties?

3. If it is an entirely new plant, is it vigorous? Will it bloom,

fruit, or produce a quantity of handsome foliage?

4. If it is a pot plant, can it be adapted to household condi

tions so it will be valuable for window gardens?

5. Is it easily propagated?

Any hybrid plant you consider as a prospect for naming and propagation should, preferably, be positive on all five qualificationsa minimum of four anyhow. Point No. 5, for example, has a major bearing on the price you can charge for your new plants. Your packing and shipping costs (for mail orders) will also influence your prices.