The Organic Home Nursery
(Page 3 of 6)
March/April 1972
By Roberta A. Fanning
Since every penny the new business earned was plowed back into more plants, Donn soon learned to provide for other needs by becoming a master recycler. The Tickners' greenhouse, for instance, cost only $11, a feat managed by using one side of the garage as a wall and by salvaging wood from various piles. Donn even found free nails. His only expense was the four-mil polyethylene covering which he lathed in place. The Tickners are now gradually replacing the plastic—which wears out in six months—with fiberglass siding (used, of course).
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For added greenhouse heat and light, Donn strung a connection from the house and hung up a $2.50 infra-red bulb. He says that he could have heated the greenhouse with chicken manure dug into a deep trench and covered with a layer of soil but he didn't because the manure must be renewed four or five times a year and, when wet, is too difficult for the necessary bacteria to decompose.
In his recycling fervor, Donn learned that wholesale nurseries are a good source of low-cost materials. "Get your flats and pots there cheap," he advises. "Such places are always using new materials and will sell their second-hand containers for very little."
Probably Donn's most valuable salvaging job (although a bank wouldn't agree) was a cache of well-rotted rabbit manure from an old hutch on another farm. The Tickners put it right into the huge batches of compost that they were then making for their special potting mix.
At that time, gardeners in the area contributed to the Organic Home Nursery's compost by dropping off their clippings and waste at the Tickners. "Now, though," Donn explains, "the neighbors are hip to the value of their organic waste and no longer bring it to us. We can make only enough compost for our own garden. I guess our lesson in organic education was a success."
As the Tickners increased their activities, customers began to trickle in. Still, there was no stampede to the nursery. Then, about a year after they first opened their business doors, Rachel and Donn were invited to exhibit at an ecology fair in Santa Cruz. Thinking the exposure would firmly establish their new venture, the Tickners worked long and hard to build a horseshoe- shaped, walk-through display. There they demonstrated forms of insect control with live praying mantises and ladybugs (from their own orchard). Donn also arranged a grouping of organic fertilizers for the show and labeled the levels of a mini-compost heap in an aquarium. Rachel set up a sensory exhibit of plants with signs saying "pollinate me" (dwarf lemon tree with paint brush), "feel me" (felt plant) and "taste me" (mint).
The Organic Home Nursery display created much interest and excitement with the fairgoers and Donn and Rachel danced home, exuberantly expecting promises and customers to materialize. They received a rather rude letdown of almost total no-shows. "But it wasn't all bad," Rachel says. "Customers from the exhibit DID appear . . . as much as six months later. It all worked out well eventually."
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