The Profitable Greenhouse

Mail Order and The Internet

Your choice of profit-making plants may be dictated somewhat by your indoor gardening experience and the time you have spent as a hobby gardener or collector. As you gain experience your horizons will widen.

Many amateurs have learned through round robins (correspondence groups) what collector friends through the country are buying-or trying to buy. If you plan to go into the mail-order business, it would be a good idea to join one or more of these groups. They will give you some good leads. Some garden magazines and many of the plant societies sponsor round robins. Membership in plant society round robins is free with membership. The addresses of various plant societies will usually be found at the back of any magazine which sponsors round-robin groups. But the most complete source of addresses of all kinds of plant and garden organizations is the “Directory of American Horticulture”.

Unfortunately, your sales may be limited by the area in which you live in. You certainly don’t want to limit yourself by limiting your revenue. You may be even more limited if you choose to grow uncommon or exotic plants. These types of plants are often referred to as collectors’ items. If this is the situation in which you find yourself, there is a solution. You can start a mail order business. You may think this would be too overwhelming; however, it’s much easier than you think. Later I will tell you about shipping restrictions and packing and how to develop a customer list for this type of business.

Without Heat

You don’t necessarily have to have a greenhouse that is heated to run a successful greenhouse business. 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 clamor 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.