Here are a few new pictures from the last planting. Sorry there isn’t more but I’m getting ready for a Home and Garden Show this month.
Saturday
Sunday
Several hundred Bacopa
peek a boo, kiki gets comfortable in the sock drawer.
Today I am starting a series on selecting,locating and site prepping for your new greenhouse as well as building your new Greenhouse Kit.
Almost 3' of Snow
The picture above shows what can happen in our area. It also shows that the kits that we manufacture can stand up to the snow as well as the wind. Note how the snow breaks off of the top of the house as it gets to just over 12″ deep. You might also note that the second greenhouse in the row has no snow on the front 15′ of the roof. That is the house that has heat in the front of it. The back is not heated and you can see where the snow starts again.
I obviously think that the greenhouses kits that we make are the best all around kit. (imagine that).Some of the reasons why are strength against snow and wind. They are big enough to grow in either on benches or on the ground. They are small enough and low enough (7’6″ for the 10′ wide) that they are easier to heat and cool and also stop less wind. These kits are attached to the ground with a 24″ long stub. The bow drops 6″ into the stub and the 2×4 that acts as the foundation frame is bolted to both the stub and bow. If any part of the greenhouse is going to blow away the whole thing has to go. That’s not too likely of an occurance and has never happen yet.
Shown above is a house under construction. Tomorrow we will start building a house by defining the best site on you property and the best way to locate the house on it.
If you want specifics on your site leave a comment.
I”m getting ready to start planting for next year. I have already planted red,yellow and walla walla sweet onion seeds. I like to plant them into jumbo 6 paks. I fill the pak with soil then sprinkle three or four seeds over each cell, trying to keep the seeds separated a bit. These seedlings will each end up in your garden. I cover the seed with about a quarter of an inch of soil then water in gently. These paks will produce around 18 plants each so one of each type is enough for our garden. The rest I will sell for $2.50 a pak. I could probably get more but all they do is sit in a corner until they go to market. This is the second year on each of the seeds packages and I still have seed left in them. We still have a few red onions in the raised bed garden that we will use in the next few weeks.
My Begonias Fuchsias and a couple of flats of Lewisia will be here in the last week of January. So will my first planting of Calibrachoa. Most of the calis are single cell plants but a few flats of 72 plants each are what is known as a trixie-liner. This plug has 3 different cuttings of different colors in one cell. They have found the most popular combinations over the years and now they offer them in a single cell. No they’re not be generous with the plugs, they charge 2 and a half times as much for each plug and it still takes at least 3 plugs per pot. I found last year that 3 trixies and a trailing lobelia worked very well. They took a couple of extra weeks to fill in but they looked great by late June.
Most of this first planting will go into 3 1/2″ or 4″ pots. I will grow them until they have a good root system then shift them up to baskets. This planting all ends up going into 12″ baskets, if I tried to hold them for single pot sales they would be way too root bound. I spend a day filling pots into flats then a day filling the flats with soil. I water the flats in a few days before the plugs arrive then spread them out onto the benches. I will usually take the greenhouse up to normal growing temps the day before I receive the plugs. I think there is less transplant shock if the soil they get planted into is up to the same temp as the plug. The plugs are planted to where the soil of the plug is even with the soil in the pots. I stick a finger into the center of the pot wiggle it around a little (that’s tech talk for growers) then set the plug into the hole while firming the soil around it so that is seats. Make the hole a little shallower than the plug or you may end up with an air pocket under it. Water them in and they are ready to grow.
As soon as I am done planting for the day I arrange the fans in the greenhouse so that they move the air around over the tops of the flats. One fan at each end of the greenhouse both blowing toward the other end. This helps move the heat around too. I leave the fans on now 24/7.Now it’s time to step away from the plants. I don’t do anything to them for 5 or 6 days except remove any rotten leaves. They shouldn’t need any water in this time period. If you have air drying out the surface you can spot water only the driest ones.
After this first week you can start cleaning the rotten leaves on a daily basis, make sure when you go to pull off a leaf that you also grab the stem. If you don’t the whole plant will come along with the rotten leaf. Water as needed for the next couple of weeks. After a month I will give the whole batch a shot of fertilizer. I mix my fertilizer into a trash can of water. About 12 ounces of dry fertilizer to the barrel makes for about 250-300 parts per million of nitrogen. I will repeat this every two weeks.
We’ll talk about growing today. What do you want to grow? How much room do you have? Have you got a greenhouse or are you going to start your plants in your garage, or on top of your refrigerator ? How many market days do would you like to attend? Do you want to start early in the season or wait until it warms up a bit? How much room do you have to spread your starts out once they are ready to be shifted up? Do you have a place to hang baskets? Should you even grow baskets?
Lets start with something easy. One plant that is looked down upon by other vendors is the lowly Marigold. Great there is your first opportunity. Everything nowadays is about new plants. The trailing petunias and all of their counterparts, the fancy cutting grown patented plants that you have to pay someone else to start for you. And you do have to pay them. These patented varieties are protected by the plug industry by surprise on site inspection. When you sign up with a broker you agree to not propagate any of their plants from your own cuttings. It took me 15 years in the nursery business before the first plant inspector showed up but when they did I was clean and not growing anything except what I had bought from them. If I had they could have basically black-balled me and my nursery from ever being able to order patented plugs again.
Okay back to Marigolds. I order my seed from Park Seed Wholesale at least a month before planting time. I start my Marigolds in start early March. I start some plugs as early as early January. I take a 10″x20″ planting flat that usually holds the pots and line the bottom with plastic or newspaper fill it full of my good planting mix, Sunshine #4, water the flat in until its damp for the first couple of inches then spread the seed around the top of the flat. I try to cover the soil with a pretty good layer of seed, not so much that the seed is stacked up on top of the other seed but close. After I have a layer without a bunch of empty spots in it I cover the seed with a quarter inch of soil and gently water it in again. Cover the flat with plastic and put it in the hot bed that we discussed before. As soon as they sprout take the plastic off and move them to the cool end of the bed. After two weeks you can move the flat onto a bench and watch them grow. When they are big enough to transplant I take the flat and start ripping the nicely rooted plants out of the flat and shift them up to 3 1/2″ pots. I put one per pot but you could use two. My 17″ square flats hold 25 pots so I might get 6 full flats of 3 1/2″ plants from that one open flat of starts. I sell mine at market at two for a buck. They cost me about 15 cents to produce which nets me 35 cents times 25 per flat times six flats times probably 5 crops out of the one quarter ounce of seed. I’ll let you do the math. The thing about these plants though is not the profit but the fact that everyone can relate to the Marigold., usually from their past. They also serve as great color at the front of my stall and they don’t take up a lot of room while starting, growing or selling. Another nice thing is that folks rarely buy one plant at a time. It’s usually at least 4 or 6 and often the whole flat.
Before Planting Day
We just mentioned room to grow. How do you plan to grow. Greenhouse or some other shelter. I highly recommend a good quality greenhouse with benches for growing. I would recommend that though as I sell what I consider to be an above average quality Greenhouse Kit. If you haven’t got one go to.stevesgreenhouses.com/and you can look at mine.Yes they are ups shippable. Some folks will start enough plugs/liners and seeds to fill up their greenhouse,don’t do that. You have to remember that they are going to take up at least 3 times as much bench space once you shift them up into their finishes pots Four six packs of tomato starts will fill up one whole 17″x17′” flat. That is a standard sized flat. There are two the 10″x20″ ,that is the size most of your plugs will come in but I like the 17″ square because it holds 25 31/2″ pots and 16 4″ pots. This will hold true for almost anything you do from seed. I do my veggie starts in 4″ pots. That way I can take a half of a flat of several different varieties of veggies and not have a whole flat of just acorn squash.
After Planting,full house
If you are going to sell the fancy cutting grown plants,I sell thousands of them, plan your space ahead. Do you have room to plant them all in 3 1/2″ pots 25 to a flat or should you plant some or most of them right into your 12″ basket? I prefer to get their root system up to a better size than the plug by putting them in 3 1/2″ then shifting them to the baskets about two months before I plan on selling them. That gives you a chance to pinch them once or twice in the pot and still have time to pinch once in the basket. By the way with the new trailing plants pinch them until they scream. The more you pinch the bushier they get, but you do have to stop pinching things like the wave petunias a month before you plan on selling them. Although the newest calibrachoa/ mini trailing petunias are better at branching and don’t need quite as much pinching. Nothing is more frustrating than moving a flat of plants just so you can put another flat in it’s place. Now you have to find a place for the flat you just moved. Have enough space. Buy a bigger/another greenhouse. yay
This is getting long more on plants tomorrow. I’m just going with what I know. I plan on covering most of the plants I do each year.