Growing for the House-Plant Market – Abutilon, Acanthacea

Tropical foliage plants are enormously and deservedly popular. Many new homes are being constructed with built-in planter bins and unusual planters or combination planter-room-dividers, some with artificial lighting units. This-combined with the long-standing market for potted and bare-root foliage plants for old-fashioned window gardens, water planters, etc. -spells “ready money” for almost any kind of foliage house plant you may grow.

Some of the large foliage plants are popular for use on totem poles in pots or to grow in large plastic or wooden pots or tubs. Most foliage plants propagate rapidly and are easy to grow- a real asset when you are considering them as profit-making plants. Many indoor gardeners like flowering plants for their window gardens. You have plenty of leeway in the plants you choose to grow for these customers-from miniature gloxinias and African violets to shrub like flowering maple. This chapter is devoted to the better foliage and flowering plants-better for your customer because of their good performance and better for you because of their cultural reliability and built-in sales appeal.

Abutilon

The flowers of Abutilon, the flowering maple, look like paper bells and come in near-white, rose, and orange. You may have to purchase your first plant, and from this you can make fall and early winter cuttings. A soil of equal parts of loam, peatmoss, and sand seems to keep abutilon happy. During summer it can be grown under ordinary warm greenhouse conditions. In the winter the plants fare best in a cool greenhouse. Fall cuttings will be salable 3-inch plants by April or May.

Acanthacea

Three members of the Acanthacea family make good material for small pots. Beloperone guttata, the shrimp plant, is usually a popular novelty. It has showy spikes of salmon-colored bracts; the flowers are of lesser interest. The plant needs a steady supply of moisture and grows best with regular liquid feeding.

Hypoestis sanguinolenta, the pink polka-dot plant, has dark green leaves dotted and splashed with a vivid shade of pink. The flowers are small and purple, borne on long-stemmed bracts. I know of no plant that is a faster propagator. Terminal cuttings struck in any media are ready for 2-inch pots within 3 weeks. Few dealers offer this plant, and it should prove an instant success as a sales item for counters or roadside markets.

Crossandra, another acanthacea relative, has waxy green leaves that are a perfect foil for the bracts of salmon-hued flowers. If you want to grow these plants in quantity, sow seeds in spring, in a flat of milled sphagnum. They germinate more speedily with bottom heat, but if you are unable to supply this place them in a 70-degree house and cover the planting with a pane of glass. Germination usually takes place in 2 to 3 weeks, although I have waited as long as 6 weeks for the last of a batch to show life. As the plants crowd, shift them to 2-inch pots. With twice-a-month feeding of liquid fertilizer, they will flower in these pots. It takes about 6 months from germination to flower, but the foliage is so attractive plants sell at 4 months without flowers.

All three should be pinched to prevent legginess. They can be propagated through cuttings at any time of year. Rooting is easily accomplished in sand, vermiculite, or sphagnum moss.

Keywords: Greenhouse Gardening, Landscaping, Plants, Pool, Gardener, Landscape, Trees

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