Once you know how to effectively propagate landscape plants,                 you will soon have more rooted cuttings than you can use. At                 that time you can decide whether or not you should quit growing                 cuttings, since you have all you need, or maybe you like to sell                 some of your cuttings to a wholesale grower. 
Let's discuss how easy it is to start a business selling                 lining out stock. That’s what nurserymen call the little                 plants that they buy to plant out in the field or in containers.                 Lining out stock, or liners for short. 
“Nurserymen buy plants?” You might be asking. 
Yes they do. Nurserymen probably buy more plants than any                 other group of people in the country. Why would they buy them if                 they know how to grow them? 
Because sometimes they can’t grow them fast enough to keep                 up with the demand. Or maybe they would like to grow a certain                 variety of plant, but can’t grow it themselves because they                 don’t have any place to get several thousand cuttings. So what                 they do is buy in rooted cuttings, plant them in the field or in                 containers, and then they either grow them on to sell, or they                 grow them on and just keep them around a year or two longer so                 they can take cuttings from them. 
Let’s say that Mary the nursery owner buys 1,000 Variegated                 Weigela rooted cuttings @ 50¢ each. She plants them in the                 field in the early spring and they take off growing like crazy.                 That summer she goes out and takes 3 cuttings from each plant                 (They need pruning away, right?). 
She sticks those 3,000 cuttings under intermittent mist and                 in about 5 weeks she has 3,000 rooted cuttings that she can                 plant out that fall, and she does just that. The following                 summer she can get about6,000 cuttings from the original 1000                 plants that she bought, plus another                 9,000 cuttings from the                 3,000 she planted out last fall. 
That’s a total of 12,000 cuttings.
By now the original 1,000 plants that she bought @ 50¢ each are large enough to dig and sell, and they are worth $10.00 to $15.00 each wholesale. That’s $8,000 from a $500 investment, plus she can produce as many variegated weigela as she wants without buying any more cuttings.
Does it really happen this way? Yes it does. I was recently                 talking to a friend who grows and sells all kinds of plants and                 he told me that he has been buying Dwarf Alberta Spruce cuttings                 and growing them on and selling them. He doesn’t even root any                 himself, he just buys 5,000 every year, pots them up and sells                 them wholesale. How many other nurseryman across the country do                 you suppose do that? 
As long as you keep taking cuttings the plants will remain                 fairly small, and compact. Then after a two or three years dig                 them up, put them in pots and sell them. By then you will have                 thousands more coming on that you can take cuttings from. Start                 out slow until you know what there is a market for.  Gardening Articles

 

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