Bootstrap Business: Earn Cash With your own Garden-grown Nursery

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Another good way to get started is to buy “liners” — young plants that have been propagated commercially — and “grow them out” until they’re large enough to sell. In most cases, you’ll get a saleable plant sooner by starting with liners rather than with seed stock.

Also, you don’t need a greenhouse, large windowsill or nursery bed in your garden to start these as seedlings; you can “line them out” in your garden as soon as they arrive. The drawback, of course, is the initial cost of the liners, which is not recouped until you sell them, perhaps in two or three years, or even longer.

Dirr describes in his book the best ways to propagate plants, and after a few times of doing it yourself, you’ll learn the processes. I learned that bayberry seeds should be collected in October and cold stratified (kept moist and cold) for 90 days before they will germinate. I collected my first berries from a large group of roadside shrubs, sowed them in a seeding medium just as you would sow tomato seeds, kept them in an unheated greenhouse over winter (watering occasionally when the medium wasn’t frozen), and in late spring they germinated. Seeds of many woody plants need this stratification period to break their dormancy.

If you don’t have a greenhouse, porch or other place where you can stratify seeds over winter, simply mix seeds with moist peat or a seed-starting mix, and put them in plastic bags. Then, store them in the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator for the winter. They’ll sprout when they’re ready — and sometimes before you’re ready. I’ve done this with bayberries and species roses, and ended up with seeds sprouting in February. These I had to grow in small flats on the windowsill because outside temperatures — even in the greenhouse — were still too cold for seedlings. Starting the stratification period later solves this problem.

After your seeds have sprouted in a small flat or plastic bag, transplant them to small pots and grow them until they’re large enough to move into the garden.

With some plants, such as some species roses, the transplant period could be midsummer of the first year of growth. Slower-growing plants, such as bayberry, should be grown in pots for a full year before they’re moved to the garden. You can overwinter them in their pots in an unheated greenhouse or cold frame.

As with vegetables, the traits of woody plants propagated from seed can vary. If you want to propagate a variety that is true to type, you’ll have to use some method of vegetative propagation, such as cuttings.

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