Archive for the 'home greenhouse' Category

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.

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 from 1 to 3 months, depending on type.

One grain of pollen makes but one seed, so whenever possible, give the stigma a thorough coating of pollen to encourage heavy seed bearing.

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 when the stigma is ready to receive the pollen. In African violets the signal is the appearance of a tiny white blob on the tip of the stigma; in gloxinias the stigma spreads to reveal an opening. In rechsteinerias and many other flowers, the pistil elongates, reaching out over the petals and almost invariably showing a white tip. Many flowers have a drop of sticky substance on the stigma when they are ready for pollination. In amaryllis, the pistil elongates and divides into three parts.

If possible, choose a sunny day for pollinating-especially with African violets: you will find that the pollen becomes more powdery and easier to handle.

If you are working on special crosses, bag the pollinated pistil with cellophane or slip a large soda straw over it and bend the end of it shut. This will avoid introducing foreign pollen carried by insects or brushed on with your hand as you water or handle plants.

With special crosses, it is important to keep records. Tag the pollinated flowers with a slip of paper (or use a stationary tag) on which you have detailed the following information: names of seed and pollen parents, date of pollination. If you plan much plant breeding, enter these data in a record book. Such records are valuable, and you will surely need them if you register or sell the offspring of a cross.

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 much time on hybridizing as I’d like to-and that apparently is the case with most other greenhouse growers. Thus the field is wide open-the market for new pot plants has never been better, and competition here is all but nil. Why not set your hands to hybridizing some of your plants? They can help you get a better profit from your greenhouse if you give them a chance.

Many Plants Can Be Tried

One greenhouse grower in Missouri makes a profit from creating new varieties of ferns. Others in the same area developing and selling hybridized African violets and gloxinias. An Oregon grower has produced a strain of hardy azaleas-all started from seeds in the greenhouse. Amateur as well as professional greenhouse gardeners have developed new chrysanthemums-some as seedlings, others as mutants.

I can’t possibly give the whole story of the “how-to, when-to, what-to-do” of plant hybridizing. But the following ideas should at least give you a start.

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 something appropriate for holidays, special days and, of course, the seasons.

Many Ways to Profit

Investigate the profit possibilities in supplying local businesses and stores with regular flower arrangements. Also, look into driftwood and dried-flower arrangements. You may be able to build a profitable volume by offering flower arrangement accessories and supplies to your customers. For this, and almost any other aspect of your business, a close contact with local garden clubs will prove extremely helpful.

A specialized-but big potential-venture lies in flocking wreaths, sprays, etc., for Christmas decorations in homes and offices. You can buy or rent flocking machines which simplify and accelerate production.

But operating a retail flower business, even in a small way, is not a thing to be considered in haste or in brief outlines of operation. You should then find out a great deal before you spend time and money to set up a retail business. There’s much to learn-much more than can be properly presented here. So consider my suggestions about books, schools, and practical apprentice training. The more you know the less risk you run of “getting burned,” and the quicker you will be able to establish a profitable operation. (See the Information Source List in the Appendix.)

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 florist shop, and read books on this profit-making aspect of greenhouse operation. Your classified telephone directory will provide names of schools near you; correspondence schools advertise in national magazines.

Flower Design as a Career

A gardener in Washington who took a mail-order course in floral design for only 6 weeks, soon earned enough from sales of corsages, funeral sprays, and flower arrangements to pay for her course and show a profit. Another in Georgia earns as she learns by specializing in arrangements for silver and golden wedding anniversaries and church weddings.

You might enjoy flower designing so much that you will want to go to work for a local florist and specialize in this phase of commercial floriculture. Florist shops offer wonderful opportunities for those who enjoy working with flowers and dealing with the public.

Flowers on Commission

If your greenhouse is not large enough to grow the flowers you want for retail, and your town has no florist shop, you might try taking orders-that is, being the local agent for a florist shop in a nearby city. Many small towns have no florist, but still there is a demand for designs and arrangements for special occasions. An out-of-town shop will pay you a commission of 15 to 25 per cent of the selling price for handling their flowers.

Cutting and Storing Flowers

Some authorities recommend cutting flowers in the early morning when stems and flower heads contain a large amount of moisture. Others recommend later-afternoon cutting. It probably makes little difference if no foliage is attached to the stem, as with gladiolus, narcissus, orchids, and many other plants. Where there is a lot of foliage, I like morning. Cut-flower customers prefer-and pay more for-long-stemmed roses, snapdragons, stock, and chrysanthemums. With corsage flowers- orchids, camellias, and gardenias-stem length is unimportant.

Deep plunging of flowers into water immediately after they are cut reduces water loss from leaves, helps retain turgidity, and adds to life. Cut flowers should be kept out of bright sun and draughts, and humidity should be increased. Petalife and other water-soluble preservatives make cut flowers last longer. You can stock these products either to sell or to give away with each flower order.

Flowers placed in sealed packages and kept in temperatures of 40 to 50 degrees will keep weeks longer than the same flowers placed in water and stored at the same temperatures. Scrub all containers and keep them clean, for better appearance as well as to remove the bacteria which shorten the life of flowers.

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 cisterns of rain water available, and plenty of light, they find they can feed their orchids more heavily and more often than most growers. Water temperature approximates a warm rain by an adjustment between the hot-water tank and the direct line from the cistern. An old, water-softener tank was converted, by replacing chemicals with fine sand, into a filter to remove algae and fungus spores. This keeps pots and osmunda fiber clean and fresh longer, and the roots of the plants are not smothered by an accumulation of moss and dirt. The Rehs grow their plastic-house orchids wetter than do glasshouse gardeners. Their phalaenopsis and cymbidiums, especially, seemed to be in a much damper growing medium than I have observed elsewhere. In their Fiberglas house, air circulation is increased according to seasonal temperatures.

L. J. Milan of Tulsa, Oklahoma, built an 8- by 20-foot orchid house for only $200.00, including benches. Walls and ceilings were made from spent, 48-inch, fluorescent light tubes. It has weathered 4 years of Oklahoma hailstorms and winter temperatures occasionally as low as 10 degrees. He makes a good profit on flowers alone and sells no plants. In winter he heats economically with two 15,000 BTU orchid-house-unit heaters, and holds the temperature at 60 degrees.

Orchid success stones are legion. You can always be sure of sales if you grow these plants.

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 lip; L. purpurata has large flowers with sepals and white petals flushed with rose and a purple lip.

87. Herbs offer another out-of-the-ordinary income source. You can sell them as novel house plants or for spring garden planting. Incidentally, and this holds true for herbs, begonias, gesneriads, and all the rest, you would be wise to have printed some cards of cultural recommendations to give away with each plant purchase. This will save you much time and trouble, and will also effectively publicize your name. (Courtesy, George J. Ball, Inc.)

Phalaenopsis

These produce sprays of 2- to 5-inch flowers, up to one hundred per branch, usually in late winter to early summer. They make fine hanging-basket plants and will grow in shadier locations than most other orchids in daytime temperatures of 70 to 75 degrees. Phalaenopsis gloriosa is white and pink; P. ama-bilis, white with purple dots and yellow stains.