How to Make Money at
Home Growing Small Landscape Plants on 1/20 Acre or Less
by Michael J. McGroarty
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Small town, big town, it doesn’t matter, if you have a
small area in your backyard that you can use for planting, then
you can make money growing small plants at home. Actually you
can make pretty good money on 1/40 of one acre. That’s an area
about 30 feet by 40 feet.
You will be amazed at how many plants you can fit in an area
that small, and at how much money you can make. Even apartment
dwellers can do this! If you live in an apartment, just to get a
feel for how fun and rewarding a tiny nursery can be, find
somebody with a little piece of ground that they will either let
you use, let you rent it, or do a joint venture with you.
Is there really a market for small plants? The market is
huge, something like 4 billion dollars last year alone, and the
demand is tremendous. As a small grower, you have a tremendous
advantage over the larger nurseries, their overhead is very
high. As a backyard grower yours will be almost nothing.
You might be asking; "I live in a small town in a rural
area, how many plants can I really sell?"
Tens of thousands if you want to. Most people don’t
realize it, but large wholesale growers are the largest buyers
of small plants in the country. They sell so many plants that
they just can not produce them fast enough themselves, so they
buy them from where ever they can find them. Just pack them up
in a cardboard box and ship them anywhere you want.
I routinely buy large quantities of small plants and have
them shipped thousands of miles to my house. Why do I buy plants
if I know how to grow them myself? There are a lot of reasons,
but one is because I am impatient and don’t like to grow
Japanese Maples from seed. I can buy Japanese Maple seedlings
for as little as 75¢ and all I have to do is pot them up and
watch them grow.
I also buy large quantities of flowering shrubs that I would
like to start propagating myself. I buy them for 50¢, pot them
up, and often sell them the next year for $4.97. But in the mean
time I take cuttings from them to propagate for next year’s
crop. Then I never have to buy that variety again.
Those are the
same reasons that many wholesale nurseries are always looking
for great deals on small plants. When they find someone like
you, growing in their backyard they are delighted, because they
know they can buy what they need for less money from a small
backyard grower than they can if they buy from a large nursery.
It only stands to reason, your overhead is almost nothing,
you don’t have to raise the price of your plants to pay for
buildings, hundreds of acres of land, trucks, tractors, and
dozens of employees.
How much money do you need to get started?
Almost none. All you have to do is root some cuttings, and
you’re on your way! There are dozens of easy plant propagation
techniques that are so easy to learn that young children can do
them, and with great success I might add.
This propagation
information is available to you free of charge at www.freeplants.com
The size of the area you need to get started is really up to
you, but an area about the size of a picnic table is a start.
I’m serious. I root my cuttings in flats that are about 12”
by 15”, and can get between 100 and 150 cuttings per flat. In
an area about the size of a picnic table you should be able to
root several thousand cuttings at a time.
And guess what? As soon as they are well rooted, they have a value and can be
sold immediately! Isn’t that cool? Typically a rooted cutting is worth about 50¢. Let’s see
now, 1500 cuttings at 50¢ each, that’s $750.!!! Wow!!! The
wheels should be turning now.
But you don't have to sell 50¢ plants, you can grow them
until they’re bigger and get more money for them.
That’s what I do, I pot them up in small pots and they sell
like crazy right from my driveway at $4.97 each.
This
spring we sold over $25,000. worth of $4.97 plants right from
our driveway. One the people that bought my Backyard
Nursery E-book held a sale this spring and sold $2,800. worth of
plants her first weekend. She was ecstatic! Of course we also sold plants for much more than that.
I used to grow Japanese Red Maples and we sold those for $45.
each, and they sold like hot cakes!
This is one of the most fun and rewarding home businesses you
could ever get involved in. My kids have learned work ethics,
the value of a dollar, and skills that will last them a
lifetime. Anytime they needed a little extra money all
they had to do was step out the back door and earn the money
they need.
It costs very little to get started, and the rewards can be
quite high.
It’s certainly not a get rich quick plan (because
there is no such thing!), but plenty of people have done very
well in the nursery business. All it takes is
determination and hard work. You can learn it as you go along.
It’s much easier than you think.
Michael J. McGroarty is the author of this article. Visit his
most interesting website, http://www.freeplants.com
and sign up for his excellent gardening newsletter.
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