Without Paying For Heat
Heat is not essential for all kinds of greenhouse gardening. Although gloxinias, for instance, usually are grown in a well-heated house, a Minneapolis man has found out how to make a tidy profit from them without heat.
In late February, he starts seedlings in his kitchen windows and in his basement under fluorescent lights. When the weather warms up in late April, he moves the seedlings to an unheated pit greenhouse.
By August, when the local market is just right for selling gloxinias in flower, he has quantities and florists clamour for them. Actually he could sell many more if he wanted to expand his little project. And this is carried on in a greenhouse, without heat, in Minnesota's cold north country.
Another friend makes money from an unheated greenhouse by using it as a potting shed and starter room for potted roses, daylilies, and iris. She also has a heated greenhouse a glassed in extension of the south portion of the basement which she uses for starting seeds of tender plants. She has found that this is also the perfect place for a few potted orchid plants whose blooms are always in demand. Potted conifers grown in a cool greenhouse bring profit to another Minnesota gardener who prefers growing trees to flowers.
House Plants
A young man in Oklahoma made a success of growing many kinds of house plants in a 6- by 9-foot plastic-covered greenhouse. Total outlay for all materials was $70.00, and it was not unusual for him to net that amount in a single month.
An enthusiast in Maine invested some money to transform an old chicken coop into a small lean-to greenhouse. She soon developed it into a profitable hobby, and today she owns and operates four large greenhouses. Her specialties are potted gesneriads (African violets, etc.) and bedding plants, such as coleus, wax begonias, and geraniums.
And what about growing plants just for their seeds? Seeds of newer varieties of saintpaulias often bring as much as $750.00 per ounce! There is also a steady market for seed of rare plants and extra-fine strains of garden and house plants.
Help Yourself Take Courses
If you want to enlarge your field of operation you can learn to be a florist or landscape nurseryman by taking a correspondence or extension course. Nearly every state university gives extension courses; nationally known and advertised florist and landscape schools teach you through the mail.
These schools have prominent horticulturists on their staffs, and they stand ready to help with all of your "growing and selling" problems. One of the landscape schools is now adding to its curriculum a course in greenhouse growing and management. My brother, a major in the United States Army, will retire at the age of forty-three. Looking ahead, he and his wife took a florist course. Upon retirement, they will build and stock a small greenhouse and open a florist shop.
Glass-House Gardeners Club
Amateur greenhouse growers in Tulsa, Oklahoma, have formed a group which might well be emulated in other cities. They call themselves the Glass-House Gardener's Club. The members exchange growing methods as well as successes and failures. This makes for easier under-glass growing for all and offers pleasant social contact, too.
Once you have established your own greenhouse business, you won't mind the fact that most of the plants are only rent-paying tenants (or profit-making transients). You will enjoy these plant "guests" because they pay expenses and net you some profit too-profit that, if nothing else, will permit you to enjoy your own plants without tight-budget worries. "Money doesn't grow on trees," you'll find, but you can make it grow in a home greenhouse.
