Growing Plants for Fun or Profit
by Michael J. McGroarty - mcplants@ncweb.com
Do you enjoying growing your own landscape plants from cuttings? Have you ever thought about growing small plants to sell? Whether you'd like to make a little extra money raising plants in your backyard, or just like growing them for your own use, or to give away, this article will provide you with some valuable plant propagation tips.
Realizing success with plant propagation can be summarized in two words. Timing, and technique. The secret is to use the proper technique at the right time of the year. Once you learn how to match your technique with the appropriate season, you will easily propagate thousands of landscape plants. All with very little cost to you.
Let's start with “Layering”, a technique that works great in early spring. Layering is actually very simple to do, and works well with many flowering shrubs such as Forsythia, Weigela, Hydrangea, Mockorange and others. To layer a plant all you do is bend a branch down to the ground, dig a little trench, force the branch into the trench with the tip of the branch sticking up and out of the ground, and cover the branch with soil. In other words, you bend the branch to the ground, then bend it in a “U” shape at the point where it reaches the ground, and you bury the bottom of the “U” in the soil.
One end of the branch is still attached to the parent plant, and the other end is sticking up out of the ground, while part of the branch is buried under the soil. You can place a weight on the soil to keep the branch from popping out of the ground. To increase your chances of success using this technique you can wound the part of the branch that is buried under the soil by scraping the bark on just one side of the branch with a knife, and then treat the wounded area with a rooting compound. Rooting compounds can be found at most garden centers.
Leave the branch buried until late fall, when you can loosen the soil and pop it out of the ground. At this time you will find that the plant has rooted, and you can remove the new plant from the parent simply by clipping just below the new roots. This technique is quite effective because the cutting is still attached to the parent plant during the rooting process.
Another propagation technique that is extremely effective starting around June 1st. And throughout the summer is “Intermittent Mist”. Intermittent mist is used to propagate softwood cuttings. A softwood cutting is a cutting taken from the new growth of a plant. When plants put on new growth in the spring, that new growth is very soft and pliable, and hardens off as the growing season progresses. By fall this new growth hardens off to the point that it is hard and brittle.
Softwood cuttings of many plants will root quickly and easily, but they are very delicate and will wilt in a matter of minutes if not cared for properly. By using intermittent mist you can keep the cuttings healthy as they root. Intermittent mist is the technique of applying a fine spray of water on a regular basis throughout the day. A typical mist cycle is a 10 second spray of water every 5 minutes.
Until recently it was impractical for home gardeners to use intermittent mist because the cost of the equipment was prohibitive. That's not the case anymore. You can buy a battery operated water valve/timer combination that hooks to your garden hose that will control the misting cycle for you. To learn more about the equipment and the technique visit www.freeplants.com and click on “Plant Propagation Using Intermittent Mist”.
Intermittent mist is like magic. Cuttings will develop incredible root systems in just weeks when you use intermittent mist. Mist works on many plants, even evergreens. When using mist you can start your evergreen cuttings in late July through September.
You can also root hardwood cuttings of both deciduous plants and evergreen during the fall and winter using a simple bed of sand. Hardwood cuttings take longer to root, but you don't need any special equipment, nor do they require much care. To learn more about all of these techniques, visit www.freeplants.com. At this website you will find articles on a variety of different plant propagation techniques that work great at home.
If you'd like to grow plants for profit, you'll find the market for plants is huge. Especially if you offer small plants at reasonable prices. At our backyard nursery we sell our plants for $4.00 each in 2 quart containers, and you should see the people that show up for our plant sales. We sell all kinds of flowering shrubs and evergreens, and the people go crazy over them. They're like kids in a candy store.
You don't need much room to start your own backyard nursery. Our little nursery is only 1/20 of one acre, that's an area about 45' by 50', and you can easily grow thousands of plants in an area half that size. We grow approximately 5,000 plants at a time in our little nursery.
If you live in an area where you can not make retail sales from your home, or if you don't care to deal with that many people, you can grow plants and sell them wholesale. Wholesale buyers are always looking for good plants they can buy at fair prices. There is also a good market for rooted cuttings or seedlings. Dogwoods are actually quite easy to grow from seed, and those seedlings can be sold by the thousands. They can be packed and shipped to just about anywhere in the country quite easily.
At www.freeplants.com you can learn how to grow Dogwoods from seed as well as Japanese Red Maples. You can also communicate with others who share your interest via the message board. Visiting www.freeplants.com is a daily routine for many gardeners. They stop in, check the message board, respond to messages that interest them, and read a few articles at the site.
Plant propagation is a wonderful skill to learn. Taking a cutting from your favorite plant and being able to root that cutting brings a person a degree of satisfaction that only a gardener can appreciate. If the hustle and bustle of your daily life is stressing you out, learn to garden. A garden is a magic place where human beings can work in perfect harmony with birds, bees, butterflies, and other friendly creatures.
Leave your cordless telephone in the house, there's something about that electronic device that can hamper your gardening efforts. Take a pen and paper with you in case you feel the need to communicate with somebody, you can write them a letter. You do remember how to do that don't you?
Michael J. McGroarty is the author of the booklet “The Secret of Growing Landscape Plants from Cuttings”. Send $4.00 to Garden Secrets, P.O. Box 338, Perry, Ohio 44081. He also publishes a free E-mail newsletter, you can subscribe at www.freeplants.com, where you can learn more about the backyard nursery business.
