Tag Archives: bacopa

My Plant and Plug Orders For 2012

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Here’s some pretty dry information about ordering plugs for my upcoming season.

Above is an order confirmation for some Calibrachoa plugs. 932 of them.  I left out the pricing  but this is a typical order. I placed the order in Sept of 2011 for 1-30-2012. The broker is Wehop and the plug supplier is Fessler Nursery. They are a large plug grower for our area.  You can see that the plugs come either 72 or 100 to a tray. These are all intended for baskets so most of them will be planted into 3 1/2″ pots for the first 6 weeks or so until they get a good root system.They will be ready to go into baskets then. I will usually plant them 4 or 5 to a basket. The trixi-liners are a liner that is bigger and has 3 different colors in it.  They use sets of 3 of the most popular combinations in a trixi-liner.

The cost for these trixis is about two and a half times the cost of a regular plug. With these I plant three into a 12″ basket and put a white Magadi lobelia into the center of the basket. These were a very good seller last year. Added to the cost of the individual plug, which is 56 cents each this year, you also have to add 4 cents for royalty fee and 5 cents for the plant tag that goes into each pot. So for 932 plugs I am in about $900 plus $12 shipping. Based on 4 plugs to a basket i will end up with 233 baskets out of this one order.

Above is an order for fuchsia starts and begonia liners as well as some lewisia liners. 922 plants total also for delivery on 1-30-2012.

The fuchsias will go into combo baskets and the begonias are mostly the trailing varieties and will go into baskets too.This will add 150 baskets to my plan for the year. Begonias are a little tricky to grow and will rot off at the base but if you grow them dry enough and have good air movement in the greenhouse you will do alright. These begonias also require some additional lighting until mid March. The pic below is 3 fuchsia starts one Bacopa and a lobelia in the center that winds through the whole basket.

Fuchsia Combo

Combination Baskets

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Below are a few baskets I have done  over the last couple of years. I lost pictures of hundreds of others. I will be refilling my media library this year as I produce more baskets. The first basket is a trailing Begonia, it is in the illumination series. This one and the apricot are my absolute best sellers. If I had the patience to hold on to them until they were in the shape this one is I’m sure I could get $25-$30 each.

Trailing Begonia

These like more shade than sun and will keep blooming until into October.They are fairly easy to grow. If you keep them on the dry side and give them a systemic pesticide to keep the bugs down you can produce an awesome basket. These also like very good air circulation to keep them from rotting, and warm nighttime temps (65 degrees) to get them really growing fast.

 

The next on is a repeat from an earlier post. It is a combo Fuchsia with Bacopa and Lobelia.

 

Fuchsia Combo

Kind of hard to see because of the background.This basket has about $3.50 worth of plugs in it and is a sure seller. .I use 12″ plastic baskets with plastic hangers. I used to use the pulp baskets but they have gotten too costly for me. Plastic seems to produce a basket that is just as nice as the pulp pots.

Above are the combo of the Supertunias I mentioned in an earlier post, these are deceiving, as pretty as they look now these are the baskets that I mentioned that went to hell this year. I will be replacing as many as possible for customers that bought them and then had bad luck with them. Can you guess how many Supertunias  I will be doing this coming year? If you guessed zero you win. Note the patio pots below the baskets.Those are mixes with geraniums and some other odds and ends like strawflower or yellow marigolds and Euphorbia.