#im so tired of trying to raise awareness and only other canadians care but being expected to be

[mionghairearracht]

i don't know why but im particularly pissed about us centrism today.

i think i might actually need to figure out how to filter at least some posts related to us stuff because its legitimately upsetting seeing the amount of posts for us issue vs. canadian ones despite me following multiple canadian focussed blogs and bloggers.

it not even that i want there to be less us posts i just wish any non us issues got even a fraction of the attention.

[kihaku-gato]

Hello, fellow horticulturalist here. So you are a green house grower? Is that for cut flowers? Or retail? Sorry if this is werid. Im just looking into so much to help decide what i should do after my internship ends with a tiny nursery I am currentlt at. Any help or knowledge is appreciated

This is gonna be a doozy of a wall of text, so my apologies beforehand.

I’m a owner/grower of a basic hoophouse greenhouse at our family farm. I primarily container raise perennials, trees, and shrubs from seed (either collected at gardens or purchased online) to sell to gardeners and other greenhouses/nurseries, so basically a mix of retail/wholesale.

My original plan was that I was going to work as an employee at a greenhouse/nursery while I worked on my own greenhouse from the ground up slowly until it reached a point of self sustainability. Unfortunately the few greenhouses in my locality weren’t hiring, which lead to me just going head first into my self-employed greenhouse work a little sooner than I was planning to.

I have at least two nursery connections that have expressed interest in purchasing plants from me, however I still have to wait at least 1-3 more years before a lot of my existing plant crops are at a size/quality that I feel is worth selling.

If you go plant nursery route (especially from scratch) I can at least say a few things from what I learned already on my first/second year;

If doing this from the ground-up in a self employment set up, it’s going to take a big while before any green (money) will come rolling in. Unless you go into Contract/Annuals work where you’ll get quicker amounts of money, you won’t see money come in that quick if at all. If anything you’ll be seeing a lot of uncomfortable red for a while. I live with my family so I can get away with having greenhouse as my primary even with it being red (and I tell ya, between the greenhouse being built and the huge amount of potting soil I’ve needed, I’ve been seeing a lot of red), but for most people they would probably need to have a part time job to keep living expenses going, which isn’t that necessarily hard to do with nursery work imo.

If going container style over bareroot nursery style, try your hardest to find the closest bulk nursery supplier to purchase from. Pots and potting soil when you need it get really expensive, especially if you end up depending on retail like Canadian Tire or Home Hardware or Walmart. Most bulk sellers if you’re lucky will have a seasonal bulk selling deal (there’s one near-ish us that sells potting soil by the pallet in autumn/spring, so we’ll be doing that in the future). Talk to other greenhouses/nurseries in your area if you can, they’ll likely know about suppliers that you weren’t aware of. It was a Mennonite lady who does annuals that helped us find our supplier.

As annoying/scary as it may be (and admittedly my own biggest kryptonite), local connections in the business are going to be your biggest ally. Talk to other nurserymen, talk to horticulture groups, get your image out there. They’re not likely going to just walk into your establishment on their own discovery, you’ll have to bring their attention to you.

This business is a little harsh if you’re not careful on your choice of crop. I’ve seen a lot of plants sell for less than the potting soil, containers and time it probably took to grow them (example- tall person-sized trees sell for a measly $4.99 CDN). As it currently stands, my current tree saplings at this current time are at a value that would sell for way less than the pots and soil they’re growing in. And it can get a lot worse if you’re selling/raising plants in bulk that people aren’t interested in buying. I grew tomatoes last year to attempt to get some seasonal money in while waiting for my slower crops to grow, and I only successfully sold to 3 people, and hardly enough plants to be worth the work it took to grow them. As another more recent example there’s an entire corner of Hosta lancifolia being sold at Cuddy Gardens, and almost no one has bought any whatsoever (A- it’s not a true species hosta so it doesn’t appeal to collectors, B- it’s a green hosta so unappealing to most gardeners who probably already have green hostas and are more interested in other colours/varieties), even though it took at least 2 years to raise them as they are. If Cuddy wasn’t such a plant-generalist of a nursery and have other selection, that would be a bit of a disaster. Practically, you’re going to want to grow stuff that will appeal to a lot of wide array of gardeners long-term. Annuals/Veggies can be risky here as tastes can drastically change year to year.

You’re going to lose crop plants. Surprise diseases, pests/animals, your own newby mistakes (DON’T PUT HEAVY FERTILIZER IN FRESH TRANSPLANTS IN MIDDLE OF SUMMER, DON’T BE ME OF 2016), it’s inevitably going to happen. It kind of ties up with the earlier point of the business being pretty harsh. If you’re lucky you’ll just lose a handful of each of your different crops (while not great it’s still a normal average in some greenhouses to lose a few of certain crops), if not so lucky it’s going to be a painfully gigantic chunk of your crops and time. Prevention/learning is most key.

Avoid patented plants. A bit obvious for the wise but still. You need a special paid licence to propagate/sell patented plants. It’s not worth the risk in fines and money lost when you’re just barely starting out, imo don’t do it.

Despite these harsh and scary points I still want to work in the plant raising business. It’s really up for if you find the risk/reward worthwhile. I hope this response isn’t too overwhelming and that it helps.